More than ever, a company’s success today depends on understanding and engaging with their target audience online on increasingly deep levels. And while digital marketing helps connect businesses with potential customers faster than ever, 79% of consumers are only likely to engage with an offer if it has been personalized to reflect previous interactions they had with the brand, as evidenced by Marketo research. As such, analytics systems that provide information on user interests and page performance are a cornerstone of personalized online marketing across industries.

However, while systems such as Google Analytics can provide helpful insights regarding site performance overall or the success rate of individual pages, its inherent anonymity prevents companies from understanding their audiences on a deeper, person-by-person level. By creating known users in an analytics system, businesses can be equipped to create more effective online experiences that can be shaped to match the specific interests and needs of groups or even individual audience members.

In better understanding how to create known users, as well as their benefits, businesses can improve the ROI and effectiveness of their online marketing strategies.

What Qualifies as a “Known User?”

While having user profiles that show a customer’s history with a company can improve online marketing, identifying a truly “known user” requires more detailed and robust information. This information most often includes shopping history, customer service interactions, social media profiles, geographic location, product reviews and any other recorded interactions directly linked to their generated profiles. Most often, using single sign-on capabilities can help connect these many different aspects to a single user profile.

Perhaps most importantly, businesses need to properly leverage the large quantities of anonymous data that they have compiled online through the use of cookies. Even businesses who employ single sign-on may not be fully connecting user profiles to robust data generated by these same users. This may be due to data siloing in back-end systems, separate websites or profiles used for various business processes or general oversights regarding data storage. By consolidating data and better tracking user interactions, a business can create a more complete profile that helps increase understanding of purchase history, interests, location and more for more accurate personalization.

Together, these elements turn formerly anonymous website visitors into fleshed out individuals, allowing businesses to better understand how they can support and sell to known users.

How Can Personalized Experiences Benefit a Business?

Thanks to top-of-the-line modern online experiences that have been crafted by companies such as Amazon, consumers are more aware than ever of how online personalization can serve their needs. This has led to higher audience expectations and the desire to be met with websites that react to and support them as individuals with unique service demands. No matter the industry, online experiences that are personalized to known users can make a quantifiable impact on a company’s future.

Recent research from Accenture indicates that 75% of consumers are more likely to make a purchase from a business that recognizes them by name and makes recommendations based on past purchases. In the often impersonal world of online business, this difference can quickly build a relationship between a company and an individual. When combined with higher spending rates, businesses can find improved results for their online marketing efforts that benefit the company as a whole.

In addition, increasing personalization across a company’s channels can increase overall consumer spending by as much as 500%, according to The E-Tailing Group. When combined with the previously mentioned effects on the likelihood of making a purchase, personalization can lead to an increased sense of loyalty by customers. In doing so, businesses can counteract the ever-increasing difficulty of creating a loyal customer base in a time where competition is high and switching services between brands is easier than ever.

Finding Insights Through Liferay Analytics Cloud

With Liferay Analytics Cloud, companies can better understand individual users on a more personal level to better know target audiences and how to better reach them. In doing so, businesses can make informed and effective changes to their online presence. Beyond understanding individual users, businesses can also use Liferay Analytics Cloud to determine how their webpages and the individual elements found within them are performing. Together, these insights provide companies with actionable data that can lead to stronger, more profitable business-customer relationships.