Ecommerce personalization examples & strategies to optimize the customer experience

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Consumer data privacy has been in the spotlight for years. For starters, it’s becoming more difficult to target audiences with paid ads online:

• In July 2024, Google announced that they’re rolling out a new Chrome experience that would give people a choice about allowing third-party cookie tracking.
• In late 2023, Apple’s iOS 17 expanded on earlier privacy features by removing link tracking when people are browsing in private mode on Safari or using Apple’s Mail or Messages.
• In 2022, Meta removed detailed targeting from its ad service, which ended up increasing competition and pricing out a lot of small to midsize ecommerce businesses.

At the same time, 74% of consumers expect a personalized experience when they engage with brands, according to Klaviyo’s 2025 future of consumer marketing report. It’s just that they want a choice about what they share—33% are willing to share their email address, for example, while only 2% are willing to share their social media information.

As it turns out, what people really want is control—over the personal data they share, how it’s used, and how far it extends.

In other words, people still want to interact with brands, but they want to do it after they’ve given those brands permission to use their data. And that’s a huge opportunity for brands to develop more meaningful—and lucrative—relationships with smaller, more manageable audiences.

If you want this for your own brand, you need to learn about—and invest in—better customer data. Keep reading to find out what that means and how to do it right.

What is ecommerce personalization?

Ecommerce personalization is the use of permission-based data to tailor both on-site experiences and brand communications—such as personalized emails, SMS, and mobile app messages—for different people based on their demographics, lifestyle factors, and online behavior.

It’s one thing that can separate an average online shopping experience from an outstanding one.

“By adding personalization to your marketing strategy, you make your customers feel like you’re speaking to them directly.“

“By adding personalization to your marketing strategy, you make your customers feel like you’re speaking to them directly,” says Gracie Cooper, former digital marketing strategist at Groove Commerce.

Put simply, ecommerce personalization leads to a better customer experience. It creates customer journeys that feel relevant and timely, whether people are browsing your website or receiving personalized messages. This helps them find and purchase the products they want, faster, ultimately driving higher customer engagement, increased conversions, and stronger customer loyalty.

The benefits of ecommerce personalization

Ecommerce personalization has a direct impact on a brand’s bottom line. This is because personalization—and the segmentation behind it—is the key to creating more relevant marketing campaigns that reach the right audience.

For example, Klaviyo’s 2025 benchmark report found that campaign order rates are more than 5x higher for the top 10% of campaigns across both email and SMS. The repeat purchase rate (RPR) is even higher—7x the average.

These top performing campaigns stand out for a few reasons: they’re highly personalized, more relevant to their audience, and stand out more prominently in inboxes—all factors that lead to improved clicks and conversion rates. In other words, the more targeted your email and SMS campaigns, the higher the potential impact on revenue.

Nonetheless, Jay Narula, head of sales in North America at Nosto, believes both paid ads and paid social will continue to occupy solid places in the business ecosystem for driving traffic. It’s just that these channel investments need to be paired with personalization efforts to properly pay off.

“Marketers spend an average of $92 to get a paid traffic visitor to a brand’s website, but only $1 to convert them once they’re there,” Narula points out. “The second we shift some of that investment, it pays off 10- and 20-fold.”

“Marketers spend an average of $92 to get a paid traffic visitor to a brand’s website, but only $1 to convert them once they’re there. The second we shift some of that investment, it pays off 10- and 20-fold.“

While personalization used to be “something nice to have,” he says, “now it’s vital. It used to be a vitamin. Now it’s a painkiller.”

“Nurturing and managing the customer relationships you’re building through website personalization means converting them vs. not,” Narula adds. “Often 10x, 30x, 80x for brands that really take the time to address it.”

To see the benefits of personalization—and eventually wean your brand off third-party data—you need to collect high-quality, permission-based data that can tell you more about your customer base than paid channels can. Then you need to use that data to create personalized experiences across all your customer touchpoints.

Personalized omnichannel experiences are still a differentiator, too. According to Klaviyo’s B2C CRM readiness quiz, only 12% of brands are reporting that they’re creating personalized experiences across every touchpoint. This means there are still far too many impersonal experiences out there that aren’t engaging customers in the ways they’ve come to expect.

