The Power of Data in E-commerce: Hyper Personalization

General customer segmentation packages, mass marketing campaigns, and efforts aimed at the general target audience to attract the attention of customers and maintain interaction with them are a thing of the past. As communication has become much faster and more accessible with the acceleration of digitalization, it has also become more complex and challenging in terms of being selectable among the mass of messages.

In order to promote and offer products and services that organizations or individual customers know they need in the form of business or that they are not even aware of, it has become important to express product and service promotion through different channels with different forms of content. On the other hand, in order to survive in the e-commerce arena, the attention span required to articulate how and for what needs products and services are offered to customers has shortened. Therefore, as a result of all these needs and expectations, personalization in e-commerce has deepened even further, leading to hyper-personalization. In other words, it used to be very difficult to get results from the advertising or promotional messages that a customer encountered for a random product or service when opening various channels. Now, the messages work within the scope of an offer or campaign customized according to the customer’s name and individual consumption orientation directly on the first page and email that the customer clicks on as soon as they turn on their computer or mobile device.

The efforts of e-commerce sites to provide a personalized customer experience based on the customer’s consumption behavior and other personal data is called personalization in e-commerce. All actions of a current or potential customer related to site traffic, such as browsing for a particular product or service, purchase or return history, blog articles or behavior in other sections of the site, are data in the customer’s purchase decision process. In addition to this data, various personal data such as demographic information also plays a role in the personalization process. By processing all data with CRM applications, it is possible to go beyond attracting the attention of the individuals who make up the target audience; it is possible to convert purchase intentions into purchase decisions or to encourage repeat purchases.

As the number of customer touchpoints increases, so does the rate of exposure to a high volume of messages and a lot of interaction, which affects the quality of communication. Creating a personalized customer experience therefore goes beyond attracting attention or increasing sales and conversion; it also contributes to the perception of the products or services and the organization offering them. This is why personalization has become increasingly important in e-commerce, leading to a deeper dimension of personalization: hyper-personalization.

Personalization is not only about e-mail notifications. Similarly, privileges such as product recommendations, promotions or additional points for a personalized purchase can be offered within the framework of a campaign.

In cases where the customer adds to the cart but leaves the cart for some reason and leaves the e-commerce channel without purchasing, messages to remind the customer of the product by encouraging them to purchase with remarketing techniques are delivered to the customer in a personalized way. For example, in these messages, “Dear Burcu Efe, the books you have chosen are waiting for you in your cart! Moreover, a special 20TL gift voucher for your shopping is in your account!”, a reinforcing meaning and emotion-oriented expressions to remind and encourage the purchase intention can be included with the customer’s name.

The basis of hyper-personalization is shaped by the demands and behaviors of customers. Depending on the nature of the business, hyper personalization tactics can be designed in many forms, supported by the appropriate technological infrastructure, in line with the expectations and needs of the customer. Organizations or brands that take the wind behind the dynamism of hyper-personalization can prevent customer loss to a great extent and thus increase e-commerce performance. According to research conducted by KPMG, 75% of customers are influenced by e-commerce messages personalized to their individual preferences, prefer to buy and are willing to provide their data. Based on this information, it can be said that hyper-personalization is a highly effective method in e-commerce.

Just as there is no one method or technique of commerce, there is no one way to manage e-commerce and e-commerce issues. Therefore, artificial intelligence support, for all its capabilities, always involves various limitations and is an important functional element that will only support the technical side of the business but cannot guarantee the success of hyper-personalization on its own. Due to the multidimensionality of the marketing and communication fields and the need to work in a variety of specific strategic ways, hyper-personalization and its related content should also be studied in a subject-specific manner.

Artificial intelligence support enables to be in the right place at the right time, in other words, to reach the customer with a pinpoint shot while the purchase agenda is fresh. This creates the advantage of offering customized content to the right person at the right time in e-commerce. This is a very important advantage. Therefore, artificial intelligence becomes the heart of e-commerce. In this sense, hyper-personalization efforts planned through the support of an expert and/or agency can achieve success when systematized and technically supported by artificial intelligence. In other words, the support of technological solutions suitable for hyper-personalization, which is worked within a strategic planning, can be integrated in accordance with the plan during the implementation phase, thus ensuring successful interaction.

The most important issue in marketing and communication is to act specific to the business, the organization, the brand and what it offers. For this reason, developing business-specific personalization methods can be adapted in various business lines from different sectors. For example, hyper-personalized e-commerce methods can be developed and included in digital marketing efforts in different categories such as hotel services in the tourism sector, hospital unit services in the health sector, consultancy type services or services offered in specific business models such as B2B, B2C, etc.

Business-specific determinants and differentiators, such as the purpose of the e-commerce site, the range of activities and the purposes of hyper-personalization, should be determined, and for this purpose, analysis evaluations and targets based on them should be created by using various research data. Some questions that can be asked in this context are as follows:

• How many of the site visitors are existing customers and how many are potential customers?
• For which specific purposes will customers be reached?
• What are the personalization topics or purposes (reminding the products in the cart, etc.)? In which area is hyper-personalization needed and why?
• What kind of optimizations are needed and which artificial intelligence formulas can meet this need?
• Who can monitor and report? Which experts should I get help from?
• What is the budget that can be allocated to this issue?
• What is long-term strategic planning and what can be done in the short term to implement it?
• How can solutions such as advertising or blogging be provided and how much budget can be allocated to get help?
• At which points on the sitemap would general segmentation and at which points would specific contact be more appropriate?
• How should personalization be directed according to optimization and evaluations? How can all planning efforts be improved in terms of reorganizing and maintaining planning?

Hyper-personalization is not only beneficial for sales and marketing; it also contributes positively to the communication side of the business. Hyper-personalization is also an element of e-commerce that supports continued customer engagement. The customer wants to feel special for the brand or business, and interaction within a hyper-personalized automation process helps to trigger this emotional contact.

It is impossible to achieve hyper-personalization on a customer-by-customer basis through human intervention. However, with machine learning and cross-system integration of various CRM software into digital transformation design, it becomes possible to send hyper-personalized messages and increase e-commerce performance.