It’s no surprise we all want services and brand experiences to be tailored to our needs and wants. In fact, it’s become the default expectation for consumers worldwide, as a McKinsey report highlights: 71% of surveyed consumers expect personalization in their shopping experience, and 76% of consumers are disappointed when they don’t get it.

In addition, an Epsilon survey found that 80% of consumers are more likely to make a purchase when brands offer personalized experiences.

What does that mean for you and your store? At the very least, you should begin with segmentation, where you identify groups of customers based on various criteria, which can be any of the following: 

• Geolocation
• Source (i.e. did they find you through Google, an ad, or referral link?)
• What time of day they were on your site
• Active time spent and what pages they viewed
• Their browser or device type
• Purchases they made/items added to their cart
• Filters they applied to searches, e.g. price or type

Leveraging software to do the heavy lifting for that kind of customer segmentation is recommended, especially if this is your first time launching such a program. 

Then you can bridge your email marketing strategy with customer segmentation in order to reach the right customers with the right offers.

In addition, take advantage of other apps that could help you create auto tags on orders for better workflow and order processing. This kind of software can identify which items are out-of-stock, sort by date, delivery time, zip code, and other attributes.

You can also filter your orders to see which ones are by first-time customers and which items are out-of-stock, so you can send customers emails for alternative products they may enjoy instead.

As a previous Shop Circle post noted, instead of focusing solely on getting new business, personalization helps you bolster your customer retention. “In turn, you get more business for less money. Retaining existing customers can cost five times less than acquiring new ones. Being able to build a stronger brand while driving higher profits is one of the greatest benefits of personalization.”