Customer identification made easy with identity resolution

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Customer identification made easy with identity resolution

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Here’s where Teavaro comes into play with its powerful software solution “Identity Resolution“.

The problem: customer identification in online retail

In today’s digital world, there are numerous channels and devices through which customers interact with your business. 

From the webshop to social media to the mobile app – your customers use various touchpoints to connect with you. In doing so, they leave valuable traces and data that you want to use to gain a comprehensive picture of your customers and create personalised offers. 

However, the problem is that these data are often stored in different silos and are not linked. As a result, you may not have a clear view of your customers and cannot identify them unequivocally. 

This leads to inefficient marketing campaigns, lower conversions, and a reduced Return on Advertising Spend (ROAS). 

Therefore, effective customer identification is essential to make optimal use of your marketing expenditure and achieve higher ROAS.

The solution: Customer identification with Teavaro identity resolution

Here’s where Teavaro’s Identity Resolution comes into play. 

This innovative software solution helps you identify your customers across all touchpoints and meaningfully link their data. 

Thanks to true cross-domain, cross-device, and cross-channel identity resolution, it is possible to create a holistic picture of your customers. Identity Resolution enables you to merge all your customer data fragments into a consolidated profile, regardless of the channel or device they use. 

A significant advantage of Teavaro’s Identity Resolution is its independence from third-party identifiers. These identifiers are increasingly subject to restrictions and can be influenced by platforms and privacy policies. 

Teavaro enables you to perform a first-party identifier match with third parties, thereby sensibly supplementing your customer data. 

This privacy-compliant method allows you to create a richer customer profile and specifically conduct personalised marketing campaigns.

The advantages of identity resolution for your online retail

By using Identity Resolution, numerous benefits are available to you, taking your online retail to the next level:

How Teavaro helps you with customer identification?

Teavaro is your trusted partner when it comes to effective customer identification. Teavaro’s cloud-based software deployment enables you to seamlessly integrate Identity Resolution into your existing system landscape.

Our experts are at your side with comprehensive consultation and work with you to develop customised solutions for your business.

We understand the challenges of online retail and know how crucial it is to optimally identify your customers to achieve long-term success.

Let’s work together to optimise your marketing strategies, boost your conversions, and increase your revenue. Teavaro offers you a powerful and effective solution for customer identification in online retail.

Take advantage of Identity Resolution’s benefits to increase your conversions, boost your revenue, and achieve long-term success. Let’s work together to optimise your marketing strategies and better serve your customers.

Schedule a consultation with us today and discover how Teavaro can support you in achieving your goals. With Teavaro’s Identity Resolution, nothing stands in the way of your success in online retail!

Our mission is to truly connect people, brands and media

We believe a true connection is built on explicit consent and grows over time as it offers unique value to all. The resulting relationships will be the foundation for scalable people-based marketing by tailoring content and interactions to individual people, not segments. This makes two-way communication possible.
Dirk Rohweder, COO & Co-Founder

About the author:

Dirk Rohweder

CEO & Co-Founder

Dirk has over 30 years of experience in management positions in IT, telecommunications, consumer goods and consulting, including as CIO of the Paulaner Brewery Group and T-Mobile (UK and Germany).

Since 2012 he has focused on customer data as a strategic asset and basis for omnichannel marketing, data-driven business models, data protection and marketing consent (GDPR).

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Our mission is to truly connect people, brands and medias

We believe that a true connection is built on explicit consent and grows over time as it provides unique value to all parties involved.

Today we are looking into the challenge of creating the single customer view and how this challenge is linked to identity resolution.
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What Will the World Look Like Without Third-Party Cookies?

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What Will the World Look Like Without Third-Party Cookies?

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Key points summary

Third-party cookies are every advertiser’s favourite and a popular tool when it comes to tracking a person’s movements on the Internet. However, they have long annoyed privacy advocates. For this reason, the requirements for the use of data protection-compliant cookies are constantly increasing: just the number of necessary consents from the user is already slowing down some sites and worsening their performance.

This is a problem that will soon (partly) be a thing of the past, because what some browsers like Safari or Firefox have done, Google will emulate. The software giant’s browser will soon stop supporting third-party cookies. As Google Chrome is still the most widely used browser in Spain, this will have a significant impact on the online marketing landscape.

In the following article, we show you what the removal of third-party cookies really means for you and how you can offset the loss of this marketing tool.

What are cookies and why is there talk of “A world without cookies”?

When we talk about cookies in relation to the Internet, of course, we don’t mean actual biscuits. In their purest form, cookies are small data cards that are stored on the user’s computer by a specific website. Through this, the website operator can store different data and information. The user of this website must accept the storage of the cookies; only then is data collection permitted.

