The document discusses common pitfalls in digital personalization for marketers and strategies to avoid them. It highlights four major pitfalls: segmentation errors, overlap and confusion in segments, excessive content demands, and a lack of testing assumptions. The guide emphasizes the importance of using existing audience data, creating manageable segments, and continuous learning from data to optimize personalization efforts.

1. R
Personalization Pitfalls & How to Avoid Them
Nabler Marketing Guide

2. Introduction to Personalization Pitfalls and How to Avoid Them
Digital personalization has long been something that good marketers strive to do well. Presenting the right
content to the right person in the right scenario (or time) always makes for a better experience than showing
the same content to all people.
Luckily for us, today we have a multitude of marketing technologies that make this process easier than it’s ever
been. However, like any tool, the results created by these technologies are only as good as the system they are
used in and the people that use them.
Good digital personalization requires various activities that can be challenging, even with the right tools.
Key elements such as figuring out what your audience segments should be, knowing details about what each
segment may want, creating compelling and engaging content for them, setting up the right targeting rules
and learning what works and doesn’t work all require some serious planning and brain power.
And just like any challenging journey, you will encounter some pitfalls along the way.
Based on the learnings we have gained through working with Nabler’s clients and from previous professional
experiences, we have put together this resource that highlights four of the most common pitfalls you may face
along your personalization journey. We also provide our approach to skillfully avoiding them to help you come
out ahead.
We hope you find this useful and continue to use your brainpower and marketing technologies to continue
building great experiences for all of us!
Scott Olivares
Practice Director – Conversion Rate Optimization
Nabler

3. Content
The stages of personalization: How the Nabler personalization process works.............4
Pitfalls: Common web personalization pitfalls companies face.......................................7
Solution: Focus on important few....................................................................................17
Pitfalls #1: Missing the mark with segmentation..............................................................8
Solution: Build segments from the audience you have...................................................10
Pitfalls #2: Segment overlap and confusion....................................................................11
Solution: Always be MECE..............................................................................................14
Pitfalls #3: Creating a content monster...........................................................................15
Pitfalls #4: Not testing assumptions...............................................................................19
Solution: Learn from data................................................................................................21
Summary.........................................................................................................................22
Personalization Pitfall > 3

4. The
Personalization
Process
Personalization Pitfall > 4

5. Stages of Personalization
Stages
Identify &
define audience
segments
Identify Locations
to personalize
content
Create targeted
content
Publish segment
definitions
Define
targeting rules
Deploy
content targeting
Learn &
calibrate
Web personalization is often a multi-step, ongoing process that
needs to be optimized at each stage.
The graphic below illustrates a common approach to personalization.
Personalization Process > 5

6. Stages of Personalization
The process starts with identifying the best locations on your website to personalize content.
You must define and flag the audience segments for whom you will be creating targeted content. The members of each segment
must be able to be identified in a later step.
Once the audience segments have been defined and flagged, personalized content should be created for each segment.
After audience segments have been defined and flagged, and personalized content has been created, the segment data and
content should be loaded into the personalization platform that will deliver the right content to the right person.
With the audience data and personalized content in place, targeting rules need to be configured in order to serve the right
content to the right audience segments. For example, Segment A will receive Content A on XYZ pages.
Finally, it’s show time. The campaign is launched and visitors begin seeing targeted content.
It’s very rare to get this right immediately, hence, there is a need for analyzing results, learning what works, what doesnt work,
and calibrating or optimizing, your segment definitions, content and targeting rules.
Personalization Process > 6
Identify & define audience segments
Identify & define audience segments
Create targeted content
Publish segment definitions
Define targeting rules
Deploy content targeting
Learn & calibrate

7. Pitfalls
Personalization Process > Pitfall > 7
Common
web personalization pitfalls
companies face
Common
Pitfalls

8. Pitfalls #1
Missing the mark with segmentation
Common Pitfalls > Pitfall 1 > 8

9. Blind segment definition process
Your ideal customers aren’t here
Common Pitfalls > Pitfall 1 > 9
Pitfalls #1
Low website targeting coverageIdeal segment created
A popular approach to creating audience segments is to work with your marketing
department or hire an agency to define your ideal customers. The result is often
persona-based segmentation, where each persona is made up of various attributes.
Unfortunately, this process can completely miss the mark. While the definitions may be
valuable, and the personas are often accurate, the people with those specific attribute
combinations are often not present within the company’s website traffic.
When most visitors don’t fall into any of the predefined segments, the majority of visitors
are served generic content and all that segmentation effort is wasted.

