As a digital marketer, you are familiar with the advantages of real-time website personalization.
Personalization influences consumer interaction and can increase visitor engagement.
Marketers who personalize their website experience and can quantify the results witness a 19 percent improvement in sales.
However, this type of contextual website personalization also includes another extremely effective technique of visitor engagement which is transforming the backbone of numerous marketing strategies.
Weather-based personalization allows companies to forestall customer requests and instead, capitalize on the wants, temperaments, and buying intent of their consumers.
According to this article, meteorological conditions influence around $3 trillion worth of private-sector business.
Understanding Weather-Based Personalization
Weather-based personalization allows marketers to tailor powerful messages to website visitors based on local climate conditions.
You can achieve this on your website by incorporating a real-time weather prediction data flow into your promotional platform.
For example, Wal-Mart spent considerable time and money gathering a gigantic amount of data regarding consumer preferences.
In 2004, they reported sales of strawberry Pop-Tarts escalated seven times higher than normal when Hurricane Charley moved toward the Florida Coast.
Turning Snowfall and Rainfall into Higher Conversion
Are you wondering why weather-based personalization has taken the marketing world by storm?
Here are a few reasons:
- Specific visitor data is not required. For this approach, you can tap into weather information from a visitor’s geographic location via their IP address or information previously recorded.
- This sort of personalization makes your visitors feel they are at the right site. Understanding the temperament and buying power of visitors based on weather conditions allows marketers to develop trust and a long-lasting connection.
- Similar to a generational marketing strategy, weather-based personalization also allows you to segment visitors using weather data. Therefore, you can make use of a wider selection of products, increment typical cart dimensions, and discard irrelevant stock.
- Using weather data, marketers can generate an emotional juxtaposition with their visitors, demonstrating their enthusiasm to go the extra mile.
Source: getelastic.com
Boost Visitor Engagement on Your Website
Today, marketers across diverse businesses are thinking of ingenious methods to implement weather-based personalization and enhance conversion rates.
Want to join those companies that successfully capitalize on using a weather-targeted approach?
Here are a few ways you can increase visitor engagement through weather-based personalization.
Recommend Products and Services
If you are a retailer, you can market products more effectively by using artificial intelligence and machine-learning algorithms to suggest items to your visitors based on their personal preferences and local climate conditions.
For instance, an apparel merchant can deliver a pop-up message to visitors living in hot regions, such as:
Ready to beat the heat in your town? Shop our summer collection!
Similarly, if you own a home development business, the message to consumers experiencing storms might be
Has this storm caught you off-guard? Be prepared for the next one with our wide range of generators, torch lights, and other emergency provisions!
Change the Website Appearance According to Local Weather Conditions
By using weather data from visitor location, you can change the appearance of your website’s header image or main page.
For instance, Yahoo offers a Weather API that helps you get latest information for any location based on zip code or Location ID.
With the help of this API and tools such as Stylebot, you can modify the appearance of your website with custom CSS.
Once you know how to change the website appearance based on weather data, the next step is learning to use this technique for greater visitor engagement.
Insert a Catchy Local Weather-related Header
For example, if you own a travel company, any region facing undesirable weather is perfect for a travel promotion capitalizing on visitor yearning for escape to a pleasant climate.
Therefore, target locations expecting snowfall, storms, or extreme temperatures for promotions.
These stimulate visitors to contemplate travel to places with better weather.
For instance, during an extreme heat wave, encourage visitors from Arizona using a header displaying something such as:
Is it getting too hot to handle? Book a trip to Alaska for the low price of $999!
Similarly, for visitors experiencing a blizzard, insert a catchy header or sidebar message such as:
Dodge the whiteout! California is breathtaking this time of year.
Here is an example of a weather-based header:
Source: barilliance.com
Create Appealing Ads Based on Visitors’ Local Weather
When you create ads that allow you to exhibit weather-targeted content to your customers you ultimately will attract more business all year round.
And advertising such a campaign on your website header is sure to catch the attention of your visitors.
For example, an insurance company could use weather-based ads in the case of extreme weather conditions, encouraging individuals to consider increasing home or car insurance.
Likewise, for visitors facing snowstorms, gale force winds, and heavy downpours create ads delivering information about protection policies or filing entitlements.
Final Words on Visitor Engagement
The practical applications of using weather-based personalization to increase visitor engagement are plentiful.
And, you can use it to modify push notifications, corporate campaigns, and content across digital promotions.
Currently, it is mostly used to tailor online advertisements but will work in all other forms of digital interaction.
Therefore, as mobile technology continues its rise in popularity, the need for personalized websites to satisfy customers will only increase.
And this makes the use of real-time meteorological information and geo-targeting a great way for digital marketers to keep pace with customers.
Have you used website personalization to increase visitor engagement on your website? What worked and what didn’t? Please share your thoughts in the comments section below.
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