7 Tools for Real-Time Personalization in Minutes [2023] Sarah Chan Rejante March 15, 2023
Imagine you're a "regular customer" at a local cafe.
As you walk in, the staff greet you by name and immediately strike up conversation. They prepare your usual order without you ever needing to ask and suggest you try their new chocolate cake because they know you enjoy having something sweet with your coffee. By the time you walk out the door, you feel like you've just had coffee with a good friend.
You may not have realized it, but you've just experienced real-time personalization in real life.
Real-time personalization is a lot like giving that "regular customer" experience online.
Employees at brick-and-mortar stores are trained to remember customer preferences, make suggestions based on popular demand, or give alternative product recommendations when customers express interest.
Through real time personalization, businesses can recreate many of the aspects of this experience online.
If you want to learn more about how real-time personalization works and the tools you can use to implement real-time personalization on your website, keep reading below.
What is real-time personalization?
Personalization is an essential component of successful sales and marketing campaigns.
An Epsilon report states that 80% of people are more likely to engage in business with a company that provides personalized experiences.
Customers expect a personalized experience and personalization is a major driver in customer satisfaction today.
But does one personalize content for anonymous visitors?
In the past, personalization strategies were limited to collecting data from customers through surveys, sales data, and requesting feedback.
Today, businesses can use marketing technology, artificial intelligence, and machine learning to gain more accurate consumer insights faster and adapt instantly to improve interactions.
This strategy is called real-time personalization.
Real-time personalization uses real-time analytics and other sales tools to show customized content to customers or prospects, including personalized offers and recommendations.
Tailoring content to each individual user allows businesses to better address customer needs, build trust, and connect with their target customers in a more meaningful way.
Many real-time personalization tools also help businesses collect customer data, understand customer behavior, and create more accurate customer profiles.
This data can be collected from various channels, including email, SMS, social media channels, and your website.
What are some real-time personalization examples?
There are many effective real-time personalization features and tools that you can use to improve customer experience and conversion rates.
Recommendations from live chat or chatbots—For example, if a user has scrolled through your product information pages, this could trigger a notification to your sales team to take additional action. This could include prompting them to answer a video call or sending them a message in a pop-up chat box.
Providing location-relevant content. Using location data can help larger businesses personalize experiences by showing geo-location specific content or local or regional content. This could include special discounts for local holidays or events, such as a special sale on barbecue grills and camping chairs for the Fourth of July.
Reminder emails on e-commerce sites. Another common real-time personalization strategy ecommerce stores use is sending reminder emails to existing users who have added items to their cart without completing the purchase. These emails prompt customers to make a buying decision, while also recommending related products to increase their overall spend.
This is just a snapshot of the many possible ways your business can implement real-time personalization tools.
Read More: Best Books for Persuasion. Learn how to be more persuasive in your marketing techniques and sales calls with these books!
Top tools to implement real-time personalization in minutes
Personalizing the customer journey can lead to stronger engagement and higher revenues. It's a good idea to use a range of real-time personalization tools in order to bring in data points from multiple sources. That way, you are able to gain a more well-rounded picture of your potential and existing customers, and with the right data, you'll be able to provide a more relevant customer experience.
Here are the real-time personalization tools that made our shortlist:
1. Glass—in-app video chat for direct conversations
Glass takes real-time personalization to the next level by helping businesses offer high-touch customer experiences using video calls.
When visitors make relevant interactions, you or your sales team can use Glass to prompt them through a notification.
Pros
Easy to install (a Javascript)
Currently, the only service that allows you to see visitor screens in real time
Also allows for instant video and voice conversations within your website or app
Provides higher response rates vs. email outreach and marketing bots
Cons
The product is in an early-access program
Does not have as many integrations as other live chat tools
Ideal for: Businesses wanting to provide personalized attention at critical stages in a customer journey
Price: Starting at $200 per month.
2. Intellimize—machine learning and AI-powered programmatic CRO
Intellimize taps into artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning to drive conversions, optimize websites, and support real-time personalization tactics.
Instead of running time-consuming A/B tests, Intellimize uses machine learning and AI to test your marketing strategies for you.
Pros
Offers a no-code personalization feature set for marketers
Ability to set optimization goals
Does not require preliminary data—adapts according to each website visitor
Cons
No mobile application
No free trial
Few native integrations
Ideal for: Mid-sized to large B2B, B2C, and ecommerce companies
Price: Not available. You can book a demo or request a pricing quote through their website.