10. Solution
Build segments from the audience you have
Common Pitfalls > Pitfall 1 > 10
To avoid this pitfall, build segments from your existing web audience.
We suggest beginning your segment definition process by mining data from your existing
website visitors. This source of visitor data can come from you web analytics platform, or if you
have a proprietary data warehouse that has visitor attributes, that can be even more insightful.
By starting with data about your existing visitors, you can group people that are actually visiting
your website, based on attributes that are important to you. This creates audience segments
that are both valuable and actionable. The result is that fewer people go untargeted, and most
of the content you create will actually be seen by the people that should see it.
Build segments based on the audience you have
Pitfalls #1
Start with existing website visitor data

11. Pitfalls #2
Segment overlap and confusion
Common Pitfalls > Pitfall 2 > 11
Just Who is This Guy?
Stoned
Burglar
Awful
Burglar
First-Year
Roommate
Breaks Into Houses
Leave Things Behind Eats Your Food
Santa
Claus

12. Segment overlap and confusion
Good segments can still have overlap
To illustrate overlap we'll use 4 common hotel industry segments:
• Business traveler
• Leisure traveler
• Price sensitive
• Price insensitive
This is a real-life and actionable segmentation of guest types that can be used for personalization.
Pitfalls #2
Common Pitfalls > Pitfall 2 > 12
Business Traveler Price Sensitive
Leisure Traveler Price Insensitive

13. Segment overlap and confusion
Overlap wreaks havoc on targeting rules
However, overlap would wreak havoc on a targeting plan
that uses just these four segments. For example, what
content should be targeted when a business guest
decides to stay a few extra days for some leisure time,
or when a price sensitive guest is visiting for a business
conference? Either of these scenarios can cause confusion
if the hotelier’s segmentation plan is too simple or rigid.
Interestingly, the problem isn’t that the overlap exists.
The problem is that companies often fail to plan for
segments that exist within the overlaps. Unfortunately,
when they finally realize it, they aren’t prepared with
content and/or segment definitions to effectively serve
them.
Pitfalls #2
Common Pitfalls > Pitfall 2 > 13
Price InsensitivePrice sensitive
Business Traveler
Leisure Traveler
? ?
? ?
???

14. Solution
Always be MECE
We recommend that segment definitions always be MECE
(mutually exclusive, completely exhaustive). While this may
sound complex, it simply means that all your segments
should be completely different from each other and when
you add them up, should include your entire audience.
The illustration on the top right that contains our hotel guest
segments is not MECE, because it defines only the four
basic segments that don’t have a clean break from each
other. In this case, the segments are completely exhaustive,
but not mutually exclusive.
The chart on the bottom right is MECE because it makes
new segments out of the overlap areas, making all segments
completely different from each other. As you can see, the
four hotel segments make up to eleven combinations when
the overlap segments are accounted for. In this MECE
scenario, every single segment is cleanly separate from
every other segment and when you add them all up, equal
the entire audience.
Mutually exclusive, Completely exhaustive
Not MECE
Pitfalls #2
Common Pitfalls > Pitfall 2 > 14
Price InsensitivePrice sensitive
Business Traveler
Leisure Traveler
A
B
C
D
MECE
Price InsensitivePrice sensitive
Business Traveler
Leisure Traveler
E G
K M
JIH
A
B
C
D

15. Pitfalls #3
Creating a content monster
Common Pitfalls > Pitfall 3 > 15

16. Content monster
Content requirements grow exponentially
Pitfalls #3
As marketers, we often believe in serving the right content to the right person at the
right time. That means that if we have eleven different audience segments, then we
need eleven different homepage banners to target the right content to the right visitors.
As marketers, we also often believe in A/B testing, therefore we’ll want to test each
banner against a variant. Given our eleven segments and an A/B test, we’d actually
need twenty two homepage banners!
Many marketing teams start down the personalization path without understanding the
significant increase in content that it will demand. Unfortunately, once reality hits, the
need for so much content creates a bottleneck that either cripples the personalization
initiative or forces a lot of work to be undone.
Common Pitfalls > Pitfall 3 > 16
Hyper segmentation
Banner needed by segment
Test banner needed by segment
1 2
3
54
6
9
7
8
11
10
1
4
7
10
5
8
11
6
9
2 3
1B
4B
7B
10B
5B
8B
11B
6B
9B
2B 3B

