Rant Deck

Don’t do stupid personalization. Because it’s stupid.A rant for marketers and web people and ecommerce pros

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You know the feeling.

You land on one of your favorite websites and it greets you by name.

Nice. They know it’s you.

Kind of like getting recognized when you go into your local pub.

Feels good.

Then it all goes wrong.And within a few seconds, it becomes clear that they really don’t know you at all.

They know your name but they don’t seem to know anything else about you.

Duh.

They shove a Dr. Seuss book in your face just because you once bought one for your niece.

Or they think you’re into Justin Bieber just because you clicked on a single celebrity gossip link way back in November.

Or they send you an email with eight products you’d never buy and one you already bought.

This is Stupid Personalization.

It looks like the real thing but it’s… well, it’s stupid.

Stupid Personalization is personalization that’s based on.

Stupid Personalization is personalization that’s based on.Too little data

Stupid Personalization is personalization that’s based on.Too little data

That’s out of date

Stupid Personalization is personalization that’s based on.Too little data

That’s out of date

And collected from the wrong places

Stupid Personalization makes you look stupid.Even though it’s trying to make you look clever.

It can actually be better to deliver a generic, one-size�njWV�DOO�H[SHULHQFH�WKDQ�D�poorly personalized one.Ouch.

Which is a shame because

Personalizationis a great idea.Done right, it turns boring, generic customer experiences into compelling, friendly, relevant ones.

And, done right, it drives big boosts in important metrics (things like clicks and views and purchases).

Which makes sense because

Personalizationmakes sense.It’s just good business. You use what you know about each customer so you can serve them better.Kind of a no-brainer.

So what went wrong?Why does personalization get so stupid?

Personalization gets stupid

when you starve it of insight.Virtually every personalization platform is based on the things you can learn from people’s interactions on your own site and with your own emails.

Things like clickstreams and purchase histories.

But this is a hugely limiting data set.

Here’s the thing:People spend far more time on other places on the web than they do on your site.

The few historical transactions and interactions you can see are a very poor indicator of a person’s real interests and intentions.

So your content or product recommendations are wrong (or kind of stale).

In other words,

Personalization is a classic GIGO proposition.Garbage data in: Garbage recommendations out.

So how do you get access to better, richer, fresher data?

You go where people spend most of their time online.Where they share just about everything about themselves: their interests, plans, passions, preferences and peeves.

You go to Social Media.

3DXVH�IRU�DQ�H[SHULPHQW�1) Go to your Facebook page.2) Scan your news feed.���7U\�WR�njQG�RQH�SRVW�WKDW� doesn’t give an indication of the person’s interests.

<RX�ZRQšW�njQG�PDQ\�Social media is packed with intent signals.

Social media is the most powerful source of data for personalization ever invented.If past tools are a Model T Ford, this is a Bugatti Veyron.

This is huge.<RX�FDQ�njQG�RXW�D�massive amount about every visitor to your website and their interests and intentions right now by analysing their social media activities.Even the ones who have never visited before.

With insights like this, your personalization will never be stupid.It will always be super-relevant and up-to-the-minute fresh.

But here’s the thing:

You can’t be stupid about Social Personalization either.

You have to ask permission.With simple, transparent social sign-in.

And you have to separate the social signal from the noise.Which means you need to njOWHU��SURFHVV��VOLFH��GLFH�DQG�MXOLHQQH�all that unstructured social data and turn it into insight.

And you have to separate the social signal from the noise.Which means you need to njOWHU��SURFHVV��VOLFH��GLFH�DQG�MXOLHQQH�all that unstructured social data and turn it into insight.And do it in a few microseconds.

And you need to know yourself.You have to ingest everything relevant about your own site and content and products, so you can get really, really good at matching people’s interests WR�\RXU�FRQWHQW�DQG�RNjHUV�

The bad news: people can’t do this.This is Big Data in real time – and it’s no place for manual processes and complex sets of rules.This has to be automated.

The good news: that’s what we do.We’re Intent HQ and we have the world’s sexiest social personalization platform for companies like yours.

But this isn’t an ad for us.It’s a plea for you.

It’s a plea to start doing personalization.But to do it smart instead of stupid.

It’s a plea to let your customers and visitors personalize WKHLU�RZQ�H[SHULHQFHVwith a simple, one-time social sign-in.

It’s a plea to harness the power of social media.To make your personalization much more relevant, granular and up-to-date.

So people love the experience and come back for more.

Okay, now for the ad part.

We’re Intent HQ and we do social personalization.

Our InterestRank™ technology analyses social data and turns it into intent signals. And our Social Tuning™ engine turns those signals into super-relevant, timely recommendations on the page, in the email or on a mobile device.

You can deploy Intent HQ any way you like – from the pretty-much-instant Intent HQ Personalization Bar to full-scale integration with your site and your content, commerce, automation and analytics tools.

And you can learn all about it here.

Thanks for listening. We’re going to do great things together.IntentHQ.com

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We recently carriedout a study,conducted amongst2000 UK adults whouse social media, withenlightening results:

Over half of UKsocial networkusers are willing toshare social data forpersonalized content

53%

Two thirds saying theyonly follow people orbrands they have agenuine interest in

Almost a third also agreethey have become moreselective in the informationthey share about likes andinterests on social networks

66%

FollowBrands or

people

33%

MoreSelectiveSharing

Appendix

The research alsoshows the depth ofvaluable dataavailable for digitalcontent andecommercepersonalization

Over half of Socialnetwork users haveshared theirrelationship status

54%Share

relationshipstatus

50% share theirinterestsand hobbies

50%Share

interestsand

hobbies

35%Share

eventsattended

30%Share

holidayinfo

30% shareinformationabout holidays

35% share eventsthey’ve attended

Appendix

56%

Wouldlogin using

SocialProfile

57%

Accessingoffers anddiscounts

41%

Seeingproductsbased oninterests

34%

ContentFriends

and familyView

When askedwhat would makevisitors login to asite using theirsocial networklogins, wediscovered:

A significant 56% confirmed theywould log into another websiteusing their social networkprofile for personalized content

Accessing offers anddiscounts on relevantproducts are the key drivers

This was followed byproducts based on theirinterests

Then seeing content thatfriends and family haveengaged with, such asmusic, videos and articles

Appendix