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Today’s customers appreciate and value online personalization. Online personalization is necessary for your business to captivate, engage, and generate loyal customers.
The online world is crowded, and it gets bigger and louder as time moves on. Our customers are bombarded with choices, making it difficult to stand out in the crowd. One way to gain a leg up over competitors is through personalizing customer experiences.
Strategic Product Recommendations (SPR) are a powerful tool in your marketing toolkit that caters to your individual customers’ needs and preferences. Are you familiar with SPR? You should be, and this blog will help you understand how this opportunity can be a game changer for relationship building and long-lasting customer relationships.
What Are Strategic Product Recommendations?
Strategic Product Recommendations (SPR) are suggestions customized and presented to your customers based on their browsing behavior, purchase history, and preferences. When browsing a brand’s website and products, you might notice the website begins to suggest other products based on your searches, and it’s not a coincidence.
Unlike generic recommendations, SPRs are finely tuned to each customer profile. Sophisticated algorithms and analytics predict what a customer is likely to purchase next. This personalized approach enhances the overall shopping experience and increases the conversion opportunity. It’s a win-win for the customer and your business. A customer feels valued when they are understood through personalization.
Easy-To-Understand SPR Examples
Here are two good examples to help you get the SPR picture:
A customer visits your website, where you sell cookware, and repeatedly searches a specific line of cookware every time, such as Le Creuset. It’s that user’s past preferences and behaviors. The next time they visit your website, an SPR appears and suggests a new release from the brand, maybe in a different color or type of product, like saucepans instead of Dutch ovens.
A personalized product recommendation might offer the repeat customer their favorite brand of cookware, but maybe it will also show limited-availability lines that are more expensive options. At this point, the goal is for the repeat customer to appreciate the personalized suggestion and add it to their cart.
Another example we can use is the feminine health industry. A brand offering products centered around treating and preventing UTIs may have a repeat customer who purchases UTI medication multiple times on your website.
Since they’ve repeatedly tried one of your products, the next time they hop onto your website, an SPR might suggest some other products, such as vitamins and supplements you sell, to prevent future infections. You might also present a personalized offer to bundle these products. This not only shows them your business understands their needs but also generates add-on sales. You can also include links to blog posts that provide additional information on how to use your products or on their condition.
How Does SPR Work Brilliantly in the Backend?
The mechanics of SPR combine technologies, including artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), and data analytics, to detect patterns, preferences, and behaviors among vast amounts of data.
These patterns and pieces of information allow you to deliver relevant product recommendations that align with the customer’s current stage in the journey.
Why SPR is an Essential Marketing Strategy?
According to a blog post on MailChimp, “49 percent of consumers say that a personalized recommendation has driven them to purchase a product that they did not initially intend to buy.” Some may consider SPR trendy. Others agree that it is a necessity to stay one step ahead of your competition and reach your customers. Here’s why:
- Improve Customer Experience: Personalized recommendations make customers feel valued, understood, and special. It’s all about an enjoyable online shopping experience, which is key to building brand awareness, loyalty, and repeat business. People like to do business with businesses they know, like, and trust. SPR provides exactly what they are looking for.
- Increase Sales and Conversions: When SPR assists in suggesting products your customers are interested in, this improves your conversion rates, boosts your bottom line, and generates repeat business
- Increase Add-On Sales: SPR results also encourage customers to add more items to their cart than initially intended. Showcasing complementary products and upgrades increases the average order value.
- Creates Customer Retention and Loyalty: When you provide a seamless, personalized customer experience, customers are more likely to return because you met or exceeded their expectations.
Adding SPR to Your Website for a World of Difference
It takes some time and strategy to take full advantage of SPR. Take a look at some helpful action steps:
Collect and Analyze Your Data
Data is the heartbeat of SPR. Work with your website developer to implement tools and systems to collect data from multiple sources. This includes website visits and interactions, purchase history, and social media activity. This data will help you understand your customer behavior better and strengthen your SPR.
Segment Your Audiences
It’s fair to say that not all customers are the same. This is where segmenting your audience is helpful for personalization strategies. Segment your audience by demographics, behaviors, and history to customize their experience.
Suggest Recommendations That Align With the Customer Journey
Every time a customer clicks on a different page on your website, it is an opportunity for personalization. Each touchpoint, including the home page, product pages, search results, checkout page, etc, should include a recommendation. This ensures the customer is constantly given relevant product suggestions.
A/B Testing Can Improve Your Success
Experiment with different content and continuously optimize your recommendations. A/B testing is a tool to help you compare, evaluate, and refine your approach to get the most customer engagements and conversions.
Build Trust With Your Loyal Customers
Always share with your customers how you use data for recommendations. This builds trust and transparency with them and provides them with the opportunity to customize and update their preferences. It also helps you comply with data protection laws like GDPR and CCPA.
Update and Refresh Recommendations for Relevance
Keep a close eye on your product recommendations. Keep it fresh and relevant. Don’t allow it to get stale and old. Update your product inventory and recommendation algorithms to reflect trends, seasons, and availability.
Final Thoughts
Displaying strategic product recommendations on your website can help your customers discover new products based on their interests and behaviors. By delivering personalized recommendations, you can increase the number of items per order, increase customer lifetime value, and generate more loyal customers.
Remember to use technology to help you analyze your customer data, properly segment your audiences, and consider each stage of the customer journey. Additionally, remember to run A/B tests to ensure you’re consistently improving your strategy, refresh recommendations regularly, and make trust between customers and your business a top priority.