Data as personalization fuel: building your unified customer profile

A unified customer profile is a collection of defining characteristics on your customers and subscribers. You’ll be able to create this profile with two types of data:

• Zero-party data: information someone proactively gives to you, like their email address, phone number, or birthday
• First-party data: information you compile from observing your owned channels, like engagement with email marketing campaigns, product page browsing behavior, and cart abandonment

Mitch McKay, director of partnerships at BigCommerce, prefers this type of data to third-party data because of the consent involved in the process. “I’m willingly giving that to a brand,” he says. “That makes the relationship more enthusiastic, with the potential to be longer-lasting.”

Under this umbrella, the data you collect falls into the following categories:

• Demographic: gender, location, age, income, etc.
• Psychographic: the “why” behind individual customer preferences, such as their likes, dislikes, and values
• Behavioral: past purchases, website browsing history, marketing engagement
• Contextual: devices, channel interactions, seasonal fluctuations

Here are a few of the best ways to collect data for your ecommerce personalization efforts:

• Advanced web forms
• Quizzes and surveys
• Post-purchase automations, like review requests and custom review questions
• Integrations with your ecommerce site (a gold mine of behavioral data)
• Point-of-sale systems, such as Square and Toast (to gather additional behavioral and contextual data)

Okay, but what can you actually do with all that data?

Narula says he sees the most success with real-time behavioral data, which is a direct line into why someone is shopping in your online store. For example, seafood brand Svenfish sends targeted messaging to online shoppers based on their proximity to a newly launched brick-and-mortar shop.

Contextual data is also relevant, Narula adds. These are all data points that can correlate with personalized website content :

• The weather the visitor is experiencing
• The country, state, city, or even neighborhood they’re in
• The time of day
• The device they’re on
• Where they’re coming from—like Facebook, Google, or TikTok

Finally, Narula advocates for session-based data. A trigger or on-the-spot quiz can help a brand personalize an online experience to, say, a woman who’s in her first trimester versus her third.

Once you’ve decided what kinds of data you’ll collect, you need to learn how to use it within your B2C CRM to launch personalized ecommerce site experiences and measure results.

What are the main types of ecommerce personalization?

There are several ways to personalize your brand experience for shoppers, but first it’s critical to understand why 1:1 personalization is a must-have and the ways you can execute it.

What’s the difference between 1:1 and 1:many personalization?

1:1 personalization tailors every single brand interaction with a customer—whether on-site or through messaging—to that customer’s unique preferences and behaviors.

Unlike 1:many personalization, which groups customers into much broader segments who receive the same content or offers, 1:1 personalization creates experiences that are truly personal and relevant to each individual. That deeper level of relevance is what ultimately builds trust and loyalty, creating lifetime customers for your brand.

Here are the most effective types of ecommerce personalization:

Website personalization

Personalized shopping experiences on your website, tailored to preferences and behaviors, are a smart way to engage customers and increase sales. This is about using behavioral data (gathered through shopping behaviors and tactics such as forms) to feature relevant products and offers that will appeal directly to shoppers.

Klaviyo also offers the option to create a Customer Hub on your website, where customers can log in to instantly experience a highly personalized shopping experience and self-service support, all based on their unique behaviors and needs.

Email personalization

Emails that speak directly to customers and subscribers—and only them—are messages that contain elements like personalized product recommendations, dynamic content, or subject lines that hint at their last transaction with your brand.

People are bombarded with email marketing. Personalization helps cut through the noise and make your brand stand out. Use the data you have for individual shoppers to create targeted email campaigns that reach them at just the right time and place in the customer journey. One of the most effective ways to do this is through email automations, which send triggered messages such as abandoned cart reminders and post-purchase follow-ups at just the right time.

SMS personalization

Like email personalization, SMS personalization can send product recommendations, sales, offers, and more, all based on a customer’s interests and past behavior.

You can also set up automations to send targeted messages such as cart reminders, shipping updates, and re-engagement offers that reflect real actions taken by subscribers and customers.

SMS also opens the door for real, two-way conversations, allowing you to answer questions and provide lightning-quick customer service, which humanizes the shopping experience and strengthens customer relationships.

Mobile app marketing personalization

If you run a business with its own app, all in-app messages and push notifications should be tailored to the needs and preferences of each customer, similar to how you would personalize your website for them.

With mobile app personalization, you can create in-app messages to highlight relevant products or promotions based on each customer’s browsing history and past shopping behaviors. You can do the same with push notifications to send relevant offers, reminders, low-inventory alerts, and more. These small, personal touches create a helpful, more human experience and keeps your brand top of mind.