3. Proof—a social proof tool
If everyone is doing it, why aren't you? Proof allows you to include "social proof" elements on your landing pages to build trust and boost conversion rates.
Examples of "social proof" include the number of other customers who recently took action on your site, a live visitor count, and recent user activity.
Pros
No-code visual editor
14-day free trial
Easy to set up
Integrates with a wide variety of software, mobile apps, and website builders
Cons
Limited personalization features
Can get costly as your business scales
Ideal for: Businesses looking to boost their conversion rate
Price: Starts at $24/month when billed annually for the most basic features.
4. Mutiny HQ—actionable data from visitor analytics
Create real time personalization experiences based on your customers' specific interests using Mutiny HQ, a conversion platform designed with the goal of turning your website into your top revenue channel.
Not only does Mutiny HQ provide detailed website traffic analytics to help inform your strategy, they also teach your team website conversion best practices and allow you to customize your landing pages with ease.
Pros
No code web personalization
AI-powered audience segmentation
Easy to use
Cons
Limited customization options
Pricing may not be ideal for businesses with low website traffic
Ideal for: Mid-sized B2B businesses
Price: Not available. You can book a demo or request a pricing quote through their website.
5. Smartlook—event-based analytics
Want to know more about your website visitors' behavior? Gain real-time behavioral data using Smartlook, a user behavior platform for websites and apps.
Smartlook offers a variety of useful features, including heat maps, session recordings, interaction tracking, and funnel analyses.
This is your one-stop shop for comprehensive user behavior analytics and insights that can help you better personalize your messaging and design.
Pros
Offers a free version that lets you record up to 3,000 user sessions/month (no credit card required)
Always-on session recording feature allows you to replay and review user journeys
Cons
Free plan has limited additional capabilities, and the paid version is recommended for more detailed analytics
Some users have reported lagging and glitching
Ideal for: Small or mid-sized businesses
Price: Start at $55/month, with a 30-day free trial.
6. Salesforce Marketing Cloud (Interaction Studio)—personalization management
Salesforce's Marketing Cloud offers real-time personalization and interaction management features as a part of their more robust suite of marketing tools.
Also known as Interaction Studio, these features use real-time analytics to help you design personalized content and experiences for your audiences.
Their omnichannel personalization platform allows you to guide users through an optimized customer journey based on their interactions and data, so you can keep changing to meet their expectations.
Pros
Integrates well with the rest of the Salesforce Cloud
Offers AI-driven optimization and personalization
Wide variety of features available
Cons
UX design is not very intuitive
Robust platform can be overwhelming at first
Ideal for: Mid to large-sized enterprises, especially those with existing experience with Salesforce products.
Price: Not available. You can book a demo or request a pricing quote through their website.
7. OmniConvert—real-time personalization tools
Get to know your audience using Omniconvert, a suite of real time personalization tools that help you optimize your website. These tools include A/B testing, advanced audience segmentation, personalization experiments, and more.
Omniconvert aims to improve your business' "customer lifetime value" using their "Customer Value Optimization" (CVO) methodology. Omniconvert defines CVO as, "the framework in which companies focus on raising the value of their customers to grow their businesses."
Pros
Built-in JS and CSS editor
Offers optional service to assign a dedicated data analyst to your analytics account
Cons
Can be complicated to start up and sometimes requires advanced CSS knowledge
Some users report frequent bugs
Ideal for: Mid to large ecommerce businesses
Price: Starts from $167/month when billed annually.
In closing
Customers today are hungry for personalization, and customization ultimately leads to more conversions and higher revenue in the long term.
Without real-time personalization tools, your business could be missing out on valuable customer data and analytics.
Sarah Chan Rejante is a digital marketer and social media coordinator based in Toronto, Canada. She has a Bachelor’s Degree in Public Relations from Humber College and is passionate about marketing and getting in front of customers in the right way.
About Glass.io
With Glass.io, you can reach across the screen and help visitors make a buy decision. See exactly how visitors use your website in realtime, trigger a notification to the right sales rep when they show buying intent, and start a personalized conversation (chat or video) at the perfect moment.
Plug your leaky sales pipeline by engaging with your website visitors while you have their attention. Sign up for an account here.