How SMEs Can Achieve Personalisation at Scale

When it comes to optimising the online customer experience for increased sales, large eCommerce corporations have always led the way. Due to their constant experimentation, it’s now well understood that personalisation leads to a higher likelihood of conversion, and this is exactly what these brands deliver to every customer.

The modern shopper has now come to expect a highly personalised experience as standard. However, as a small or medium-sized enterprise business (SME), it can be easy to feel outmatched in your ability to personalise the customer experience without access to the vast budgets or advanced technology of larger corporations.

However, AI-powered tech is becoming increasingly available for use on a smaller scale, and SMEs have their own unique advantages that you can leverage to provide a type of personalisation that the eCommerce giants can’t replicate.

Read on to discover the personalisation strategies you can use as an SME to enhance the customer experience and increase conversions.

The challenge of SME eCommerce personalisation

There’s no doubt that eCommerce giants have an advantage over SMEs in applying large-scale personalisation strategies. Small and medium enterprises are often restricted in their use of technology due to:

• Having a smaller budget
• Reduced access to technical expertise
• Time constraints

For enterprise businesses such as Amazon, having access to a wealth of resources means they are better equipped to handle the data or build the complex artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms typically required to deliver personalisation at scale.

As an SME in pursuit of personalising the customer experience on a large scale, you also need to take care not to over-automate and risk losing the very identity that differentiates you from bigger brands.

SME advantages in personalisation

We’ve discussed the challenges of customer personalisation in SMEs, but what are the advantages?

With fewer departments and smaller teams, SMEs will often work more closely with the consumer and have more flexibility around marketing decisions than larger companies. This provides you with unique opportunities that can be used to the advantage of the business.

Customer intimacy

As an SME, you will likely have more direct contact with your customers than larger retailers that may outsource customer service to external call centres. This gives you a deeper understanding of your shoppers which you can leverage to personalise the entire customer journey.

Brand authenticity

Smaller businesses often have stronger connections to their original values and more unique brand personalities. You can show these things that make your brand authentic to encourage shoppers to build an emotional connection with your brand that drives repeat purchases.

Agility

With fewer layers to the company, SMEs can approve new ideas more quickly. This places you at an advantage over large businesses when it comes to reacting to fast-moving trends or customer feedback, enabling you to deliver a customer experience that is more relevant to your shoppers’ interests and needs.

When competing with eCommerce giants as an SME, you can leverage these advantages to give a more human touch to your customer interactions that can’t be replicated by larger brands.

How to achieve personalisation at scale without losing your identity

As an SME, your personalisation strategies should allow you to make the most of your business’ unique advantages.

Advanced eCommerce and marketing technology has become more accessible, more affordable and easier to use, meaning it’s now possible for smaller brands to scale up their personalisation efforts to match those offered by Amazon and Walmart.

However, you must be careful when automating personalisation, as there’s the chance you could lose the human touch that differentiates your brand from large corporations.

Here’s how you can maintain brand identity in eCommerce while creating personalised customer experiences on a large scale:

1. Invest in customer personalisation tools

Gone are the days when automation was only available to the eCommerce giants. There are now many subscription-based tools available to SMEs that provide the ability to deliver personalised experiences, without requiring a large budget or technical knowledge.

Tools like Salesfire work behind the scenes on your website to track customer behaviour and deliver highly personalised content. These tools are designed with user-friendly interfaces, allowing you to set up campaigns in just a few clicks.

For example, you can use a recommendations solution to display on-site product suggestions that are tailored to the browsing behaviour or purchase history of each user. This can make the shopper feel understood and more inclined to buy.

Dynamic on-site messaging allows you to set custom responses for specific behavioural triggers, such as revealing a promotional code when a shopper shows signs of exiting your site to encourage them to stay and purchase.

Aligning your messaging with users’ interests and real-time behaviour means it’s more likely shoppers will engage with your marketing efforts and make a purchase.

2. Segment for success

Segmentation is a great way for small businesses to individualise the marketing messages they send to their shoppers, and with modern marketing tools, this once manual task can now be automated.