How personalization can improve the customer experience

Ecommerce personalization isn’t just about targeted product recommendations—it can (and should) show up throughout the entire customer journey. Here’s how personalization can help during each step:

1. Awareness: Use lookalike audiences—people who are similar to your customers—to target specific groups of people who are new to your brand and capture their attention with relevant ads, social content, and emails.
2. Consideration: Entice shoppers with personalized product recommendations, content, and offers that match their browsing behaviors.
3. Conversion: Personalize messages—like abandoned cart reminders and exclusive offers—to convince shoppers to click that buy button.
4. Post-purchase: Create thank-you messages, shipping updates, and related product offers, based on items they recently purchased.
5. Loyalty: Recognize and reward customers with perks, VIP offers, and highly personalized messages to increase repeat purchases and retention.

From the moment a shopper lands on your website to after they join a loyalty program, personalization can make the experience more relevant and engaging. Here are key some areas where personalization can enhance the customer experience:

Personalization on landing pages

Dynamic landing pages can display personalized content based on factors like browsing history, referral source (such as an ad click from Instagram or Google), or user location. For example, a clothing retailer might highlight seasonal apparel based on the visitor’s local climate.

Personalized checkout experiences

A smooth checkout process increases conversion rates, and personalization can help remove friction. Features like pre-filled shipping details, recommended payment options based on past purchases, and dynamic discount offers for returning customers can all make the checkout experience faster and more tailored to the customer’s actual needs and behavior.

Personalized product search results

Shoppers searching for products expect results that are relevant to their preferences. Personalized search can serve up results that are based on someone’s past browsing behavior, purchase history, or popular items among similar customers.

This kind of service makes it easier for people to find what they’re looking for, which can decrease bounce rates and increase conversions.

Next steps: gather the data you need to execute these tactics

Klaviyo B2C CRM—the only CRM built for B2C—centralizes subscriber and customer data within a platform that also brings together your marketing, service, and analytics.

When you only need one piece of software to gather data and use that data, the personalization tactics we’ve highlighted here are a lot easier to execute.

Ecommerce personalization FAQs

Why is ecommerce personalization important?

Ecommerce personalization is important because it creates a better customer experience. Personalization can help people find and purchase the products they want quickly, reducing frustration and increasing satisfaction.

Personalization also improves website, email, SMS, and mobile app engagement, boosts conversion rates, and fosters customer loyalty by delivering tailored recommendations, dynamic content, and seamless interactions. When shoppers feel understood and valued, they’re more likely to return, ultimately driving higher sales and long-term business growth.

What is the difference between personalization and customization?

Personalization is when a brand tailors content, recommendations, or experiences to a customer based on data such as browsing behavior, purchase history, or demographics. It happens automatically, without requiring the customer to make adjustments.

Customization, on the other hand, is when the customer actively modifies their own experience. They may select product features, adjust settings, or choose preferences.

How can I measure the effectiveness of ecommerce personalization efforts?

You can measure the effectiveness of ecommerce personalization efforts by A/B testing them on your website and in the messages you send. Start by implementing something simple, like a first name populated in a form, and measuring click and conversion rates on that asset. When you have a solid amount of data, try implementing more personalization across your site and in your messages to increase conversions.

What technologies are used for ecommerce personalization?

Ecommerce personalization relies on a combination of advanced technologies to tailor shopping experiences based on customer data. Key technologies include:

• Artificial intelligence and machine learning: These analyze customer behavior and predict preferences to deliver personalized recommendations.
• B2C CRMs: CRMs centralize customer data from multiple sources, allowing businesses to create unified customer profiles for targeted personalization. Platforms like Klaviyo combine their CRM with marketing automation to help brands deliver personalized emails, SMS, and other communications based on behavior and segmentation.
• Behavioral tracking tools: Website analytics and heatmaps track user interactions, helping brands optimize personalized experiences.
• Dynamic content engines: These adjust website elements in real time, such as personalized banners, product recommendations, and email content.
• Recommendation engines: AI-driven algorithms suggest products based on past purchases, browsing history, or similar customer behavior.
• Chatbots and virtual assistants: AI-powered chatbots provide personalized shopping assistance and customer support.

By integrating these technologies, ecommerce brands can create omnichannel, data-driven personalization strategies that enhance customer engagement and drive conversions.

What are the challenges of implementing ecommerce personalization?

Ecommerce personalization comes with some challenges if you don’t have the data infrastructure to collect and analyze customer behavior. As an added layer, you’ll also need the right marketing integrations to translate that data into a personalized experience on your website and in the messages you send.