Gone are the days of just welcoming the user to your website with their first name, “Hello Sara.” It’s simply not enough anymore as there are so many robust ways to deliver personalized content in a “non-creepy” way. Today through the use of Artificial Intelligence, location based data, and Machine Learning, there are more and more new innovative ways to create moments of delight that offer up your brand in a helpful way. But it’s tricky to not cross the creepy, pushy, line that can become downright irksome.
Best practices for setting-up personaliztion:
- Give the consumer a choice to clearly “opt-in” or “opt-out”.
- Identify the key data collection functionality that your brand already has access too, and then harness the content output based on those data points.
- Identify What User Data you DO have access too: Location Based Info, Personal Name, Browsing History, Calendar Data Items, Saved Wish Lists (amazon), Purchase History, sleep amounts, and exercise step data.
- A way to collect data is to ask QUIZ-LIKE questions. I Like this, I don’t like this. Similar to the old Thumbs UP, Thumbs Down that helps teach Machine Learning about your preferences.
Current Examples of personalize done right:
1. LinkedIn Suggested Recommended Messages – this is a super cool and very helpful smart AI that reads the actual message and presents a few different ways you can respond in a mini-second click.
2. G-Mail Suggested Response Message – So there are many times, sadly, that I READ an email but forgot to respond and it quickly got lost in the ether. Now GMail as a nice “nudgy” notification to remind you that you didn’t respond.
3. Lark App – personal health-based reminders to assist on taking more walks, sleeping more, and giving healthy coaching in real time. Lark’s chat interface is very well done at keeping the interactivity simple with NO text entry needed from the user. It just presents two button options (YES)/(No) to keep the engagement effortless. This is one of my favorite apps.
WISH LIST for the Future
- Would love my refrigerator to ping me when I’m near my local grocery store and remind me that i’m low on milk.
- Or Amazon to remind me it’s my daughter’s birthday in a month and send a link to her Amazon wish list.
- Or have Open Table remind me of Mother’s Day early enough to repeat my reservation that I had created last year.
- Or my running shoes to let me know when i’ve passed the 300 mile mark and send a link to repurchase them on Amazon.com.