Cookies that are placed by the website itself and only store your behaviour during this session on the page are called first-party cookies. These will continue to exist. The cookies that will disappear from the network in the near future are the so-called third-party cookies. These are cookies from a third party that interacts with your page. For example, there is the option to place a Facebook pixel on your page, through which Facebook has the opportunity to store data from your visitors.

What are third-party cookies? Third-party cookies are the cookies that are heavily criticised by privacy advocates. They make the user transparent and ensure that, ultimately, every step of a person on the network can be traced. This, in turn, is a dream for advertisers. Because they can read a person’s interests, preferences, and search intentions just from their complete online profile.

As online marketing has primarily been based on these cookies in the past few years, many experts speak of a world without cookies. This is not entirely true, because first-party cookies will continue to exist, and can become a powerful tool to replace third-party cookies.

What is the difference between First and Third-Party Cookies?

As I mentioned, first-party cookies are created and filled with data on your own site. Things stored include products the customer has added to the shopping cart, or product pages the customer has visited. This information is only available to you and is used, for example, so that a customer who has prematurely abandoned a session, upon returning to your page, will still find the same products in their shopping cart.

Third-party cookies are provided by third parties like Facebook, Google or similar companies, and are primarily used for advertisers. Some even sell the data obtained here. The fact that the customer can be completely tracked through third-party cookies is a problem for privacy advocates, as well as the fact that companies like Google or Meta are anything but transparent in the way they use the obtained data.

This is why Third-Party Cookies were an important tool for marketing

Third-party cookies offered the opportunity to launch individualised advertising. You could personalise offers for a visitor to your page, even if this user had spent very little time on your page. For the background information, data stored in third-party cookies were analysed, showing what else your potential customer was doing on the Internet.

Therefore, you had the opportunity to offer products quickly and without complications to people who came to your page, which corresponded exactly to their previous searches. If you had created and used an identity chart of your customers, you could easily compare the data stored here with the data from third-party cookies, and finally obtain all the relevant information for a successful advertising campaign.

Third-Party Cookies weren’t always the last word in wisdom

Third-party cookies cannot be assigned to specific people, but only to devices at the beginning. Therefore, if someone browses on a mobile phone and visits pages completely different from the ones they visit on their personal computer or laptop, the advertisements shown on different pages on the mobile phone will be different from those on the laptop.

In the past, it was difficult to link the information from cookies from different devices. This is one of the reasons why many experts today say that third-party cookies were a good tool, but they did not take over advertising for you. In fact, even in a world without cookies, if you will, there are excellent opportunities for advertising and individualised communication with customers. You just have to obtain the data in another way, and the customer really has to give it to you voluntarily.

Can you obtain the most important information about your customers without Third-Party Cookies?

One of the most important factors significantly hindered by the removal of third-party cookies is active retargeting. With retargeting, we refer to a marketing strategy that aims to convert so-called “warm leads”. Warm leads are people who have been on your website or online store and left it without performing the desired action.

The intention of most e-commerce sites, for example, is to encourage people to make a purchase on their site. If a user has been browsing your site without buying anything, that’s initially a warm lead. With retargeting, you can increase the customer’s interest in a purchase before the contact cools down and the customer forgets about you.

For this, very specific advertising offers are used in retargeting, which are presented to the user on social networks like Facebook, YouTube or Instagram or in advertising banners on Google or other Internet sites. This connection and, therefore, the advertising approach aimed at these customers on other sites or on social networks is no longer possible without third-party cookies.

What are First-Party Cookies?

This is where your first-party cookies come into play.

First-party cookies offer you the opportunity to store the behaviour of visitors to your page on your own website and thus obtain valuable information. However, this data alone is usually not enough to create really interesting and attractive individualised offers for customers.

For many providers, there is a very simple way to directly and voluntarily obtain from the customer the data that in the past was laboriously collected and analysed through third-party cookies.

This can be, for example, through questionnaires. Of course, a real added value must be offered to the potential customer. If, for example, you offer hair care products, you can ask the potential customer several questions about their hair and shopping habits.

As a “reward” for answering the questions, you can offer the customer a deal that fits exactly their needs and expectations. The advantage: if a customer has once stored this data with you and has agreed to the storage of their data in the context of using first-party cookies, you can use it over and over again to send them individualised information.

Good customer relationship management (CRM) is the key to the problem

A CRM is a database where you can store all the data from your own website or external actions with users and then compare them. For this to work well, you first need to be able to identify your visitors. The best way to do this is through registrations and logins. Because when a customer creates a profile in your store and connects here, you have completely different comparison data.

