In a fascinating interview on behavioral marketing within a site Offermatica CEO Matt Roche talks about increasing the effectiveness of behavioral marketing within a site by tracking keywords used to get to the site and serving up specific homepage content that targets those keywords:
“So with MusiciansFriend.com, [when] someone comes to the home page we know nothing about them, so they get the home page. What if we repeat the keyword that they searched on to get there, just show similar information? That increased the conversions. We repeat your keyword so you have a connection.”
That’s the first step. Then they look at the behavior within the site and retarget the message when they return to the home page:
“Then we install affinity targeting that says when you go to the drums section and come back to the home page it will show you more drum offers. It increased the conversion rate in double digits on all the categories where we did category affinity”
Here’s where the real payoff for the merchant comes in:
“What was more important, in my opinion, was that the guy who was running the category for drums has never had his stuff on the front page. The front page is reserved for those departments inside a company that have the power. But if you suddenly say that the front page visitor is not just a MusiciansFriend front page visitor but a MusiciansFriend drummer, then you say, Mr. Head of Drum Merchandise, you tell me what I should show them. In the past you sat back and prayed people get to the drum section. Now he is leaning forward and saying, I know they are a drummer, [so] what should I be showing them? When the marketer becomes engaged, when they do something and see the result of it, then they do things that are in the end more engaging for the consumer.”
This is incredibly powerful stuff that is not technologically beyond the range of most serious site marketers because, unlike behavioral retargeted ad campaigns, it would not require sophisticated third-party server solutions. Anyone with a serious shopping or informational affiliate site should be thinking in these terms because this could greatly increase conversions and improve customer/visitor loyalty.