The Hypothesis
Unless the way you segment and respond to your target market includes their intent, it does not reflect how people shop.
Whether a site visitor is a returning customer, from paid media sources, social channels or email clicks is not a definitive indicator of high opportunity. Neither is just knowing the actions they have taken, the pages they’ve visited or the categories they’ve browsed.
And don’t even start on demographic segments or personas. These are valuable for strategy, but not when it comes to responding to the rough and tumble of online shopping.
Think about it; a person returning to your site does not classify them as a high level of intent, does it? They might be still researching, comparing, seeing if the price has gone down or copying and pasting the title to find it cheaper elsewhere.
These retrospective attributes reveal past behaviour accurately, but lack context. Intent data is based on predicting future actions. Like who is ready to buy, likely to exit or unlikely to return to site. Context on their current purchase journey, and what the retrospective actions truly mean.
Incorporating this level of intent data into your ecommerce insights is how you identify your areas of highest opportunity.
The Tech You’ll Need
We don’t mean to be too pushy but…you’ll need the Made With Intent platform, or an alternative way to get real-time intent data categorised into segments and opportunities
A bonus would be integrating this with analytics, to cross-reference traffic numbers and behaviours post-opportunity identification.
Setting this up
Here’s how you can use the Made With Intent platform to understand your customers’ intent and find high opportunity segments.
The Target Segments
Clearly, it makes sense to target the segments who have a level of purchase intent on your site. It’s worth saying however, that these might not necessarily be the biggest opportunities.
If you have a proven ability to nurture customers and a highly considered purchase, it might be easier and quicker to go after those with lower intent. You’ll certainly have a higher volume of these customers.
That said, prioritising opportunities for segments who have shown a level of purchase intent is a safe, catch-all response. Some priority examples of these segments from our ecommerce segmentation framework based on intent include:
Struggling or Hesitant Buyers
Both of these segments consist of site visitors with high intent, who are in the checkout process but are showing signs of struggle.
Segments don’t get more ‘high opportunity’ than likely purchasers faltering in the checkout. They're struggling and not checking out. Why? Are they checking discounts? Rather than push them through a checkout when you know this journey isn't typical, how can you respond to the fact they don't seem ready to buy?
Understanding and addressing this hesitancy is key to converting stalled checkouts into successful transactions. Consider things like live assistance and building trust through user-generated content about the brand.
Basket Abandoners and Last Chancers
Both of these segments signal customers with high intent, but a low likelihood of returning who are predicted to exit soon.
As this is your last chance to persuade these users on their current buying journey, this is your quintessential low-risk, high-reward opportunity. Think about appropriate messaging that can be used to reduce their likelihood of exiting. Consider final discounts and attempt to build a relationship through live chat engagement. You may even want to capture their email so you can maintain engagement with abandoned cart emails. This is the perfect segment for you to highlight immediate value.
The Impact
How do you quantify the impact of insights? Well, here are some of the results and intangibles our customers have seen by thinking about their opportunity segments differently.
“It's a complete shift in how we think. After applying it to Essence Vault, we've started to focus on those who were about to abandon yet had a high intent to purchase and managed to reduce that by over 50%."
Ollie Hudson, Founder, Soar With Us
“Made With Intent gives us a paradigm shift. It helps us prioritise who to target.”
Jackie Barnett, Head of CRM, M&M Direct
“We're able to prioritise how we engage our customers at the most appropriate time. Not only have we seen experiences improve conversion rates upwards of 10%, we're also seeing improved engagement metrics in our remarketing activities too.”
Jo Homer, Head of UX and Product, Signet Group
“Being able to see the intent of our users is game changing. We've seen a conversion rate increase of 20% plus on some of our experiences that are based on intent instead of being based on one-size fits all messaging.”
Jan Bartczak, CCO, Value Lights
Strategically identifying and prioritising opportunities based on customer intent doesn't only improve customer journeys. By leveraging intent data, you can ensure your initiatives are targeted at the segments who can drive the most incremental revenue, in the short and long term.
And this play is just focused on the kind of intent insights Made With Intent can unlock for you. To find out how this translates to action both onsite and offsite, check out our playbook the rest of our retailer-led plays.
