Personio: Website personalization from small startups to large enterprises

In the software as a service (SaaS) world, a common dilemma arises as your product gains traction with both startups and enterprises. Should you tailor your messaging to the startups or roll out the red carpet for larger companies? 

Picture yourself as a marketer at a budding SaaS firm. As your product gains momentum, big players start showing interest alongside your SMB (small and midsize business) clients. How do you cater to both on your website? It's a challenge many of us in marketing confront as we balance maintaining our appeal to small businesses while accommodating a growing and diverse clientele.

Andreas Fess is SEO and Personalization Manager at Personio, an all-in-one HR software solution. He explained how Personio solved this issue with personalization in a webinar hosted by Andy Kaiser, CEO and Co-Founder of Ninetailed. Drawing from firsthand experiences, Andreas discussed implementing personalized solutions using firmographic data to tackle this challenge effectively.

This post is for you and all the other marketing mavens out there finding themselves at this pivotal juncture. We’ll discuss how to personalize your website for different company sizes. Next, we'll explore how to leverage website personalization to not only increase the conversion rates for SMBs but also boost the number of demo signups for enterprise accounts, together with examples from Personio.

An ABM personalization strategy for every business size

This success story is about account-based marketing (ABM), a marketing strategy to direct your resources towards a group of high-value accounts within a market. By deploying personalized campaigns to engage an account, the marketing message is built around the specific attributes and needs of that account.

On behalf of the team at Personio, Andreas was considering an important decision. Should Personio prioritize their messaging for small businesses or large enterprises?

The scenario looks something like this: Your product is hitting its stride, you're gaining traction across diverse business sizes, and then bam! You're faced with the challenge of creating homepage messaging and an offer to appeal to both nimble SMBs and mighty enterprises.

But Andreas and his team didn’t just wing it and hope for the best. They turned this challenge into an opportunity using Ninetailed to fine-tune their website personalization. By tailoring their web experience to match the specific needs and pain points of SMBs and enterprises alike, the team created a dynamic homepage that resonated with visitors from both ends of the customer spectrum.

Once the visitor journey was personalized, Personio saw a huge lift in conversion rates for both segments:

For small businesses:

• 46% conversion uplift

• 63% higher mail consent

For enterprises:

• 45% conversion uplift

• 16% more demo requests

As Andreas explains: “With personalization, you can deliver more meaningful and relevant content and can differentiate your messaging from the competition.”

Enhancing ABM personalization with industry-based social proof

The team at Personio were already on the right track with their personalized homepage approach that catered to different company sizes. Yet, their ambition didn't stop there.

They wanted to explore a more nuanced aspect of personalization: tailoring social proofs based on the industries of their visitors. This initiative wasn't just about adding another layer of personalization; it was about taking ABM personalization to the next level.

Social proof, as most marketers would agree, is a powerful tool in the conversion toolkit. It’s the digital equivalent of word-of-mouth — testimonials, case studies, and success stories that offer tangible evidence of your product's value. Andreas recognized that while social proof is universally persuasive, its impact could be magnified by making it resonate more deeply with the specific concerns and aspirations of each industry segment they served.

Personio identified key industries that represented their primary market segments. Then they embarked on a mission to personalize the social proofs displayed on their website for these segments. This meant that a visitor from the healthcare sector would see testimonials and success stories from other healthcare organizations, while a retail business owner would be greeted with insights and endorsements from the retail industry. 

“We have a logo component, which we use across our site on hundreds of pages," says Andreas. "By taking advantage of the reusability of the component within Contentful’s Composable Content Platform and with Ninetailed, we could personalize the generic logos when someone from the target audience sees them.”

This strategic alignment ensured that the social proofs spoke directly to the unique challenges and successes within each sector, making the value proposition of Personio's solution immediately apparent and relevant.

