How to Use Anonymous Data to Optimize and Personalize Your Customer Journeys
Personalization enables interactions with shoppers to be unique. Given the rise of data privacy concerns, brands must be creative in using data to personalize customer journeys. This is where non-personally identifiable information (non-PII data) comes in.
What is non-PII data and its role in personalization on e-commerce sites? How can online brands leverage it to optimize shopping experiences in real time?
The Personalization Imperative
There are many opportunities for personalization along the customer journey. To stand out, you need to offer more. In fact, 44 percent of consumers are willing to switch to brands that do personalization better.
How can you do personalization better? An effective way to convert and win loyal customers is using on-site personalization based on customers’ behaviors and intent. It’s one-to-one customer personalization and engagement, but there’s a catch.
Striking a Balance Between Personalization and Privacy With Non-PII Data
There’s a line between using shopper data for personalization and upholding consumers’ privacy. Laws and regulations such as GDPR, removal of third-party cookies support, and Apple iOS’ increased privacy protections are all prompted by this balancing act.
Non-PII data offers brands a new way to deepen personalization without compromising shoppers’ trust and privacy. Examples include data collected by browsers and servers using cookies such as device type, plugin details, language preference, and time zone.
5 Strategies for Leveraging Non-PII Data to Enhance Your Customer Journeys
From search to purchase, non-PII data enables brands to gain visibility, uncover insights, and enhance the shopping experience in real time. Here are five of the many use cases for leveraging non-PII data:
- Exclude visitors with ad blockers to optimize campaigns. Including shoppers with ad blockers in A/B tests can lead to inaccurate results. By using this non-PII data point, you can optimize A/B experiments and campaigns by segmenting shoppers with ad blockers to receive ads via other channels, including email and SMS.
- Distinguish shoppers with browser extensions to create better messaging. Site visitors who have shopper browser extensions installed typically have high intent with specific interests. Coupon lovers? Bargain hunters? You can target these shoppers with personalized messaging and promotions based on their preferences.
- Identify hesitant visitors and offer tailored experiences to increase sales. One way to identify hesitant shoppers is when they’re browsing your site for a long time. You can prevent them from leaving by triggering a series of activities — e.g., offer help through a chatbot, emphasize customer reviews, highlight free shipping and return policies, promote a unique discount.
- Leverage weather information to improve conversion rate. You can identify audiences who aren’t converting because of their current weather conditions. Rainy days could force consumers to shop online from home, but they could feel unsure of purchasing because of shipping concerns. These details can help you customize your promotions, such as offering free delivery to visitors shopping from a rainy location.
- Customize the experience using site accessibility quality to boost engagement. Shoppers visiting your site could have varying internet speeds or hardware limitations. You can offer a lightweight version of your site by removing heavy videos and rich media content to shoppers with a weak internet connection or low CPUs.
Delivering More Individualized Interactions Across the Customer Journey to Stand Out
As more shoppers expect personal connections with brands, it’s also important to deliver it in a way that favors consumer privacy. Non-PII data enables brands to offer value with relevance. Combine it with having one central place to orchestrate your customer journeys and you can unlock multiple opportunities to delight shoppers down to the individual level — in real time and at scale.
Einat Etzioni is the chief marketing officer of Namogoo, the pioneer of the world’s first digital journey continuity platform.
Einat has over a decade of management experience with global software solutions in complex and data-driven business environments. Einat leads Namogoo’s marketing strategy and go-to-market planning and execution, and is focused on expanding the company’s reach, customer acquisition and retention. Before joining Namogoo, Einat was CMO at Magic Software, a platform powering multi-channel user experiences for enterprises, where she served as VP of operations and General Manager UK&I.
