Eric van Hall
29 november ‘22 7 min. reading time

Online personalisation: this is how you use personalised content

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Online personalisation is an approach that you can no longer ignore as a marketer or content manager. 

In the past you had to actively search for information yourself. Nowadays you are inundated with content all day long. Blog posts, advertisements, newsletters, social media posts… They have all become an integral part of our daily lives.

Countless companies are doing their best to contribute to the deluge. Of course, they have to stand out if they want to win the battle for attention.

How do you attract the attention of your target audience at a time when we’re overloaded with content?

But this battle is getting tougher. How do you attract the attention of your target audience at a time when we’re overloaded with content? How do you involve your audience in your brand and create a meaningful connection?

One of the keys to success is personalised content. Personalised content helps you to cut through the noise and create valuable relationships with your target audience.

But what exactly is personalised content, and why should you use it? We’ll dig into it in this article.

What is personalised content?

The difference between general and personalised content is that personalised content uses specific information about your visitors. By doing so, you create a unique experience for every visitor. As a consequence, that person feels much more attracted to the content.

For example, if you know the gender, age, location and maybe even the interests of your target audience, you can make more finely-tuned contact with your target audience. In turn, this creates more engagement with your brand.

Personalised content creates more engagement with your brand.

Of course, you don't always have access to detailed data about your visitors. Fortunately, in addition to deep personalisation based on age, location, search behavior and so on, simple personalisation is also valuable. For example, you can create more engagement by addressing your readers personally and using their first names..

You can often easily apply this approach to emails and newsletters – simply mention the name of the recipient in your salutation and use the 'first name HTML code' once or twice in the main text. The reader feels more ‘seen’ in comparison to reading anonymous texts and is more likely to engage.

Why is online personalisation important?

Online personalisation ensures that your recipient or visitor feels addressed by your texts. And a visitor who feels addressed is more likely to contact you or make a purchase. Anyone who gets started with personalisation gains more knowledge of their target audience. As a consequence, you’ll understand the best approach to use to reach them.

Personalisation ensures a better relationship with your customer and contributes to the effectiveness of your marketing

Personalisation ensures a better relationship with your customer and contributes to the effectiveness of your marketing. It enables you to optimise the customer experience and customer journey. For example, about 90% of consumers are more likely to shop with companies that provide them with personalised offers and recommendations.

About 75% of online shoppers consider it to be annoying if the content of a website is not focused on their interests. Every company should therefore add personalised content to its marketing plan to serve targeted content and relevant information to their target audience. This highly increases the chances of conversion.

About 75% of online shoppers consider it to be annoying if the content of a website is not focused on their interests.

The return on investment (ROI) for personalised content is also substantial. This is especially measurable with websites selling products. About half of all retailers who personalise their marketing content gain a ROI of over 300% over the course of their relationship with a consumer. 

So, companies looking to improve their engagement and grow would do well to prioritise personalisation. By doing so, you offer the right message to the right target audience at the right time.

This is how you apply online personalisation

There are all kinds of categories to organise your audience when creating personalised content.

Thanks to machine learning and data collection, it is increasingly easy to obtain information about your customers and website visitors. You can then optimise your content based on different customer groups. By doing so, you appeal to their interests and buying habits.

Reading tip: this is how to use AI for your content production.

How do you divide your potential customers into categories? By looking at the data of every visitor to your website or social media page. This information might come from search queries, keywords and purchase history, or personal information such as location, age and gender.


Are your visitors logging in to your website? Great! This is one of the easiest ways to collect data and personalise your content based on this information. When someone is logged in, you immediately have an insight into their characteristics.

Are your visitors logging into your site? Then you have gold in your hands!

When you put all available customer data together, you get a good idea of the interests and needs of your target audience. Use this information to share the content that appeals to your customers specifically.

For “logged-in” customers, it is possible to customise your entire website to their specific profile, from the products you promote to the articles you link on the home page. Of course, this requires using the necessary technical solutions.

Divide your target audience

There are different categories by which you can divide your target audience. These give you valuable information for personalisation. Some ways to organise your audience include:

Age

Knowing the age of your visitors will give you additional insight into what kind of customers you are dealing with. For example, older shoppers often prefer personal contact and physical information such as store visits and paper brochures.

Targeted advertisements might encourage older shoppers to visit a physical establishment. Younger generations are more inclined to do as much as possible online, so respond to that way of operating if you want to reach them.

Sex

Gender-based marketing also helps to encourage interaction. Make sure you do your research and don't rely on clichés – there are no typical male and female interests! 

Location

With the help of location-based marketing, you can target customers in specific regions. Suppose you have a store with different locations, but only your store in Amsterdam is holding a sale. Then you can target shop and website visitors from Amsterdam and the surrounding area with the promotion of your sale.

Stage of the sales funnel

In digital marketing, there are five key stages in the customer sales process:

  • Brand awareness
  • A growing interest in the products and services
  • Checking whether your company meets their needs
  • Commitment to your company (with the team, the socials and/or website)
  • Making a purchase or another desired call-to-action.

 

Following the process through your website makes it easier to personalise the content the customer sees at each stage. Of course, the aim is to lead them to the bottom of the funnel.

Buying behaviour

By working with a login system, you gain insight into previous purchases of your visitors. By using this information, you can tailor the content for your customers’ next visit. For example, show customers products that are a perfect addition to their previous purchase. Or show similar articles that might interest them.

Place of origin

Knowing how customers ended up on your website makes it easier to determine their interests, so you can effortlessly present with relevant content. Did they visit your website thanks to a Google search? This gives a good insight into what they want to know, as does whether they came to your website through a social media page or another website.

A good way of personalising your web texts is by  by directing visitors to a specific page based on where they came from.

A good way of personalising your web texts is therefore by directing visitors to a specific page  based on where they came from. Suppose you have a website about pets and you are allowed to place a link on another website that is entirely devoted to dwarf poodles. Then, there is a good chance that visitors to that website are mainly interested in your page about dogs, and probably less interested in information about stick insects. 

You could take advantage of that knowledge by linking to0 your dog page. By doing so, you increase the chance that people who came to you through the miniature poodle site will actually read the information on your website. Of course, you don't know exactly what kind of person you are dealing with, but you do know that there is a good chance that he or she likes to read texts about dogs.

Conclusion: categories for a lot of valuable information

The interesting thing about many of the categories mentioned above is that, of course, you are using the information from the category itself. From that,you can draw many more conclusions.

Age not only gives information about how old your customer is, but also about preferences and behaviour. When you define these categories for your business, think carefully about how much more valuable information you can gather about your target audience – information that you can then use to grow your business.

Have your texts written for the best personalisation

It's clear: commit to online personalisation and you will make your company future-proof online. If done right, personalisation is an excellent way to entice and retain customers.

But do you dread writing all these texts? CopyRobin's experienced copywriters are happy to take the writing off your hands. We provide you with perfectly personalised texts, precisely tailored to your target audience. 

Are you curious about what our writers can do for your personalised content? Then use our free trial order!

We also have an easy tool to help you choose the best CopyRobin package:

Contact us for a quotation

Eric van Hall

CopyRobin

Eric is the founder and owner of CopyRobin - 'copywriting as a service'. This online platform helps companies obtain excellent copy, and freelance copywriters get fulfilling assignments. Eric regularly blogs, podcasts and vlogs about digital marketing at CopyRobin and Emerce. Eric is also available as a presenter, moderator, interviewer and chairman for (online) events. He has been interviewed by Het FD, Het Parool, De Volkskrant, De Telegraaf, Het AD, Trouw, BNR and others. His mission is to help the world with better texts.