E-commerce Customer Personalisation: How to Drive Customer Engagement

Why Personalisation Matters for Customer Engagement

Personalisation isn’t just a buzzword— it’s a proven strategy that makes customers feel understood and improves their shopping experience. When your store communicates with shoppers in a personal way (showing relevant products, content, and offers), you reduce the “noise” and make it easier for them to find what they want. The result? Happier customers who stick around longer and buy more.

In fact, about 80% of shoppers are more likely to buy from a brand that offers personalized experiences. Likewise, personalisation has a direct impact on loyalty – roughly 60% of consumers say they’ll become repeat buyers after a tailored shopping experience.

╰┈➤ Consider a simple example: a first-time visitor lands on your online store. Without personalisation, they see generic bestsellers or a one-size-fits-all homepage. With personalisation, however, you might highlight products in the categories they browsed or show a welcome banner with a special offer just for new shoppers.

The personalised approach immediately resonates better. Customers feel the site is speaking to their needs, much like that friendly shop owner who knows them, and this sense of being understood builds trust and engagementOver time, these tailored interactions—whether on the website, in marketing emails, or even via ads—make customers more likely to return and less likely to stray towards a competitor.r. Personalised marketing can make the difference between a one-time sale and a lifetime customer.

Personalisation Techniques That Boost Sales and Loyalty

Modern e-commerce offers a toolkit of personalisation techniques that even small merchants can deploy. Here are some of the most effective ways to drive engagement and sales:

• Tailored Product Recommendations

Recommending products based on a customer’s behaviour or history is a cornerstone of personalised marketing. Think of the “Recommended for you” carousel on Amazon or the outfit pairings on a fashion site. These suggestions use what you know about the customer – viewing history, past purchases, items left in the cart – to display products they are likely to be interested in. Done right, the information feels magically intuitive to the shopper.

👉 For example, if a customer bought a camera, your site could suggest compatible accessories or a lens cleaning kit. By surfacing relevant items (instead of making the customer search for them), you increase the chance of additional sales and show the customer you understand their needs.

It’s common for personalised recommendations to account for a significant chunk of e-commerce revenue because they encourage cross-selling (related products) and upselling (higher-end products). In practice, many small online retailers implement this through apps or built-in platform features – for instance, a Shopify store might use a plugin that automatically displays “Customers who bought X also bought Y.”

• Dynamic On-Site Content

Dynamic content means your website changes what it displays based on who’s viewing it or how they interact. This kind of customisation can make a website feel almost bespoke for each visitor.

👉 For example, your homepage could show different banner images and promotions depending on whether the visitor is a first-timer, a repeat customer, or a lapsed customer you’re trying to win back. A returning shopper might see a “Welcome back, [Name]! Check out new arrivals in your favorite category” message, whereas a new visitor sees a more generic welcome or a discount for their first purchase.

Similarly, you can dynamically change product listings—showing a user more of the categories they seem interested in— or even alter the order of content (such as putting a user’s preferred brands at the top of the page). Personalised email content is another form of dynamic content: for instance, an email newsletter that inserts the specific products each recipient left in their cart, or changes the hero image based on gender or location of the customer.

All these tweaks make the shopping experience feel tailored and relevant. The payoff is higher engagement: customers spend more time on sites that quickly connect them with what they want, and they appreciate emails or messages that speak to them personally. Retailers large and small report better conversion rates when using dynamic content to cut through the clutter.

• Personalised Marketing Messages & Offers

Beyond the website itself, personalisation extends to how you communicate with customers through marketing channels like email, SMS, and ads. Email personalisation is particularly powerful for small and medium businesses because it’s accessible and cost-effective. Instead of blasting the same newsletter to everyone, you can segment your email list and send targeted campaigns.

👉 For example, you might send a special discount on kids’ apparel to customers who have bought children’s products in the past or a “We miss you!” re-engagement offer to those who haven’t purchased in six months. You can even set up triggered emails: automated messages sent when a customer takes a specific action (or doesn’t take action). A classic case is the cart abandonment email – if a shopper leaves items in their cart without checking out, they receive a friendly reminder with those item details (and perhaps an incentive to complete the purchase).

These kinds of personalised follow-ups can dramatically improve conversion rates. In addition, consider personalised SMS alerts or push notifications (if you have a mobile app)—a text message telling a customer that an item they might like is back in stock, for instance, feels personal and timely. The key is to use the data you have to make your marketing feel like a helpful concierge service rather than a one-way advertisement.

