Visibility

The marketer’s path for the acquisition of desirable traffic is typically well defined for E-Commerce, lead generation, publishing and subscription-based websites.  Generally, a website will have one or more internal teams or external agencies responsible for different acquisition methods and a singular focus to improve upon their own metrics and objectives.  For instance, a large E-Commerce company may have individual groups dedicated to email, paid search, natural search, display, and affiliate-acquisition channels.  The goal of each channel is to engage visitors at initial contact and ultimately helping them click through to the pre-defined destination on a website or landing page.  

Acquisition Budgets Continue to Rise

In a recent Forrester Research report (http://www.forrester.com/Research/Document/Excerpt/0,7211,55668,00.html), interactive marketing spend will near a total of $55 billion by 2014, with different growth rates for various industries.  In turn acquisition channel vendors are bolstering their product offering to attract more dollars (see Googles’ new ad formats for example http://adwords.blogspot.com/2009/11/announcing-product-listing-ads.html).

As dollars and efforts pour into offsite acquisition activities, marketers have not yet fully realized the potential for onsite personalization and optimization programs. In looking at the problem from a different perspective, the focus has traditionally been on pushing and pulling distinctive levers to maximize one channel. Instead, let’s work on a concept we call Acquisition Budget Optimization.

Getting Started on Acquisition Budget Optimization

An onsite personalization strategy can take many forms, but we at Amadesa typically see marketers focusing on the largest population with the greatest acquisition cost as the immediate first step.  For instance, the two greatest audience plus cost acquisition methods for an E-Commerce site are paid search and email.  The first step of budget optimization is to identify the opportunities for improvement.  The second step is planning personalization and optimization programs for the target opportunity.

Personalizing Content for “Paid” Visitors

Paid search represents an obvious opportunity.  An acquisition budget is allocated, users click on advertisements, clicks generate a fee for the advertised website, and visitors arrive to the site; but only a small percentage typically convert to paying customers. The dollars spent by those visitors represents the return on the paid search investment.  

Personalizing content on the site for this particular group of visitors ahead of their imminent arrival is advantageous from a conversion rate and ROI perspective.  Consider a paid search ad with the following messages on a query for “men’s shoes”:  “Free shipping on orders $35+”, “365 Day Returns”, “Find Your Style Now”.  A user who clicks on one these messages will be influenced by messaging on the site’s landing page (and subsequent pages).  Consistency in content between the advertised message and on-site message is an important personalization step that is much more likely to strengthen engagement and convert visitors into paying customers.  

This is a simple example of content personalization – tying unique content to a unique user group based upon a particular action (or set of actions).  Best of all, this type of personalization scenario is marketer controlled (no IT support needed), which frees up the marketer’s resources and reduces costs.

Taking Personalization to the Next Level with “Smart” Promotions

Once pre-defined personalization opportunities are outlined and implemented, the next step is to implement “personalized promotions” on key areas of the site.  Personalized promotions are “smart” site zones that live on the website and evolve with user behavior.  These self-optimizing areas utilize data from hundreds of anonymous users and correlate that data to present the right content to the right user in real time to improve their experience, drive conversions, and increase revenue.  For instance, you may consider the hero graphic on your site a prime area for “smart” promotions.  Maximize the opportunity to convert all acquisition channels with real-time predictive solutions.

Capitalize on Results, Fine Tune and Adjust Budgets According to ROI

With multiple personalization programs running across key acquisition channels, results will naturally vary, so it’s important to remember to fine tune and adjust the creative and messaging for the greatest overall benefit.  The final steps in the process are to communicate wins to internal stakeholders, learn from your audience and keep pushing toward ever-more personalized content to each visitor providing a more satisfying experience for the customer and building a more rewarding relationship for the business.