The results of this initiative were nothing short of spectacular. By infusing their ABM strategy with industry-specific social proofs, Personio experienced a remarkable 26% increase in conversions from inbound leads. This wasn't just a minor uptick in engagement; it was a significant leap forward, underscoring the potency of well-targeted personalization.

Furthermore, the impact on their contact form conversion rates was even more pronounced, with a staggering 62% uplift.

Using Ninetailed inside Contentful: Personalized experiences that drive results

Where 91% of consumers are more likely to shop with brands that recognize, remember, and provide relevant offers and recommendations, creating personalized user experiences has become a cornerstone for businesses looking to stand out and connect with their audiences on a deeper level.

Recognizing this, many organizations are turning to innovative solutions that allow them to craft these unique experiences efficiently and effectively. One such solution is the integration of Ninetailed within Contentful, a powerful combination that enables companies to deliver personalized experiences that drive tangible results.

Everything happens inside Contentful

At the heart of this integration is the seamless operation within the Contentful environment. What we mean by seamless operations is you can define your audience segments, create experiments and personalized experiences, and analyze your audiences, experiences, and content components all inside Contentful. 

One workflow: Organizations can manage personalized content and experiment creation and distribution all within a single workflow. This streamlined process eliminates the need for juggling multiple platforms or tools, ensuring consistency and efficiency across the board.

No learning curve: Ninetailed's integration within Contentful is designed to be intuitive. Marketing teams can leverage familiar interfaces and processes to start creating personalized content or experiments without the need for extensive training or technical expertise.

There is no dependency on devs: One of the most significant advantages of the integration between Ninetailed and Contentful is the autonomy it grants marketing teams. With everything happening inside the CMS, there's no dependency on development teams for implementation or changes. 

According to Andreas at Personio: “Ninetailed enabled our marketing team to build personalized content experiences without any developer support needed, right inside Contentful, where we have a single source of truth for our content.”

This independence not only speeds up the process but also allows for more agile and responsive marketing strategies, free from the bottlenecks of technical development queues.

Personalization at scale: Beyond the operational efficiencies, a major benefit of using Ninetailed inside Contentful is the ability to personalize at scale. The capacity to tailor content for individual users or segments without compromising on speed or quality is invaluable. This approach not only enhances user satisfaction but also drives significant results across key metrics, from bounce rates to conversions and customer loyalty.

By leveraging data-driven insights and dynamic content delivery, organizations can ensure that every interaction is relevant and resonant. Whether it's adapting the homepage to reflect a visitor's interests, or displaying targeted offers based on browsing history, the potential to reach new audiences is massive. And with the ease of use and flexibility provided by Ninetailed and Contentful, scaling these personalized experiences across channels and touchpoints becomes effortless.

It’s all about testing more and more

The journey undertaken by Personio sheds light on an essential aspect of digital marketing strategy: the need for continuous testing. Because the uncomfortable truth is that not every test will be a winner. 

In fact, some of the tests conducted by Personio resulted in no significant uplift in conversion rates, while others didn't contribute to the bottom line at all. These moments could easily be perceived as failures or wasted effort. Yet, they represent something far more valuable — lessons learned in the complex dance of aligning with user expectations and behaviors.

Andy Kaiser, CEO and Co-Founder of Ninetailed, shared this perspective: “The accumulation of knowledge from the personalized experiences and experiments drive more informed, data-driven decisions in future strategies to create even more meaningful personalized experiences.”

A key takeaway from Personio's experience is the critical importance of increasing both the frequency and depth of testing and personalization efforts. Rather than being disheartened by tests that don't yield positive results, the focus should be on the insights gained from these experiments. Each test, regardless of its outcome, adds a piece to the puzzle of understanding your audience's preferences, behaviors, and motivations. 

Wrapping up

The integration of Ninetailed within Contentful represents a paradigm shift in how businesses approach personalization. By combining the agility and ease of use of a leading composable content platform with advanced personalization capabilities powered by Ninetailed, organizations can create compelling, tailored experiences that resonate with their audience and drive unparalleled results.

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