In this case, on one hand, you can access information from your own database. On the other hand, you have the possibility to identify users and reveal their usage behaviour through the use of a large customer data platform (CDP). For this to work, ideally, you should encourage your visitors in the first step to create a user account with you. You can achieve this in several ways. For example, through:

By building your own identity graph, you can receive support from experts like Teavaro. In this way, you ensure that you really have all the data you need from your customers in the end.

So, what will a world without third-party cookies look like?

Building an identity graph was already an important element in order to really use third-party cookies. Now it becomes the only reasonable option to collect and process the most important information about your potential customers. Since tracking cookies, as this variant of the “little data cookies” was also often called, will no longer be available, you will need your own well-established user database to use for online marketing and retargeting.

This also offers you the opportunity to optimize your retargeting very specifically. For example, you can exclude from the retargeting program customers who have already placed an order with you and therefore already have the status of actual customers. In this way, you focus on the users who you have not yet managed to completely convince of your brand or products.

Customer experience should be the central focus

To convince your visitors and effectively increase your conversion rate, even without the support of third-party cookies in your marketing, you can examine your website and your online store in the framework of a possible conversion rate optimization (CRO) for possible improvements. This includes factors such as the readability and search engine optimization of your product texts and your landing pages.

But also the performance of your page itself and the duration of the loading time of your page or the subpages of individual products. What is the search experience of visitors on your page and how good are the representations of your products? Do product images directly appeal to your customers or were they done in a hurry? A good product presentation should leave no question unanswered for your potential customer.

Marketing without third-party cookies will not be easier, but it will be more transparent

Of course, we must acknowledge that third-party cookies have significantly facilitated the lives of advertisers. However, although targeted and personalised advertising will not be easier with the elimination of tracking cookies. The use of data and, above all, the exact amount of data that is available to you and the advertising platforms with which you work, are more transparent for the customer.

This generates more trust. It’s not uncommon to hear from users that the deluge of cookies on the internet scares many consumers. The fact that one still sees advertising banners from companies whose pages were once visited, even days later, also does not inspire much trust.

The elimination of third-party cookies can therefore strengthen the trust of many users again. If you take the opportunity to further improve the customer experience of visitors to your page, the disappearance of third-party cookies can be a real opportunity for you to gain a small advantage in terms of individual customer focus in combination with optimizations on your page, ahead of your competition.

Our mission is to truly connect people, brands and media​

We believe a true connection is built on explicit consent and grows over time as it offers unique value to all. The resulting relationships will be the foundation for scalable people-based marketing by tailoring content and interactions to individual people, not segments. This makes two-way communication possible.
Dirk Rohweder, COO & Co-Founder

About the author:

Dirk Rohweder

CEO & Co-Founder

Dirk has over 30 years of experience in management positions in IT, telecommunications, consumer goods and consulting, including as CIO of the Paulaner Brewery Group and T-Mobile (UK and Germany).

Since 2012 he has focused on customer data as a strategic asset and basis for omnichannel marketing, data-driven business models, data protection and marketing consent (GDPR).

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Our mission is to truly connect people, brands and medias

We believe that a true connection is built on explicit consent and grows over time as it provides unique value to all parties involved.

Today we are looking into the challenge of creating the single customer view and how this challenge is linked to identity resolution.
(more…)

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How to optimally increase the conversion rate in e-commerce?

Optimally increase conversion rate
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How to optimally increase the conversion rate in e-commerce?

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There are numerous different ways to improve performance indicators in an online store. An excellent opportunity to optimise the success of the store is the implementation of a good identity solution. Indeed, the use of such an identity solution is the only optimisation that allows you to address your customers in a very specific way and thus significantly improve the Customer Experience (CX) of your clients.

This is more important today than ever, as customers have an incredibly wide range of products due to the growing number of online stores and online sellers. There are few products that cannot be obtained in a wide variety of variants from many different sellers. Even if you can offer products that have a unique feature, there will at least be similar products on the market that can also attract your potential customers.

For this very reason, the way a purchasing decision is made has changed enormously. In the past, customers bought products they saw or presumed were the best on the market, while today in many cases there also has to be a certain identification with the brand or the company behind the product.

This is where CX comes into play. Because it reflects the entire communication process between you or your company and your customers. There are numerous different touchpoints at which the way you interact with your customers can lead to greater customer engagement or the loss thereof.

The implementation of an identity solution, such as Digital Identity Resolution, for example, is a very effective method for achieving greater customer engagement. This has a positive impact on current customers, but above all, it has a very large effect when it comes to acquiring new customers. Depending on the type of goods you trade, this can lead to regular follow-up sales or at least increase the likelihood that this customer will return to your online store the next time they are looking for a product in your sector.

