Presented live on Tuesday, April 28, 2020
Attend our live tutorialsThe frustrating thing about writing a website is that you have to write for some generic “visitor.”
That home page headline you’ve rewritten 600,000 times has to work for… everyone.
And the way you organize your features on your tour page or your products on your catalogue page — that’s also gotta work for everyone.
Except, of course, it doesn’t.
You don’t actually need to use generic messages across your site.
You could, instead, try your hand at personalization.
Come meet Brennan.
He’s a personalization pro.
In this Tutorial Tuesday, Brennan will walk us through a 15-min “how to personalize a page” hands-on tutorial. So you can overcome any intimidation you may feel and start driving personalization initiatives for your team or clients.
Transcript
Joanna Wiebe: Hello to everybody. Brennan, you’re going to share with us some stuff today about this very interesting opportunity that is personalization. That I think the markets are not that sophisticated on.
Brennan Dunn: So my slide design is very basic but uh I don’t have many fortunately. I’m going to be starting out with a few just theoretical slides and what personalization is in a nutshell. There is a lot of miscommunication about, I think, what it is – starting with slide at number one.
What Personalization is Not [00:34]
I think a lot of people, when they think personalization, they’re thinking putting things like somebody’s name and an email or saying like, ‘hey, Joanna how’s Canada today?’ or something like that. Right.
Personalization is not just telling people what they already know.
Personalization Explained [00:50]
Personalization in my mind is helping curate an experience somebody has that basically lays out here’s what you should be doing next with me. And here’s why you should do it. So basically, the end of the day it’s making the experience somebody gets with you, whether it be over email or on your website, super relevant and super personal to them that aligns with what it is they’re looking for.
I’m gonna there’s tons of studies I could share but the long and short of it is, personalization works because niching works. Everyone knows that really niche websites tend to work really well for the niche they target, but a lot of us have products or services that a lot of people can benefit from.
But if we’re trying to, if this could work for copywriters and could work for designers and marketers and so on and so forth, we need to get super generic with how we communicate with that audience, which means we’re kind of like common denominator copy. Right. Like, it’s very baseline.
This copy needs to speak to everyone, which means you’re, you know, speaking to no one, so I can share at the end, like some different case studies. If you guys are interested, but I’m going to burn through this stuff because that’s what you want. You don’t want to hear about other people’s success, you want to hear about what you can do.
What is Segmentation? [02:00]
So, alright, so in terms of, um, let me just quickly start with segmentation, because you can’t personalize without segmentation and my mind segmentation is really two different dimensions, if you will.
2 Types of Segmentation [02:10]
There is vertical segmentation, which is where somebody is in their relationship with you. And then there’s a horizontal segmentation, which is who somebody is, so how somebody identifies, and what it is they need from you. So to take that to an actual example.
Vertical Segmentation [02:25]
Vertical segmentation could be something like, well, if they’re anonymous, we want to get them to be a subscriber. If there’s a subscriber, we probably want them to buy our entry level course. If they bought that, maybe they become a coaching client.
And obviously, depending on your business and what it is you do this funnel might be just when you’re like this, it could be branching. It could have a lot of different, you know, a lot of complexity to it. But I’d encourage all of us to sit down.
If we haven’t done this yet and figure out what is our basic, given who you are. Given what you’ve done with me so far. What should you do next and at a minimum, it should be anonymously they’re on your website, get on your email list.
Horizontal Segmentation [02:58]
Alright, so then comes horizontal segmentation, which are the who, somebody is and what it is they need help with. So they’re anonymous and they are a designer. They are a subscriber and they’re a copywriter. They’re a subscriber who’s a copywriter, but they also need help with pricing.
These are these are different things we can track on somebody, usually in their contact record in your email marketing app that will allow us to better personalize it. Whether it be an opt in form or an offer or sales letter to somebody when they’re back on our website and when they’re getting emails from us.
The Who [03:43]
So, the two horizontal segments, you should be tracking in but I’m going to wrap this up quickly because I want to get into the really the fun part. But the two horizontal segments that you should be tracking are the who.
So remember we have our vertical stuff, which is what you see on the right. And then there’s who, so how does somebody self identify and this is going to be dependent on you and your business.
This could be like what kind of work to somebody do. This could be what industry, are they and what their job role is and so on. But basically the long and short of it is given where somebody is in your funnel, you want them to do something next, if they’re anonymous, get on your list.
So, you know, if they’re a copywriter, grow your copywriting business by joining my newsletter. They’re a marketer, grow your marketing business by turning my newsletter, you’re basically just repositioning your opt in. I’m going to show you how to do this in a second.
