Understanding your audience and setting goals are foundational steps, but the real magic happens when you implement personalization strategies that resonate with your visitors. This post will cover two impactful techniques: Content Personalization and Behavioral Personalization. Both methods help you deliver tailored experiences that keep users engaged and eager to return.
Tailoring content to specific personas ensures that your messaging aligns with the unique preferences and needs of different audience segments. Regardless of the tools you use, implementing content variants (different versions of the same content) that match your visitors’ interests can significantly boost engagement and conversions.
Creating relevant content for your personas involves understanding what each segment is looking for and delivering messaging that speaks directly to their needs. This often includes:
Developing Multiple Content Variations: Craft distinct pieces of content aimed at different personas.
Testing and Measuring Performance: Continuously analyzing which messages resonate most with each segment.
Refining Based on Feedback: Iterating on content to improve its effectiveness.
For example, a persona identified as "Coffee Enthusiasts" might appreciate content featuring brewing techniques or coffee origin stories, while a "Casual Drinker" may prefer quick tips for making their morning coffee more enjoyable.
When creating and editing content variants in Umbraco Engage you can make use of split view editing. This makes it easy to edit, copy, and compare content. And it is really handy for both personalized and A/B Testing variants
Creating these variations makes your audience feel understood, ultimately encouraging deeper engagement and loyalty (and conversions!).
ℹ️ How to Create Relevant Content Variants
Generating targeted messaging for your personas doesn’t have to be complicated. Try using AI prompts, together with your persona descriptions, to quickly create engaging content for each audience segment.
Example Prompt:
Go to [URL] and have a look at the headline currently being used. Now provide three homepage hero messages tailored for [PERSONA].
This is very basic, but you might be surprised by how effective it can be. For even better results, you can add context to the prompt such as goals, campaign description, and other relevant information.
💡 Why Personalization Works Better Than Generalized Content:
Personalization works because it makes your audience feel understood. A Coffee Lover is far more likely to respond to a message that speaks to their passion for that perfect brew than to a generic pitch. It’s all about making them feel like your content was created just for them. This approach is backed by research: a review of 77 academic studies on personalization found it consistently improves satisfaction, engagement, and loyalty.1
And remember, all content can be personalized. It can be a good idea, especially in the beginning, to identify content where personalization will have the most impact. Try it out, and once you have an idea of what works, you can branch out to a more comprehensive personalization strategy.
The default home page banner (above) vs the personalized banner (below) on the thebeanery.coffee website. See the video below for how easy it is to set up in Umbraco Engage.
Content Personalization is about presenting the right message to the right audience. But what if your visitors aren’t engaging the way you’d hoped?
Even the most well-crafted content may not be enough to hold every visitor’s attention. That’s where Behavioral Personalization steps in, particularly through exit intent strategies.
Exit intent detects when a user is about to leave your site and triggers targeted messages or offers aimed at retaining them. This approach provides a final opportunity to engage visitors who might otherwise leave without converting.
Implementing exit intent pop-ups can effectively capture attention and encourage actions such as completing a purchase, signing up for a newsletter, or exploring additional content.
ℹ️ Why Exit Intent Matters for Conversions
Exit intent strategies work by catching users’ attention at a critical moment. When they’re about to leave your website. It’s a chance to provide a final offer or message that might just convince them to stick around.
Scenario: A segment identified as Coffee Lovers that have not yet requested a free sample.
Action: Upon detecting exit intent, a pop-up appears with the message:
“Wait! Would you like to try our coffee for free? Complete this form to receive your sample.”
This personalized approach addresses the user's interest and provides an incentive to stay engaged.
💡 How Combining Personas and Exit Intent Boosts Results:
Combining persona-based targeting with exit-intent strategies creates a powerful safety net. Instead of letting visitors leave without engaging, you offer them something valuable at the exact moment they’re about to go. It’s subtle, effective, and can significantly boost your conversion rates.
Now, let's put theory into practice and see how easy it is to set up and manage all this in Umbraco Engage.
This video covers:
Applying content variants using split-view editing for a homepage promotion aimed at Coffee Lovers.
Setting up a segment to target visitors who have viewed the free sample package page but have not converted.
Implementing an exit intent pop-up for Coffee Lovers who did not request their free sample package.
Using JavaScript and CSS from the documentation to quickly add effective pop-ups.
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 can even try adding something to your shopping cart, go to the homepage, and then try to leave the website. You should see the exit intent pop-up.
🎥 Want to see personalization in action?
Explore how Umbraco Engage personalizes content dynamically in our guided product tour.
Or take a broader look at all features in our overview tour.
While Umbraco Engage makes it easy to set up pop-ups and triggers, you can always take it further. To ensure you can customize things like banners and pop-ups, we have added small script templates in the Umbraco Engage documentation, that you simply copy and paste. This includes a template for Exit Intent Pop-up.
Adding extra polish to your exit-intent pop-ups could be the difference between a bounce and a conversion.
For example, you can modify exit-intent pop-ups to include additional elements, such as a second button offering an alternative action like "Learn More."
ℹ️ Making Your Pop-Ups More Versatile:
Customizing pop-ups to include multiple options can cater to different user preferences, potentially increasing engagement and conversion rates.
Example Prompt:
Modify this JavaScript & CSS code to add a second button labeled ‘Learn More’ alongside the existing ‘Sign Up’ button.
[paste the example scripts]
💡 Using AI to Enhance Your Pop-Ups:
AI-generated code can help you customize your exit-intent pop-ups quickly and effectively. Because the templates for Umbraco Engage are quite simple, AI chatbots like ChatGPT are quite good at adjusting functionality, such as adding an additional button. Just make sure to validate the code before implementing it on your site.
You’ve got the tools and tips you need to turn passive visitors into engaged users. Whether you’re using exit-intent pop-ups to deliver timely offers or tailoring content to fit personas, it all comes down to creating experiences that feel personal and valuable.
Here’s what to do until the next part:
Add personalized content for your personas and segments. Review your content and identify areas where you can improve engagement by speaking directly to the user as opposed to relying on generic messaging.
Review the performance of your personalized content. Is it moving the needle in the right direction? Are you seeing longer time spent on page or maybe even increased conversions?
Experiment with exit-intent pop-ups. Try out different messages and see what works best.
Have some fun with AI customization. Combine personas, segments, and goals to get crafted variations for your personalized content. Small tweaks can make a big difference!
Want to see these strategies in action? Book a discovery call for Umbraco Engage or try out the interactive demo.
In the final installment of this series, we’ll dive into Traffic Source Personalization and how to bring everything together with reporting and optimization. Stay tuned!
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In Part 1, we explored how understanding your audience and setting up personas and content scoring lays the foundation for solid reporting and great personalization. Now it’s time to take the next step: defining your goals.