Businesses everywhere are discovering their personalization efforts aren’t cutting it — not because they have yet to create a chatbot or excel at omnichannel marketing. The reason is much more glaring.
What most marketers are discovering is that, by neglecting the post-click stage, they’ve been personalizing only one-half of their marketing campaigns.
What is the post-click stage?
While the post-click stage continues to earn more attention from marketers everywhere, the term “post-click” is still relatively unknown to most. So, let’s quickly review.
In a digital ad campaign, there are two major user experiences separated by a single event.
The pre-click stage (stage 1): In this stage, the user sees an advertisement. It may be in-app, on social media, a search engine results page, etc. Everything in the environment that contributes to the perception of the ad is considered part of the pre-click stage. Traffic source, for example, is an aspect of the pre-click experience. So is the platform the ad appears on, the colors of the ad, its copy, featured media, brand equity, and much more. These all contribute to the likelihood that the user clicks the advertisement.
The click (the event): If the aforementioned elements are arranged successfully, the user will click the advertisement.
The post-click stage (stage 2): Like the pre-click stage is everything that contributes to the click, the post-click stage is everything that contributes to the conversion. While traffic sources, colors, brand affect the conversion as they do the click, several additional aspects contribute to the conversion of a visitor.
After years of treating the post-click stage as an afterthought, today, many are offering it the same attention as the pre-click stage. Ultimately, their goal is to create a highly personalized experience throughout the entire campaign, not just before the click.
What is post-click personalization?
Personalization, for a long time, has been touted as marketers’ most valuable tool. According to research, 98% of marketers agree it advances customer relationships, with 74% claiming it has a strong or extreme impact. When asked about their prospects, nearly 90% say they expect personalized experiences.
But, in the history of digital advertising most efforts into personalization have focused on the pre-click experience. There are a few reasons for this:
1. The post-click stage is a relatively new addition to the advertising campaign. Before the internet, there was no equivalent. For the consumer, there was simply an ad followed by the sales experience. Whether it was a piece of direct mail or a phone number to call over the TV or radio, the campaign went from ad straight to conversion. There was no click, and thus, no pre-click or post-click stages. As a result, this idea of the two-stage modern campaign has been slow to catch on.
Today, though, ads don’t do the selling like they once did. The conversion takes place during the post-click landing page.
2. The tools haven’t been capable of post-click personalization. It does seem like ages ago that personalization meant tactics like recommended product emails and subject lines featuring first name. It wasn’t all that complicated. And the tools were largely to blame. Without advanced capabilities, very few businesses could achieve true personalization.