In general, the goal of implementing this type of digital identity solution is always to increase the conversion rate of ecommerce. In this article, we want to show you why increasing the conversion rate should always be an important objective in your business action and how we can help you with our identity solutions to significantly increase the conversion rate in your online store.

Why is it so important to increase an ecommerce conversion rate?

To understand this, we must first be clear about what the conversion rate is. The conversion rate measures the percentage of people who go from being simple prospects to becoming actual customers (conversion). If such a conversion occurs, the conversion rate on your page increases. For example, if you have 100 visitors to your page per day and average three sales a day, your conversion rate is 3 percent. For an online merchant with very valuable and correspondingly expensive products, this can already be a good value.

Depending on the sector, the value may be relatively low or even very poor. It cannot be generalised when a conversion rate is good or bad. However, it is always important to continuously improve the conversion rate. Because with this, other important indicators are automatically increased as well.

If of your 100 visitors to the store per day, not only 3, but 30 place an order after some time, this naturally also increases your turnover and ultimately usually also your profits as an entrepreneur. Therefore, it can be stated that, keeping the number of visitors to your online store constant, an increase in the conversion rate always leads to an increase in turnover and, in the end, also in profits.

Definition of identity resolution

Identity Resolution is somewhat like a key to a better understanding of the customer. Through Identity Resolution, fragmented information about your customers, which until now was anonymous, is brought together in such a way that it provides a complete picture. With identity solutions like Identity Resolution, you can create complete customer profiles and determine exactly what your customers want and what information is important to them.

Good to know

Identity Resolution, like most identity solutions, is an automated solution that collects and unites data to create a complete picture in the end. This, of course, can only happen in compliance with strict European law regulations on data protection. For this reason, it is important that your customers know exactly what data is stored in what form for the creation of this virtual customer profile. The fact is, many customers are willing to allow the corresponding data to be stored without further ado – if they realise that they can gain some advantage from it. Therefore, it is essential to make inquiries before storing the data and using cookies.

Identity Resolution is a particular type of digital identity solution. Because while other solutions can only put together data that obviously goes together, in Identity Resolution fragmented customer data is brought together, which in the end forms a complete picture and, considered individually, actually have no informational value.

Why are digital identity resolution so important in modern e-commerce?

Nowadays, users are bombarded with advertising everywhere on the internet. In addition, there are a large number of different online stores that offer very similar products to potential customers. If you want to stand out from the crowd, you need to reach the customer directly and offer them a special shopping experience.

For this, a personalised approach is essential. But in order to be able to speak directly and individually with your customers, it is important that you know them well. For example, if you go to a weekly market or a well-established local butcher’s shop, you will notice that regular customers are often called by their name. The saleswomen already know what these customers usually buy, and they can often make special recommendations because they know the taste of the customer in question.

This is exactly the shopping experience that brings so many people to the market or to small family businesses even today. But it is precisely this experience that customers also want to have on the internet. For this, they are willing to provide or store a large amount of data. However, in order for your customers to really feel connected to your brand, you must be able to connect these data in such a way that in the end they provide a customer profile. To collect this information, you must first know who is the interested party.

How do digital identity resolution work?

Nowadays, users are bombarded with advertising everywhere on the internet. In addition, there are a large number of different online stores that offer very similar products to potential customers. If you want to stand out from the crowd, you need to reach the customer directly and offer them a special shopping experience.
In order to collect this data, it is essential to digitally identify your customers. Someone who visits your online store for the first time has not left any traces so far and only appears to you as an anonymous user. However, the goal should be to be able to identify each interested party as precisely as possible in order to then try to offer them the “market shopping experience” with different marketing approaches.
To make this possible, there are different methods of digital identity identification. We would like to briefly introduce you to the four most important ones here:

1. Customer Login Identification – Customer identity resolution
Of course, a customer can be identified more easily if they fully register on your online store and directly log in. If they also accept the installation of a first-party cookie, you can identify them even if they do not log back into your store during their next visit. The same identification option exists, by the way, for customers who use your store’s app.

The problem here: Many interested parties who do not become customers do not log into your online store. The first registration is usually not done until a purchasing decision has been made. Therefore, this form of identification is more suitable for regular customers in most cases.

2. Self-identification of the Customer
A variant that many users also use when they do not want to register and directly log in. In self-identification, the user provides their own data. This could be subscribing to a newsletter or participating in a sweepstake. With a suitable call to action on your page, you often have good chances of persuading many people to self-identify. Many providers use, for example, discount offers or vouchers when first signing up for the newsletter.