When customers receive recommendations or offers that align with their interests, they’re more likely to click through and less likely to unsubscribe. In fact, personalized email campaigns have been found to deliver significantly higher transaction rates than non-personalized blasts​, validating that relevancy drives results.

All of these techniques share a common thread: they rely on internal customer data – the information you collect as people interact with your business. Let’s delve a bit deeper into how you can harness that data effectively.

Leveraging Internal Data: Your Customer Goldmine

Every small e-commerce business sits on a wealth of internal data: the products customers view, the items they buy (and how often), the searches they perform, the emails they open, and so on. This first-party data (data you collect directly from customers) is the fuel for personalisation. Unlike third-party data (which is gathered by outside entities and is becoming less available in a post-cookie world), your own customer data is unique to your business and highly relevant.

Even better, customers are often willing to share this information (browsing behavior, preferences, etc.) in exchange for a better experience – one survey found 83% of consumers are willing to share their data for personalisation​, provided it’s used responsibly.

For a small or medium retailer, the first step is to analyse customer behaviour for patterns and segments.

👉 For example, you might identify a group of customers that buys only during sales or another group that consistently purchases new arrivals at full price. Perhaps some customers browse a lot without buying, indicating they need a different approach (like a gentle nudge or more reviews/information to make a decision). By segmenting your audience based on:

• purchase history
• frequency
• average order value
• browsing habits
• engagement level

You can craft targeted marketing for each segment. Many e-commerce platforms have analytics or dashboards built in to help identify these patterns. Even something as simple as exporting your order history to see repeat customers vs. one-time buyers can inform how you personalise communications (loyal customers might get “VIP” early access to products, while one-timers get a follow-up incentive to return).

Another rich source of internal data is customer feedback and profiles. If your site allows account creation, customers might save preferences like clothing size or wishlist items. If you have product reviews or customer service interactions, those can signal what matters to a customer (e.g., a review might mention they love eco-friendly materials – useful insight to personalise what you showcase to them). Some merchants send out preference surveys or quizzes (for example, a style quiz for a fashion box service) – the answers directly feed into personalisation by matching customers with relevant products. These kinds of zero-party data (information customers willingly provide about themselves) are increasingly popular as a way to personalise while respecting privacy.

How do you turn all this data into action? This is where Martech tools and Customer Data Platforms (CDPs) come into play, helping you manage and use data at scale.

Tools of the Trade: Martech and CDPs for Personalisation

You might be thinking, “This sounds great, but how do I actually implement it without a big tech team?” The good news is that modern marketing technology (Martech) has made personalisation far more accessible for businesses of all sizes. From email marketing services to on-site personalisation widgets, there are tools that can automate a lot of the heavy lifting.

A few examples of tools and platforms that support personalised marketing:

Email Marketing & Automation Platforms

Services like Mailchimp, Klaviyo, or Sendinblue let you use customer data to segment audiences and create automated campaigns. You can set up conditions like “if customer’s last purchase was over 6 months ago, send a win-back email with a discount” or “if they clicked on the new winter collection, send a follow-up showcasing related items”.

These platforms often integrate directly with your store (Shopify, WooCommerce, etc.), pulling in purchase history and site activity to personalise email content. For instance, Mailchimp’s product recommendation content blocks can automatically populate an email with items a specific customer is likely to buy, based on their past behaviour.

On-Site Personalisation and Recommendation Engines

Many e-commerce platforms come with basic personalisation features, like showing related products or trending items. But you can also use dedicated apps or plugins to get more advanced. Tools like Nosto, Dynamic Yield, or Recombee (to name a few) specialise in analysing e-commerce behaviour and displaying personalised product recommendations or even rearranging content on the fly.

If you run a Shopify store, the App Store has dozens of personalisation apps – some focus on upsell/cross-sell popups, others on changing homepage content by segment. These are generally plug-and-play: you install, configure some rules or layouts, and the tool handles the rest. They essentially act as mini recommendation engines, using algorithms (often powered by AI) to decide what products or messages to show each user. As a result, even a two-person online shop can offer Amazon-like recommendation experiences without developing the tech from scratch.

Customer Data Platforms (CDPs)

A CDP is a more advanced tool that centralises customer data from all your sources and helps you derive insights or trigger actions from it. While historically CDPs were enterprise tech, there are now options catered to smaller businesses or available as a service. The role of a CDP is to take data from your website, your point-of-sale system, your email platform, social media, etc., and combine it into a single customer profile.

This unified profile is gold for personalisation because you can see the full customer journey and respond accordingly. For example, if your CDP shows that a customer browsed a product on your site, clicked an Instagram ad, and then added something to cart, you have a 360-degree view to personalise the next interaction (maybe a follow-up email referencing the cart and showcasing Instagram fan-favourite items).

