Without clear goals, personalization becomes guesswork, and guesswork isn’t a reliable strategy for success.
When you personalize your content, you’re trying to guide people toward an outcome. But what outcome, exactly?
Without clear goals:
Let’s be honest; that’s not a strategy. That’s random acts of marketing.
The right goals help you:
To know if your personalization is working, you need to measure success. Not just at the end, but all along the way. In Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO), we often talk about micro and macro conversions. These concepts are just as useful in personalization.
There are a number of small (micro) steps before the big (macro) conversion happens. If you’ve ever set up a conversion funnel in Google Analytics, chances are you’ve already used this model - maybe without even realizing it.
Micro and macro goals are the building blocks for everything from A/B testing and funnel analysis to implicit scoring and segmentation. Once you’ve defined them, you’re not just personalizing. You’re optimizing.
Micro goals are small steps that show your visitor is moving in the right direction. They don’t always lead directly to a sale, but they build momentum and signal intent.
Examples:
ℹ️ What makes it a micro goal? A micro goal is often low-commitment and happens earlier in the user journey. They help you spot patterns of interest and engagement, which is great input for both personalization and CRO.
Macro goals are the high-value actions that move the needle for your business. They typically happen later in the journey and are more directly tied to ROI.
Examples:
ℹ️ What is a Macro Goal? A macro goal is a high-impact action that aligns directly with your business objectives. It’s the ultimate conversion you want visitors to make, like completing a purchase or signing up for a paid service. Measuring macro goals helps you track overall success and ROI.
💡 Why track both? Think of micro goals as signals and macro goals as outcomes. If someone watches a product video, reads two case studies, and then signs up for a trial, you’ve just mapped a successful journey.
A content strategy (personalization included) only works when it’s tied to clear, measurable goals.
Ask yourself:
If you’re not sure where to begin, your personas are the perfect place to start. You’ve already done the hard work of identifying what your audience cares about. Now define what success looks like for them.
You’ve created your personas and scored your content (hello again, Part 1 👋). Now it’s time to turn those insights into action. AI can help bridge the gap between strategy and execution.
Try asking ChatGPT things like:
“I’ve identified a [persona] who visits mostly blog content. What micro and macro goals could help guide them toward a conversion?”
“My [persona] engages with product pages but doesn’t convert. Can you suggest goals and content tweaks that might help?”
“I want to track success for [persona] who signed up for the newsletter but hasn’t taken the next step. What goals would make sense here?”
These prompts help turn your insights into measurable actions - things you can track, test, and optimize. Once you know the goals for each persona, you can personalize content to guide them towards those actions, one click at a time.
💡 Pro tip: The prompts above are just suggestions. Try combining them with what you already know. Your personas, content scoring, and visitor behavior. You might uncover new micro goals you hadn’t considered or find fresh ways to guide each persona to a macro conversion. And if a prompt works well? Save it. Share it. Reuse it. Great prompts are like great templates; they make the next campaign easier, faster, and smarter.
With Umbraco Engage, setting up goal-driven personalization is seamless. In the demo video, we’ll show you how to:
The site from the video is live at thebeanery.coffee. You can browse the site and be segmented as a coffee, tea, or cookie-lover. You might even see some of the content change after browsing the site for a while.
🎥 Want to see personalization in action?
Once your goals are in place, reporting becomes your best friend.
Key metrics to track:
By continuously reviewing this data, you can refine your content and improve your personalization strategy - one goal at a time.
Success in personalization isn’t just about showing different headlines to different people. It’s about guiding the right people to take the right actions - and knowing when it’s working.
By defining your personas ✔, setting your goals ✔, and implementing measurable personalization, you’re on the way to smarter marketing and stronger results. You now have the insights to understand not just when content is converting but if it's working at all.
And once you know that? You can optimize.
What happens when your visitors don’t take action? In the next blog post, we’ll explore how to re-engage users who haven’t converted (yet) and how to use data, intent, and timing to turn missed opportunities into future success.
Review your micro and macro goals. Are they clearly defined for each persona?
Track how your goals are performing. What’s working, what’s not?(See above for how to do that with Umbraco Engage.)
Save or refine your favorite AI prompts. They’re great for ideation and team collaboration.
Explore how Umbraco Engage personalizes content dynamically in our guided product tour.
👉 These insights will help you get the most out of Part 3, where we’ll dive into content optimization and re-engagement strategies.
---
Due to popular demand, we've set up a little reminder service so you can easily find out when part 3 drops:
Personalization is a powerful way to improve engagement and conversions. But let’s be honest - it can also feel overwhelming. How do you make sure you’re reaching the right people with the right content?