3. Click Identification
This variant makes sense when you have customers who jump from a known area to an area where they are so far unknown. This could be, for example, the switch from the app to the website, or vice versa. The most common use case is clicking on a link in an email. For example, if you send links to specific products in your newsletter, you can identify the person clicking on the link through the link used.

4. Cross-Domain Identification
This becomes important when you operate several websites and your customer is not known on all sites. Through cross-domain identification, you can track on which other domains of yours your customer is active and you can connect the different information from the different pages.

We show you why the implementation of digital identity resolutions can also boost your business

Digital identity solutions are always based on linking personal data with the devices of the person in question. In this way, you can determine which products a user has viewed on your website, what searches they may have made in your store, and what they are specifically interested in.

You can also see if the customer has filled their shopping cart but then abandoned the transaction. All of this helps you to personalise your approach to the customer and make your advertising messages much more interesting and relevant to the person in question.

A practical example of a digital identity resolution

A retailer who sold various brands on different websites wanted to improve the digital identification of their customers. Until now, identification was done only through login. However, the retailer realised that only 5-10% of the visitors to their website logged in. An insignificant number if one considers digital identification as a basis for planning advertising actions.

To increase digital identification, in this case we opted for cross-domain identification. With this measure alone, we already achieved a 135% increase in identification. The customer planned to improve their retargeting, that is, they wanted to show personalised advertising to people who had already visited their website so that they would return to it.

In fact, the match rate of retargeting advertising actions in this case increased by 70% thanks to better customer identification.

How do digital identity resolutions affect the advertising budget, based on experience?

It’s difficult to make a general statement about this. The concrete impact of the implementation of a digital identity solutions on the advertising budget and the success of the advertising carried out also depends on the advertising actions that have been previously carried out.

If there has already been a personalised approach in advertising and retargeting measures, for example, through the use of login identification, an increase of 50% in the success rates of individual campaigns can usually be achieved through more complete identification.

If so far there has been no personalised approach or retargeting, it is much more difficult to find a concrete value here. What is clear is that the conversion rate on your website will significantly increase after the implementation of an identity solution and a retargeting programme.

In terms of the advertising budget, in most cases we achieve a success of 20 to 50 percent. This means that you could reduce your advertising budget by 20-50 percent and continue to have the same success as before using our identity solutions. Alternatively, of course, you can maintain or even increase your advertising budget with even better solutions and simply achieve 20-50 percent more successful deals, that is, significantly increase the revenue resulting from your advertising budget.

How does a direct customer approach change through the use of an identity graph?

You have the opportunity to direct customers straight to the products that, for instance, they still have in their shopping cart. Often, a small nudge like “You are still £8 short of free shipping” or “Three items in your shopping cart have dropped in price since your last visit” is enough.

In general, with an identity graph, you have the chance to address your customers in a more individual and direct way. You can show them offers and products that are genuinely of interest to them, thus providing a better shopping experience in your online store.

How an Identity Graph works

If you want to apply an identity graph in practice, this graph will merge personal data with your customers’ behavioural data. This means that you can individually determine what each interested party has looked at on your page, what they have added and removed from the basket or what remains in the basket that they have not yet finalised, and what purchases the customer has made in the past.

Without an identity graph that unifies these data, this is only possible to a very limited extent. If you have managed to place a first-party cookie, for example, you can track what a person does in your online store. You can see their search history, what products they have viewed and which they have even temporarily placed in the basket.

The problem here is that all this information is only assigned to an IP address and, without an identity graph, you have no way to link this IP address with a real person.

Another example of limited individual focus capacity without an identity graph is self-identification. If a person subscribes to your newsletter and leaves their details, you have their personal data. You can use this to a limited extent: you can at least congratulate them on their birthday or send non-personalised advertising.

But here too, it applies that you only have part of the important data. Because linking personal data with the behaviour of the person in your online store is not possible without a suitable identity graph.

Email marketing with identity graph: one of the best advertising opportunities

Some time ago, we built an identity graph for a client to use in email marketing. We then identified abandoned shopping carts and at the same time checked whether an interested party might have been interested in other products, without putting them in the cart.

All these people were sent personalised and targeted emails. In some cases, special offers were made for viewed products or free shipping was offered if an order was made within a certain time frame.

To be able to make a real comparison, we also ran a similar email marketing campaign at the same time without a personalised focus. The results were very clear. The email opening rate was 100% higher among people with a personalised focus than among people without a personalised focus.