Segment and Exponea (now Bloomreach Engagement) are examples of well-known CDPs – they let you set up rules like “send this person a push notification if they’ve visited the site 3 times without purchase” or “show a special offer on the site if the customer is in loyalty tier Gold.”

For a small business, adopting a full-blown CDP might be overkill, but the concept is worth noting. Even if you don’t use a dedicated platform, you can practice the spirit of a CDP by regularly consolidating data from different places (e.g., cross-reference your email list with purchase data) to inform your marketing. Interestingly, some newer solutions bundle the power of a CDP with ease of use aimed at businesses with limited tech resources.

CDP light or alternatively to CDP

One platform worth mentioning in this space is SocialScore. This is a digital platform that leverages AI-driven analytics and alternative data to enrich your customer profiles and make predictive personalisation more accessible. In essence, it can pull in external data signals (like a customer’s public social media info or other online footprints) and integrate them with your internal data to create a more complete profile.

The platform focuses on ease of use – it offers predictive analytics with minimal integration effort, meaning even without a developer, you can tap into its insights. Businesses can automatically create customer segments and even generate predictive models (for things like purchase propensity or churn risk) using SocialScore’s dashboard.

👉 For example, SocialScore’s data might reveal which customers have interests in eco-friendly or plant-based topics (gleaned from their wider digital footprint). You could then target that subset with a tailored campaign. While you always want to use external data thoughtfully and respect privacy, enriching your internal data with outside insights can give you a significant competitive edge in understanding and engaging your customers. (Subtle tip: SocialScore is one such solution to explore for those looking to supercharge their customer data without heavy lifting.)

Enriching Customer Profiles with External Data

While internal data holds significant power, it may only provide a partial picture. This is especially true for new customers (where you have little info) or prospective customers visiting your site for the first time. That’s where external data can come in. External data means any information about customers that comes from outside your direct interactions with them.

This could include:

• social media data
• demographics
• third-party databases that compile consumer information (like interests, lifestyle indicators, or credit scores, depending on what’s relevant and available)

👉 For example, let’s say you run a pet supply e-commerce store. Your internal data might show that a certain customer bought dog food from you twice. That’s useful — you know they have a dog and what brand they prefer. Now, imagine you had access to some external data that indicates this customer also follows several cat enthusiast pages on social media. You now have a hint that they might also be a cat owner or lover. With that knowledge, you might personalise their experience by showing some cat products as well or sending an email about your new line of cat toys. Without the external data, you might have treated them as “dog owner only” and missed an opportunity to cross-sell or engage them on another interest.

External data can also include broader information like geographic or weather data (so you could recommend rain boots on a week of heavy rain to shoppers in a certain region), or even socio-economic data (if ethically and legally used, e.g., promoting premium vs. budget products in different segments accordingly). The idea is to enrich the profile of a customer beyond what they’ve directly told you. When merging external data, tools like the aforementioned SocialScore or other data enrichment services will typically match customers via something like an email or phone number and pull in any publicly available or partner-provided data on that individual.

The advantage of this enrichment is more precise personalisation. You fill in gaps that your internal data can’t cover until the customer exhibits certain behaviours. It’s like giving your online store the intuition of a real salesperson who might infer things about a customer from a quick chat. However, a word of caution: with great data comes great responsibility. It’s important to use external data in a way that doesn’t spook customers. If you suddenly start referencing information they didn’t give you directly, it may feel invasive. The trick is to use the insights subtly.

In practice, that might mean using external data behind the scenes to decide what products to feature, rather than explicitly stating “because you follow X on Twitter, here’s Y product.” When done right, external data integration simply enhances the relevance of your marketing – customers just perceive that “this brand really gets what I like”, without necessarily realizing why.

To illustrate a subtle use of external data: some merchants use social media “listening” to guide personalisation. If a particular customer base is buzzing about a new trend (say, sustainable packaging or a specific fashion style) on social platforms, a merchant can incorporate that trend into the products or content they personalise for the audience, even if individual customers didn’t directly mention it on the site. This kind of trend-based personalisation ensures you stay culturally and contextually relevant. Another example is using external data to predict customer lifetime value – certain data providers might score leads or customers based on their profile and behaviour elsewhere. If you know through an external score that a new email subscriber is highly likely to become a big spender, you might fast-track them into a VIP segment and give them white-glove treatment early.