17. Solution
Focus on important few
Pitfalls #3
Nabler recommends resisting the desire to hyper personalize when you are first starting
out and focusing on an important few audience segments. This will create a manageable
workload for your team to get started.
Common Pitfalls > Pitfall 3 > 17
Hyper segmentation Important few
1
2
3
54
6
9
7
8
11
10
Business
Travelers
Leisure Travelers
Business and
Leisure Travelers

18. By focusing your efforts on a few important segments,
you will achieve benefits that include:
You can get started faster
Creating a personalization program that includes 2 or 3
segments feels pretty manageable and probably won’t require
heavy investment. Therefore, you can start immediately and
launch within a reasonable timeframe. If you require a multitude
of segments, you probably won’t have the resources at your
fingertips to start immediately. The start of your project will be
delayed and its launch delayed even further.
You will learn faster
If you are going to be successful with personalization, then you
must be prepared to test and learn. By starting out small, you
can test your segments, your content, your targeting rules, and
learn what works and doesn’t work for your business. This is
much easier to do with just a few segments. Data will start
coming in almost immediately and you will be able to optimize
your program more easily than if you had launched a content
monster.
You will show results faster
Most likely, you will need buy-in from several people across
your organization to launch a personalization program.
Executive leadership and other teams will need to put some of
their resources into the effort. In most organizations, it’s easier
to say yes to a small request compared to a large request.
By getting started quickly and optimizing quickly, you will
demonstrate the value of the program with hard data. This will
provide you with the justification to expand and ask for the
resources to put together a more robust program.
Common Pitfalls > Pitfall 3 > 18
Pitfalls #3

19. Pitfalls #4
Not testing assumptions
Common Pitfalls > Pitfall 4 > 19

20. Not testing assumptions
Not planning for “learn & calibrate”
Creating a personalized experience is a significant investment in time, resources and brain power. Creating segments,
defining targeting rules and creating content are all complex and time intensive activities. Once a personalization
program is launched, however, your work is not done. It is imperative that you test your assumptions, learn and optimize.
After all, when was the last time you did anything for the very first time and had no room to improve?
Unfortunately, many companies don’t focus on learning and calibrating the various inputs of personalization. Often, it’s
because these activities require so much up-front work, that they have not put any planning or resources behind
continuously learning and improving the overall process.
Common Pitfalls > Pitfall 4 > 20
Identify &
define audience
segments
Identify Locations
to personalize
content
Create targeted
content
Publish segment
definitions
Define
targeting rules
Deploy
content targeting
Learn &
calibrate
Pitfalls #4

21. Solution
Learn from data
The best way to avoid this pitfall is to learn from the data
and optimize. Often this requires testing, learning and
advanced analytics research in your plan.
By establishing a plan for testing and learning and staffing
your team with people that have the right skills, you will
ensure that your personalization program will continue
improving. It’s necessary, in this situation, to get help from
data analysts or data scientists - people that will analyze
results by segment, targeting rules and every piece of
content you produce. They will provide the insights and
optimization recommendations that will make your program
successful.
Without scientific optimization, this process is will plateau
quickly and not gain the momentum it deserves.
Common Pitfalls > Pitfall 4 > 21

22. Summary
In summary, there are 4 tactics at avoiding the major pitfalls when starting your
personalization program.
Improve audience coverage by using existing audience data as the starting point
for defining segments
Common Pitfalls > Summary > 22
Avoiding targeting confusion by making them MECE
Limit demand for content by focusing on a few important segments
Gain value from personalization by always learning from the data and including
data analysts on your personalization team

23. Thank You
Personalization Process > Pitfall > 23
Interested in discussing
this further with us?
http://www.nabler.com/contactus.asp
info@nabler.com