The click-to-open rate showed even greater differences. 150% more people from the group contacted with personalised advertising decided to follow the link in the email. In comparison, the click-to-open rate was significantly lower among people without personalised advertising.

Conclusion: A digital identity resolution can also significantly enhance your online store’s conversion rate!

Today, in order to boost the conversion rate of an e-commerce platform, it’s more critical than ever to establish a strong connection with customers or the brand and have a direct customer approach. This is the only way you can offer the products that truly interest your potential customers.

The more relevant the offer is to the customer in the end, the greater the likelihood of a purchase. The better you understand the individuals visiting your online store and the more enticing you can make your store’s offering for these people, the higher your online store’s conversion rate will be in the end.

Our mission is to truly connect people, brands and media​

We believe a true connection is built on explicit consent and grows over time as it offers unique value to all. The resulting relationships will be the foundation for scalable people-based marketing by tailoring content and interactions to individual people, not segments. This makes two-way communication possible.
Dirk Rohweder, COO & Co-Founder

About the author:

Dirk Rohweder

CEO & Co-Founder

Dirk has over 30 years of experience in management positions in IT, telecommunications, consumer goods and consulting, including as CIO of the Paulaner Brewery Group and T-Mobile (UK and Germany).

Since 2012 he has focused on customer data as a strategic asset and basis for omnichannel marketing, data-driven business models, data protection and marketing consent (GDPR).

Popular items

Recommendations

contact

Our mission is to truly connect people, brands and medias

We believe that a true connection is built on explicit consent and grows over time as it provides unique value to all parties involved.

Today we are looking into the challenge of creating the single customer view and how this challenge is linked to identity resolution.
(more…)

Continue ReadingHow to optimally increase the conversion rate in e-commerce?

How to increase conversion rate? Steps to boost sales

Steps to boost sales conversion rate
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How to increase conversion rate? Steps to boost sales

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Conversion rate optimisation (CRO) is one of the most important measures in online marketing. Unlike SEO measures, it’s not about attracting more visitors to your website. Instead, the goal is to get visitors to your website to take an action. Each website has its own objective. For example, an e-commerce site with an online store would want to sell its products to customers.

If you have successfully generated leads through your advertising efforts, but these do not result in sales, the money spent on advertising will have been wasted. Visitors to your store who do not convert into buyers do not generate you revenue. This is where conversion rate optimization comes into play. In the following article, we show you how you can continuously improve your conversion rate by adjusting a few things.

In the following article, you will learn how an identity chart, in combination with a good retargeting strategy, is one of the best ways for successful and sustainable conversion rate optimisation.

What is the conversion rate and what does it mean to increase the conversion rate?

Let’s look at the meaning of conversion rate. The conversion rate refers to the proportion of visitors to your site who fulfil the site’s purpose. Each website has a specific goal. The operator of a news blog wants their visitors to subscribe to their newsletter. An information platform or a survey site wants users to leave their personal data. The aim of an e-commerce page is to generate sales.

But before the sale is the lead, that is, the visit from a potential customer. The user who comes to your site must be taken step by step through their customer journey to the point where they finally make the purchase.

On the way to this point, there can be many moments where the user leaves. It is important to find and minimise these points. For this, there are many standard ways and some really unusual approaches that you will not find in every guide at the start.

The conversion rate ultimately refers to the percentage of users who actually perform the desired conversion, for example, buying a product. So, if you have, for example, 1,000 visitors to your site in a day and achieve 35 sales, your conversion rate is 3.5%.

CRO is the process by which you attempt to move the users of your site through various strategies. This can be done in several ways. From site optimization itself to the specific setting of the offer and additional marketing strategies, there are many possibilities.

Why is it so important to increase the conversion rate?

As we mentioned earlier, the conversion rate is an indicator that shows how many users actually make a purchase on your site. Therefore, conversion rate optimization offers a great advantage. This way, you have the opportunity to generate more real customers from the existing visitors to your website or shop.

While expensive advertising measures or SEO optimizations aim to attract more people to your site, CRO is designed to take advantage of the existing flow of potential customers. This, in turn, leads to an increase in sales even if the number of visitors in your store remains constant.

Suppose a customer in your online store spends on average around 50 euros. With a conversion rate of 3.5% and 35 buyers per day, that would give a daily turnover of 1,750 euros. If the conversion rate increases by 1% to 4.5% due to your CRO measures, this would already result in 45 buyers and therefore a daily turnover of 2,250 euros. That would mean an increase in sales of 500 euros per day, without the need to increase the number of regular visitors to your store.

How to improve the conversion rate?

