How to Humanize Your E-commerce Business with Personalized Messages

By Sean Work

“Always deliver more than expected” – Larry Page

E-commerce websites are no exception to this working law. In fact, e-commerce is one of the least forgiving areas if you simply meet basic requirements. Elements such as site speed, design, positioning, pricing, categorization, and SEO are vital for efficiency and success.

Fortunately, there are many themes and third-party tools available now that handle most of the basic requirements right out of the box. This gives us more time to invest in maximizing each area of e-commerce.

Today, we’re going to focus on humanized branding with personalized messages and creative content. The following examples show us how to be more than just a store front by going above the basic requirements of RSS promotion or Facebook Offers.

Ditch Propaganda for a Voice

One of the primary shared goals of marketing and branding on social media channels and email campaigns is to befriend visitors and customers.

It’s an idea that has been preached for years but remains minimal in practice. This may be summarized best with a question from our higher-ups, “What’s the ROI of a cat meme?” That’s not to say all of our friends share cat memes, but the general idea is an e-commerce website can share the same content our friends would share, such as:

• Humorous articles and pictures
• Opinions on news, pop culture, and society
• Memes
• General questions about life
• Insightful quotes, images, and recommendations

The larger the brand, the more limited the content. We’re not going to see Macy’s tweeting about marijuana legalization, although Ben & Jerry’s will be all over it:

If you know the history of Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield, you realize this is almost as expected as Puma tweeting about track runners or Home Depot pioneering a philanthropic campaign to support forest fire fighters.

The magic of humanized marketing happens when the message influences us to …read more