The Personalization Gap
“Welcome back Mr. Roche, what can I do for you today? “
“I’m glad you called, I was about to call you. There is a stock that I think you should look at.”
“We just got the silver one with the black leather seats in. Walk with me, I want to show it to you.”
Personalization happens in the real world. It makes us feel like a valued customer. In high-touch service business and retail it is expected. Why do you think that it does not happen on line?
I am nearly a 1 million mile customer on United Airlines, I just went to www.ual.com and they knew it was me. My name was on the page, but the promotion on the homepage suggested that I “Try Taipei.” I have never been to Asia. I have no plans to go to Asia, and if I did, would Taipei be my first choice? Nope.
So why does this happen? I just got out of a meeting with a major consumer products company and we talked about this problem. Their response was that the different product groups fight for space on the homepage and when one of them gets it, they are loath to let anyone else get that precious space. Even if they could easily come up with a handful of promotion options and target them to groups of customers, they probably wouldn’t. So who loses here? Everyone.
I learn to ignore the promotion slot. The international travel content owner does not earn my business, and a promotion or a message that would grow their share of my wallet and increase my loyalty to the brand is not shown.
So here is a small suggestion. Why not try two things. First, for any promotion that will appeal to a subset of visitors, use an animated version that switches from the featured promotion to a more generically interested message within a few seconds.
Better yet, segment the audience into a small number of interest groups based on past affinity or in-session product interest and target promotions to these groups.
United could easily put me in a domestic East/West business travel group and show me deals to New York, Boston and Chicago, or they could recognize that we are close to memorial day and Summer holiday and show me a vacation special.