There are different approaches if you want to increase your conversion rate sustainably. One of them is improving your page itself. This includes, for example, the structure of your page. For this, you can ask yourself the following questions:

In addition to these simple questions in terms of user experience, there are also optimization opportunities in terms of content.

Another important factor in the conversion rate is the sense of security of potential customers on your page. Do users who find your store trust you?

All these points offer good opportunities to increase your conversion rate. But in addition to these technical and content aspects of your shop, there are also opportunities in direct dealings with the customer to improve the conversion rate.

Seeking the most important areas for optimisation: these types of analysis make sense

For you to succeed in this, you first need to analyse the biggest issues. This can be done in two different ways. One is the analytical variant. Here, you place numbers, data, and facts at the forefront.

For example, check the following points:

Most site owners can evaluate these questions with their page statistics. From this, you will gain valuable insights into the processes in your shop and find the first reference points on where optimization would make sense.

In addition to the analytical variant, there’s also the quality perspective. Here, surveys and rapid tests will primarily provide you with the information you desire. This involves questions like:

Obtaining this information is much more challenging than the simple data and facts from the analytical variant. But precisely this background knowledge significantly eases future conversion rate optimization.

The identity graph is the first major hurdle

The big issue here is the question of whom you are precisely addressing. Of course, you have a certain target group in mind. But you do not know at first glance whether this target group actually finds its way to your page. The data provided by simple statistics modules are usually quite vague. Gender and approximate age, in general, can be inferred from these. However, only with more information about the people behind the IDs in your store can you take targeted action towards your visitors. Experts refer to this as Identity Resolution. The market has increasingly become a customer-centred market in recent years. While the motto “The customer is king” was often ridiculed before, today it is truer than ever. A vast online offering in direct competition with retail has led to there being practically no product for which there is not ample competition, where the customer could also make their purchase. This means that you must win over the customer as such and bind them to you and your online store. This only works if you genuinely know your users. Without an identity graph, this is almost impossible.

What is an identity graph?

An identity graph summarises all the data and information you can get about a customer. These must be gathered from numerous databases and different information sources. But with the right solutions, you have the opportunity to speak directly and individually to your users. You get information about interests, purchases already made, regional data and, of course, the approximate age and gender of a person. This is achieved by establishing a connection between the customer’s devices and the customer’s own data in the identity graph. For example, information can be saved through cookies when someone logs onto a page. Ultimately, there are five different identification methods for an identity graph. When you combine these five different variants, you get a very detailed picture of your customer. It is important, of course, to always obtain the customer’s consent. Without this consent, the corresponding data cannot be processed, let alone stored. The creation of an identity graph would then not be possible.

What benefits does an identity graph offer?

A significant point in the question about the conversion rate is the user’s real interest. Many consultants forget this factor when it comes to Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO). However, the reasoning behind this is entirely logical: the more accurate your offer based on the interests of your potential customers, the better the chances that the user will actually become a customer. An identity graph gives you the opportunity to provide visitors to your store with offers that match their interests. Such individualised offers represent a much greater buying incentive for the user on your site than, for example, the general presentation of your store. Once such a graph has been created, it offers you a variety of options, also in creating targeted web campaigns. Thus, you can create campaigns that use personalised offers and present them to visitors of your own app for your store or the users of your store in the online version. Also in email marketing or through push notifications, these campaigns can achieve great successes and thus build a certain customer loyalty

How to increase the conversion rate in the long run?

First and foremost, of course, the points mentioned above must be implemented to optimize the user experience in your shop, to enhance the content, and to improve the overall quality of your site as far as possible. Once this has been accomplished, in most cases you’ll already notice a significant improvement in the conversion rate. However, this can still be increased.

The key here is ultimately the personalisation of your offer. Because the more personal and direct an offer is to a user, the higher the likelihood of the user turning into a customer.

When you reach this stage of conversion rate optimization, you should begin to experiment. Because each target group reacts differently to the measures in this area. If, for example, you have users on your site who have very specific interests, you should cater to them directly. If the identity graph data shows, for example, that a customer is mainly interested in cosmetic products and predominantly vegan products, it’s important to offer this customer a suitable vegan product from the cosmetics area.

The more accurately you find the interests and desires of your shop visitors, the greater the chances of a conversion in the form of a purchase.
While for one customer it may be sufficient for you to make personalised offers, the next customer may need an extra push in the right direction.

This can be provided, for example, by additional advertising measures like a personalised coupon or a certain discount on specific products. Targeted retargeting can also be a good method of CRO.

What is retargeting and how does it help increase your conversion rate?

