People love seeing their own name on things, well, maybe except for bills. But otherwise, people love having things customized to who they are. From monogrammed pillows to being able to set up your car online how you want, tailoring the world around us is simply what we do now.
Thanks to millennials (yeah, that’s right SHARON, us) this also goes for our marketing materials. The snowflake generation did marketing a huge favor. Ten years ago when the oldest of us (that’d be me) started making money, we decided we didn’t like being sold to. Brands that changed their tactics from trying to make everyone listen to them, and instead they catered to the individual, they won.
So along comes the ability to create dynamic content. I guess what we should start with is, what is dynamic content? Dynamic content is content that changes either based on preferences by a group, or an individual. This can be anything from ads that change based on who clicks on them and their demographics, to websites that change based on who you are, and your needs. So now, the next question – how do you do it?
Dynamic Ads
Nearly all ad platforms online offer dynamic ads. Whether you use Facebook or Google, having the ability to serve ads that are targeted in their look and content to users has never been easier. One of the best ways to do this (for e-commerce stores especially) is through dynamic retargeting.
When a customer visits your website, don’t just show them your brand, but the actual product that they either looked at or put in their cart. Because while it’s important to show them that you’re still there, it’s even more important to show them why they were at your store to begin with.
Dynamic Emails
Email is probably the easiest place to get dynamic and custom in how you deliver it to your audiences. In it’s simplest form it can be based on their behavior, such as interests, or lists they’ve put themselves in based on page visits.
Or you can get elaborate with specific personas, where the content changes based who who the email is going to. This takes the mail merge variables of {FirstName} {LastName} and puts them on steroids. With tools like SharpSpring you can tell your email to say one thing to one person and something different to another based on their persona.
Dynamic Website
Dynamic websites are becoming increasingly popular, they’re already a mainstay in e-commerce. But as people want to consume the content that they want and ignore the rest, machine learning of which content to deliver is going to grow. Currently on sites like Amazon, it gives you choices of other items related to the products that you’ve looked at in the past.
One of the other ways that you can use dynamic content is in forms. Progressively learning forms can help you learn more about your visitor while they’re learning from the content you give out.
A final way that you can use dynamic content is based on time or location. Companies like Moz and Fathead use this to serve you landing images that change with the time that you land (Moz) or your location (Fathead). Now as simple as this might seem, when it comes to companies like Fathead, sports are generally a regional thing. When people see their favorite team, they identify with the company serving them this content. And visitors who connect buy more often than those who don’t.
Conclusion
Dynamic content isn’t just for big companies like Amazon and Fathead. No, WordPress offers plugins for dynamic products. SharpSpring offers small businesses the ability to serve up dynamic forms and emails. The democratization of dynamic marketing over the last few years means that most businesses can get the benefits of this, and every customer can get the personalized experience they want.