Top 3 Personalization Strategies for Non-Retail Applications

2014 was an incredibly exciting year for mobile apps. With a huge advantage of personalization that mobile apps offer over mobile websites, even the most well-known  brick-and-mortar stores have geared their attention to developing more mobile applications in 2015. Using these apps, these stores successfully leverage proximity functions like geolocation, push notifications, etc.  to deliver mesmerising personalized experiences to shoppers, who so obsessively clutch their smartphones these days.

Many personalization platforms today emphasize primarily on retail mobile apps. But non-retail mobile apps can also keep their user community engaged. Read this post further to explore the different personalization strategies that work greatly for non-retail apps.

Many developers feel reluctant to dive into creating apps for non-retail businesses fearing from the exercise of collecting humongous customer data and developing big algorithms. Nevertheless, it’s a myth that we will debunk in this post.

Here are the top 3 personalization strategies for non-retail content.

1. Geolocation content

This is one of the great ways to personalize content. As majority of smartphones have in-built geolocation features, you can easily target users with newsfeed and even connect them with other users in proximity with same interests. One of the brilliant examples to quote here is that of iBeacon that enables mobile apps with its Bluetooth Low Energy technology to understand the location well and deliver relevant and contextual content to user based on location.

2. Recommendations

The better you understand a customer, the better and more educated recommendations, you can offer to your customers/online store visitors. You can extract useful information from your customers during the sign up process or even later interactions with your website. You can use this information for effective customer profiling when they start downloading and using your mobile app. You can track your customers across:

• User sign up process
• Browsing history
• User generated content like tweets, comments, favorites, likes, etc.
• User preferences
• Ratings and reviews

Once you’ve these data points, you can design a better user experience for your customers. Using the user feedback when they browse through your mobile app, you can refine your app further.

3. UGC

Often, etailers commit the blooper of looking upon personalization as a duty to deliver user experience. Personalization also entails the content and contribution of users to shopping environment. While you take all the necessary steps to offer personalization such as collecting customer data, monitoring their interactions with your ecommerce website and accordingly offer relevant and contextual product recommendations to them. You can let users contribute to your personalization strategy through a mobile application. Your private labelled application can serve as a powerful platform for users to connect and engage with your brand, pitch their opinion and experience. This will empower your users to generate their own personalized content and experience.

Let’s take the example of Gaana.com app, a beautifully designed mobile application that makes it easy for users to discover music from the best collection of national and international playlists. Here users take the music listening experience to a new level by creating/modifying playlists depending on their genres/moods.

Such mobile apps enable users to feel valued and ask for their contribution to make it more interesting a platform to visit and revisit to generate more user generated content and get their varied needs addresses on the online platform. It offers them highly personalized experiences.

The Time to Tap the Power of Personalization is now!

As fast as the modern retail environment continues to advance, the competition is getting really tougher. The multiple device types and screen sizes customers use to shop online add to this complexity even further. This has posed some intense challenges in front of e-sellers to adapt to the changing customer shopping behavior and engage with them across this myriad range of omni channels. Almost 200 million US consumers shop online now; an increase in 20% in just half a decade.

Now the question is – should emerchants like you to get personal with customers? The answer is – it’s time to get started right away! Many online retailers have witnessed a significant spike in metrics after they personalized shopping experiences for customers they serve. According to Forrester, personalization is now the top priority for 55% of retailers. Here are the some supporting statistics to understand how customer behavior has fueled this trend:

• 59% of online shoppers believe that it is easier to find more interesting products on a personalized online retail store.
• 56% are more likely to visit again the same retail store.
• 40% indicate they buy more from retailers, who personalize the shopping experience.
• 51% are willing to share data to receive a better shopping experience.

(Source: http://tinyurl.com/lge3kck)

Personalization in ecommerce store can be equated with a customer’s interaction with the sales staff in store. On repeat visits, the sales executive might know and understand your shopping preferences well, and can help you with your shopping next time you visit the store or even pre-emptively notify you of the discounts or new arrivals. This creates a long-lasting shopping experience in your mind.

Replicating this kind of memorable shopping experience forms the core of personalization in an ecommerce store. This is significant for both – the retailer and the customer. However, personalization can be successfully accomplished only by those e-sellers, who can skillfully use personalization algorithms to their advantage.

Retailers can segregate their personalization plan into different phases that include:

• Navigational personalization
• Customer-specific personalization
• Personalization using third-party data
• Predictive personalization
• Catering to a segment of one

(Source:http://tinyurl.com/opk44m9)

Retailers can practice personalization everywhere across the complete spectrum of customer’s shopping journey:

• Email messaging
• Website messaging
• Social media messaging
• Mobile marketing
• Packaging
• Customer support, etc.

As customers’ choices vary, each ecommerce store aspires to connect and engage with every customer individually by using recommendation tools or custom product-building tools. Modern retailer see personalization as the key to unlocking the door to a shopping experience that customers can remember and cherish, and maximizing ROIs for retailers and improving business performance manifold.