Based on who somebody is and this just goes through the funnel. So we just want to let them know, hey, we get you, you’re a copywriter or use language that makes sense to you. I’m gonna show you this in a second too.
Here’s maybe a testimonial that resonates with you because you want to see copywriters who benefited from this, you don’t care about the designers who have been benefited, you don’t pay for the marketers. You want to see copywriters who have been, you know, who have done this, who forged this trail before.
The What [04:44]
And then there’s the what. So the second component. The second type of segment that you’re gonna want to track, no matter what kind of business you’re having what you’re doing with personalization.
Is what is somebody here for? What is it that they’re currently struggling with right now?
So maybe they just want to start a business. If somebody wants to start a business and they’re a copywriter, they need to hear something different than somebody who wants to scale an agency and they’re also a copywriter.
Because agency owners don’t see that they have anything in relation to somebody who has got their day job and is thinking about starting freelancing. They think their worlds apart, even though you could probably help each of them, potentially, if you say help consultants, like I do.
So you know what you’re what you should be seeing on your screen right now is this way where we’re affecting somebody’s offer, which is the next thing that they should be doing next with us based on different inputs. So who they are and what it is they need.
What is RightMessage Software? [05:43]
Alright, so that’s the theory I know I don’t have a lot of time, so I’m going to show you now the application of it. So, um, I own a company called RightMessage we build segmentation and personalization and opt in software.
How Does RightMessage Work? [05:48]
And what you see in front of you now is a customer journey where, what it is we’re doing this is very if you’ve used like Automation Editor stuff like ConvertKit or Trip or any of these different tools, This should kind of seem kind of similar.
So what it is we’re doing is we’re saying when somebody is on our site. We want to find out what their need is, so what is it you need help with? Is it starting a business scaling a business for selling? And then we want to find out what kind of business. They have so I left it simple, but let’s say we have copywriters on our site designers and programmers.
We find that out. And then what we’re going to do is we’re going to route people to a personalized offer or a call to action that we want them to do next. So, this this ties and if you remember with my second slide what somebody should be doing next.
So what I’m doing here is, I don’t know if you’ve ever been like on a newsletter and you get an email from somebody, and you’ve been on their list forever, you’re an amazing customer. You click the link to their blog post they just published and you’re hit with an opt in form.
I mean, that is, first off, that’s stupid. Secondly, that’s a missed opportunity. So what we’re doing here is we’re saying, hey, if somebody is a subscriber, I want to find out what they’ve done with me and then either pitch them on like coaching or don’t pitch anything or maybe my course.
So what we’re able to do is, we’re able to say is we have real estate that we’re using to get opt ins, all of us probably have this in our website. But what if we can swap out the opt in forms in favor of hey you should buy this course and here’s why. Or, hey, it’s time to go to my coaching program and here’s why. Depending on where somebody is in your funnel.
And what you can see here is we’re just pulling in data that we have in this case ConvertKit so if they purchased our course, Yeah. All right. Have they purchased coaching? No. All right, let’s pitch them on coaching.
How to use RightMessage for Web Page Personalization [07:40]
So what’s really cool about this and I want to show you this first and I’m going to show you sales page personalization, which is really exciting or really web page personalization, I should say.
Is we can have like a standard you know say this is your newsletter opt in.
But what we’re doing here, is we’re swapping out words, Madlib style, based on what it is they told us they need so they come to the site. Like, let’s look at my site real quick.
So, I’m here. Am I making a full time income freelancing? Yes. I’m solo, and I’m a designer. So now the opt in, is about getting a freelancers, or growing a freelance design business. Now if I go to the articles page. Watch what happens.
Articles for web designers. Designers start a design business. Products. Let’s go look at the products, training for freelance designers, interesting, learn more.
Are you ready to raise your design rates? Interesting. Oh look, here’s a quote from a designer, the prominent testimonials from a designer.
This is what I’m getting at is what you’re able to do when you start to think about who people are and what it is they need and where they are in their relationship with you.
You can point them to different products, different offers, different things like your newsletter or a product they haven’t bought, or something like that. And you can change the way you describe it. This is the big thing. You can change how it’s described.
So in this case, if they’re a copywriter. It’ll say your copywriting business like hey learn what it takes to finally scale or find a buyer for your software business. So depending on how you’re getting this data, you can then change how you position or how you describe, whether it be, you know, an opt in form or something more down the funnel.
So we’re using serving or quiz stuff here to do that. But you can also do things like hey if Joanna sends me traffic if any traffic to my site from Copyhackers, I’m not going to bother asking them what they do. I’m just going to assume they’re a copywriter.