Let’s look at the meaning of retargeting. Retargeting is an online marketing tool that refers to the attempt to convert your shop’s “hot leads” into customers as quickly as possible. This can occur in several ways. For example, one form of retargeting could involve sending an email with a suitable advertising message to individuals who have viewed individual products in your shop shortly after visiting your site.

In combination with Google Ads and adverts on various social media platforms, you can also display targeted advertising messages to these visitors of your shop. This way, you keep the interest in your products alive and stay in their memory. Retargeting as an advertising tool should be used sensibly and targeted. If a user feels stalked by your advertising all over the internet, this can have the opposite effect.

It’s important that the adverts you show in such cases catch the user where they are in their customer journey with respect to you and your brand. For instance, if a user has spent only a few minutes on your page and has just realised your brand exists, brand banners are a good way to stay in the potential customer’s memory.

On the other hand, those who have already visited product pages and had a more detailed look can be targeted more specifically with advertising for these product groups.

Retargeting for shopping cart abandoners: a very special form of customer acquisition

Those who have already found their way to your shop and placed products in the shopping cart have shown clear interest in making a purchase. But it often happens that the purchasing process is interrupted. This can have various reasons. Perhaps the payment options offered didn’t suit the user, the ordering process was too complicated, or the potential customer was simply interrupted and didn’t continue with the purchase. In such cases, advertising inserts with certain discounts are suitable, or also direct email marketing indicating that the person is XX pounds short of an order with no shipping costs. Practice has shown that this type of retargeting can be an excellent way to optimize the conversion rate. For example, with one client, we designed the retargeting in such a way that visitors to his online shop who had left products in the shopping cart and then abandoned the purchasing process were reminded one hour after the interrupted purchase process. We then compared the reaction of customers who received such an email with all other site users. In the individuals that we targeted directly through retargeting marketing, we were able to increase the conversion rate by 50%.

CRO only works with regular testing and direct comparisons

Improving your conversion rate is more of a marathon than a sprint. Of course, there are measures you can take to achieve a short-term increase in your conversion rate. However, you should always push ahead to continuously utilise the potential for improvement and not to fall back into the conversion rate.

It is important that you do not implement all measures at once, but rather introduce things little by little. You should always keep an eye on the development of your conversion rate and also consider incremental sales. This term comes from English and refers to the sales based on a specific advertising measure.

To estimate incremental sales, you always need a comparison group. For example, if you start with retargeting and send emails or advertising messages to those who abandon the purchase, you also need a comparison group that is not subject to this advertising measure.

Only in this way can you directly compare how strong the effects really are. If there is an increase in the conversion rate of the group that is affected by your measures compared to the comparison group in the same period, the measure can be considered a success. After the testing phase and a detailed analysis of the actual success, you should establish such measures as a fixed marketing tool for all your customers.

How to calculate the conversion rate?

Let’s see how to correctly measure the conversion rate. For an e-commerce site, calculating the conversion rate is relatively straightforward. On one hand, you have the number of visitors to your site in a specific time period. On the other hand, you see the number of completed sales. That gives the conversion rate. The conversion rate formula is simply:

Conversions / Site Visitors x 100

The situation becomes trickier if you offer your customers multichannel sales. Here it is important to distinguish by which medium the sale was finally made.

Identity resolution: the optimal basis for increasing your conversion rate

The technical term in marketing is “Customer Identity Resolution”. First and foremost, it is about recognising customers across different channels. This is not referring to names and addresses, but to much more diverse factors such as:

Political, religious, or other inclinations, as far as they are relevant for marketing itself

The more information of this type you can collect with the customer’s consent and relate to each other, the clearer the profile you will obtain of a customer. Only with a well-applied Identity Resolution can you create a meaningful identity graph, which is a powerful tool for optimising your conversion rate.

 

Our mission is to truly connect people, brands and media​

We believe a true connection is built on explicit consent and grows over time as it offers unique value to all. The resulting relationships will be the foundation for scalable people-based marketing by tailoring content and interactions to individual people, not segments. This makes two-way communication possible.
Dirk Rohweder, COO & Co-Founder

About the author:

Dirk Rohweder

CEO & Co-Founder

Dirk has over 30 years of experience in management positions in IT, telecommunications, consumer goods and consulting, including as CIO of the Paulaner Brewery Group and T-Mobile (UK and Germany).

Since 2012 he has focused on customer data as a strategic asset and basis for omnichannel marketing, data-driven business models, data protection and marketing consent (GDPR).

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Our mission is to truly connect people, brands and medias

We believe that a true connection is built on explicit consent and grows over time as it provides unique value to all parties involved.

Today we are looking into the challenge of creating the single customer view and how this challenge is linked to identity resolution.
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