Most email marketing platforms allow you to pre-set conditions for your audience segments and then will automatically build them, adding in new shoppers as you collect more data. This allows you to easily send emails appropriate for shopper demographics or purchase history.

Using Salesfire’s Email Sequences, you can also segment data and send campaigns according to real-time browsing behaviour. This means your emails will be relevant to the products shoppers have viewed and interacted with recently, even if they didn’t make a purchase.

Segmenting your data ensures shoppers only receive messaging that is meaningful to them. By using email marketing tools to automate this process, you can scale up segmentation to increase marketing effectiveness without using up your business’ limited resources.

3. Leverage first-party data ethically

Personalisation of the customer experience relies on the availability of first-party data, which is data you have collected directly from shoppers with their consent.

Without access to shoppers’ email addresses or phone numbers, you will not be able to send them personalised emails or SMS. Therefore, maximising the amount of first-party data you collect on-site is essential for personalising the customer experience.

Customers now understand the value of their data, so it’s important that you collect this ethically. Shoppers are more likely to share their data with you if you:

• Provide a clear way to unsubscribe
• Let shoppers know exactly what they are signing up for
• Offer an incentive such as a discount code in exchange for signing up
• Provide a loyalty scheme for shoppers who have an account

You can then leverage this data in your personalisation strategies to deliver highly relevant messaging to individual customers.

Additional reading: What Is First-Party Data and Why Is It Important in 2024?

4. Focus on brand storytelling

Shoppers who connect with your brand on an emotional level are more likely to spend more over a longer period of time.¹ Therefore, to foster customer loyalty, it’s important that you build these relationships with your customers.

Telling your brand story through your marketing efforts can help you do this, as it humanises your brand, making it easier for your shoppers to connect with you. Here’s how you can incorporate your SMEs unique traits into your marketing strategy:

Combine AI-driven insights with your brand story

Including product suggestions that align with shopper’s on-site activity in your email campaigns is a great way to encourage purchases. Ensure these recommendations are seen as genuine and not purely transactional by incorporating them into emails featuring exclusive brand insights. 

For example, you could include relevant personalised recommendations in a product update email written and signed by your brand’s CEO, or in an email giving a behind-the-scenes peek at how your products are made.

Retarget with your USPs

People who choose to buy from smaller businesses often do so because they care about the brand behind the product. When sending personalised retargeting emails, include information about what makes your brand different from others, giving shoppers even more reason to buy from you.

Match promotional messaging to your brand voice

As we’ve discussed already, displaying messaging on your site at the right moment can re-engage shoppers. Make these messages even more effective by incorporating your brand’s unique tone of voice and personality into them.

Including these unique elements in your marketing messages can foster emotional connections with your shoppers that will keep them coming back to buy again.

5. Iterate and optimise

As an SME with a smaller budget, you will need to use your resources more carefully and efficiently. Ensure that you only invest in personalisation strategies that work for your business by carrying out testing, gathering customer feedback, and tracking metrics.

Consider A/B testing different product variations within your recommendations units, to see which items generate the most clicks. You could also measure the success of on-site messaging campaigns by tracking the number of sales generated by each. 

Gather feedback from your shoppers through surveys and social listening, and use this to enhance the customer experience. Allowing shoppers to influence their own experience will make the interactions they have with your brand feel more personal.

Optimising your eCommerce personalisation strategies based on data and feedback means you can discover effective ways to increase conversions, without losing the parts of your brand that your customers like and enjoy.

By applying these scalable personalisation strategies to your business, you can craft a customer experience to rival the eCommerce giants.

Personalisation is key

The level of personalisation you provide can make or break a shopper’s experience with your brand. Creating highly personalised shopper interactions can enhance your customer experience and promote increased sales.

With personalisation technology becoming more accessible and affordable for SMEs, you can leverage this, along with your brand’s unique traits, to deliver personalised experiences to every shopper that don’t compromise your brand identity.

¹ Motista’s Study Results Conclude That Emotional Connection Is the Key to Brand Success | MARTETCHSERIES