The Problem
I have lots of information about my customers that make purchases at my brick and mortar stores. At these stores, we record size, SKU, and color information about every item that our customers purchase. I want to use this data to personalize my site for these customers and drive my onsite conversion rate.
Relevance
By supplying additional data, you're enhancing the number and depth of attributes used to create custom segments. You can create richer customer data to drive more relevant content and improve conversion rates.
Solution
You're already aware that you have a wealth of information available about your offline customers, but you're not sure how to target them once they reach your site. Data Import allows you to provide all your data in the form of a dataset file to Monetate for use in an unlimited number of experiences.
Before you begin, you must expose an ID on your site that Monetate can use to locate your customers. This ID must identify real people and not their browser or device. It may be available when a customer logs in to your site, when a customer signs up for an email list, or when a customer reaches out to your online customer service. In addition, you must set up an on-site ID target in Target Builder.
After you expose an ID and configure a target, upload a customer dataset file to Monetate. Depending on the size of the file, it may take a few minutes before this information is available to use in an experience.
When the customer dataset is ready, you can then use the information you already know about your customers to personalize your site. You can do this by creating experiences that use dataset targets. Be aware that the dataset information only represents a subset of your entire site traffic. If you're too specific or add too many AND targets to the experience, you potentially risk having a small set of site visitors exposed to your experience.
For the WHAT portion of the experience, consider various options for reaching your customers.
Allow the experience to run until you have enough data to make any actionable decisions. Since you're only targeting a small subset of your total traffic, this may take a bit longer to establish.
Next Steps
After running the experience for a month, check the conversion rate in the experience analytics. The conversion percentage represents the portion of identified offline customers who also made purchases on your site. If you find that this percentage is lower than expected, revisit the personalization actions you're taking. Is it possible that you should widen your reach (for example, offer free shipping to customers who've spent $50 in the last 2 months rather than $100)? Is there a better coupon or discount that you could offer to your lowest-performing segments to help drive business (for example, offering $5 off purchases of $30 or for offline customers who haven't purchased in the last 30 days)?
There is no perfect solution that works across the board. Chances are you must try different approaches before you get it right. However, having these insights helps you reach more of your customer base in the future.