And then somebody comes to my site from Copyhackers, they’re not going to see, hey, like which one of these are you? They’re going to go straight into getting copywriter language as they move around the site, which is super powerful because then a split second later, somebody comes over from invisionapp and they’re getting design language and design social proof and design case studies and stuff.
Think in Terms of a Customer Journey [10:05]
So lots of really interesting stuff that you can do when you think in terms of a customer journey. Rather than thinking in terms of, like, here’s my opt in form that everyone gets. I mean, it’s to me at least, I, You know, I really don’t like it when I like I mentioned before, when I’m on somebody’s email list and I’m a very loyal customer and at every turn, there’s pop ups, try and get my email address.
I’d rather either not see them or be shown something that’s a little more appropriate for me that I should be doing next to further this relationship. So, you know, one thing you should be doing. And again, I know I’m trying to like cram into 15 minutes, an entire master class of what you should be doing.
But, um, what I’d encourage anyone to be doing who’s listening is to think in terms of journeys people take and how can you enrich what you know about them – who they are, what it is they need help with, and then use that to point them in the right direction to a certain product and describe that product in a certain way.
How to Describe a Product [11:03]
So I’m going to show you that describing of a product. So let’s say somebody came from a Copyhackers, they’re on the sales page, I can then click on any you know headline, I can click on, I can swap out an image like I made it. So, this is Jane Doe copywriter. Whereas now, it’s my designer, now here’s a quote from a programmer, you know, this helps me better understand how to sell my programming skills.
This helped me, you know, a lot of designers struggle to put a price in their creativity. So here’s a potential customer testimonial, from somebody who was able to get past that. So people obviously, we all know this is as copywriters, people want to see themselves in the product, and they want to, you know, they want to have a strong signal to noise ratio.
And the problem is if you’re speaking to you know agencies and solo people and everything in between, and different industries and so on – you end up with these massive sales pages, massive sales letters that have every condition possible that cover every single objection. And focus on like, is this good for people starting out? Yes. And here’s why. Is it good for experienced people? Yes. And here’s why.
Minimize the Noise with VOC [12:07]
Whereas if you can instead minimize that noise and focus and then say, Look, I know you’re an agency. I know you’re a copywriter. Here’s exactly like if you’re a designer, everything you need to raise your design budgets. Whereas, a programmer sees everything you need to increase your development rates.
And this is where we get into voice so customer stuff because programmers tend to use the word rate, whereas designers use budgets or I think copywriters often use the word fee.Right, so like there’s different ways of describing what you get paid for instance or the different language that people use.
And if you can show them that look I get it. You’re a copywriter. Here’s how copywriters speak. Here’s what copywriters need to hear. Here’s copywriters who have used this program. That’s ultimately what personalization is about.
It’s not about saying Hey Brennan or hey, Joanna or kind of like one of those kind of parlor tricks that I think a lot of people overly focus on and instead saying, Look, how can we find out who you are, what you need? Maybe through behavior, maybe based on where you came from, the ad you clicked on, the kind of content you’re reading or we just ask you point blank.
Like, what is the number one thing you need help with today? Oh, I need help with pricing. Cool. Here’s you know how you know how you can fix that. So again, I know I ran through this super fast. It’s probably the fastest I’ve ever crammed this stuff in, but hopefully this has been somewhat helpful and yeah.
Joanna Wiebe: Brennan, thank you so much. That was jam packed. There are still…
Brennan Dunn: No it’s, I ran through that but hopefully it made some sense.
Joanna Wiebe: No, I think everybody is really like stoked about what they could do so as chatted out that course link again if you haven’t, go there, get the course, learn this stuff. Coach your clients, use this for your own sites, your own products, for those who are here from Ecommerce and SaaS
Otherwise, any of those on answered questions or seven that weren’t answered, sorry guys head over to that Facebook group and ask them there. I’m sure Brennan, or his team can help you out right?
Brennan Dunn: Interesting. Fun fact about that email course there are more than 18,000 variations of it and it only took about an hour to add that
Joanna Wiebe: Wild. That’s crazyland!
Brennan Dunn: So I’m using all this stuff to drive a lot of variations for that email course so
Joanna Wiebe: Wild! So cool. Thank you so much, Brennan. Thanks, Ange and thanks everybody for attending and asking questions today. We’ll see you. Our next tutorial Tuesday is all for freelancers, and this replay will be available shortly Brennan, stay safe everybody stay safe. Thanks again Y’all!
Brennan Dunn: Thanks, everyone.