In summary, enriching profiles with external data (from social influence indicators to interest profiles) can boost your personalisation game to the next level. Just be sure to be transparent in your privacy policy and focus on using the data to add value for the customer. When the experience improves, customers generally welcome the personalisation.

Trends and Actionable Personalisation Strategies 

Personalised marketing in e-commerce continues to evolve rapidly. What’s exciting is that many of the cutting-edge trends are increasingly accessible to small and medium-sized merchants, not just the big players. Let’s explore a few modern trends and, importantly, how you can realistically apply these strategies in your own business:

AI-Powered Personalisation for All

Not long ago, using artificial intelligence to personalise meant having a big budget and tech expertise. Now, AI-driven personalisation tools are becoming mainstream and affordable. Many of the apps and platforms we discussed (from recommendation engines to email automation) have AI under the hood – for example, machine learning algorithms that decide the best product to show each shopper.

The trend moving into 2025 is hyper-personalisation, where AI analyses vast amounts of data (browsing patterns, customer profiles, contextual data) to tailor experiences in real-time.

How can a small business tap into this?

The simplest way is to use software that offers “automatic” or “smart” personalisation features. If your email platform has a toggle for AI-optimised send times or product picks, try it out. If your e-commerce platform introduces an AI-driven recommendation block, use it on your site. You don’t need to build the AI yourself ; you just need to adopt the tools that have it.

The advantage you’ll gain is a continuously learning system that refines your personalisation without manual effort. As a practical step, keep an eye on the app marketplaces or updates for your e-commerce platform for anything labelled with “AI” or “Smart”. Even chatbots powered by AI (like those on Facebook Messenger or your site’s chat) can personalise responses based on customer queries.

Omnichannel Personalisation

Customers now interact with brands across multiple touchpoints – website, mobile app, email, social media, and even physical stores or events. A strong trend is ensuring consistent personalisation across all channels, often using that unified customer data approach.

👉 For instance, if a customer browses a product on your mobile app, they might get an email later with that same product featured (if they didn’t purchase). If they buy something in a physical pop-up store, maybe your e-commerce site later shows them accessories for that item. This technique might sound complex, but even small businesses can do mini versions of it.

One actionable strategy:

Integrate your e-commerce platform with your social media advertising. Tools like the Facebook pixel or Google Ads tracking allow you to create remarketing campaigns that are essentially personalisation in advertising form – showing people ads for items they viewed or added to cart.

Another easy win is to unify your branding and messaging in email and on-site. If you segment customers by, say, interests or demographics, use similar segments for social media content. The idea is that wherever a customer engages with you, they feel the brand “remembers” them.

A practical tip is to use your Customer Relationship Management (CRM) or whatever database you have as a central reference — keep notes or tags on customers (like “interested in electronics” or “bargain shopper”) and use those tags when communicating on any channel. As tech advances, even things like personalised push notifications via your mobile app or personalised direct mail based on online behaviour are on the table for smaller merchants (some printing services offer automated postcards when an online event triggers, for example).

Start with the channels most important to your business and ensure your personalisation strategy extends to them in a coordinated way.

First-Party Data Focus and Privacy

A major trend shaping personalisation strategies is the increasing importance of first-party data. With web browsers phasing out third-party cookies and privacy regulations tightening, businesses are shifting to data that comes straight from the customer (with consent).

For you, this means doubling down on collecting useful data through direct interactions. Encourage customers to create accounts or profiles on your site by highlighting benefits (like quicker checkout or tailored recommendations). Use preference centers where customers can tell you what they’re interested in. Perhaps create engaging quizzes or style finders that both serve the customer and give you insight (for example, “Help us tailor recommendations: Do you prefer A or B?”).

The trend is that customers expect personalisation but also expect privacy – a tricky balance. The actionable strategy here is transparency and value exchange. Be clear about how you use data (“We use your birthday to send you a special discount, nothing more”), and make sure whenever you ask for data, you deliver value from it. The demise of easy tracking means small businesses should build their own rich customer databases.

Thankfully, many tools (like CRM, CDP-lite features in email platforms, etc.) help store and manage first-party data securely. Businesses that win customer engagement will be those who earn trust in how they personalise. So, make sure your personalised marketing not only follows legal requirements (GDPR, etc.) but also genuinely helps the customer. If you get that right, customers will share more info with you, which feeds a virtuous cycle of better personalisation.

Real-Time Personalisation & Agile Testing

Another trend is moving toward real-time responsiveness. Shoppers are often surprised (in a good way) when a site seems to react instantly to their actions.

👉 For example, if a customer is browsing hiking boots, a real-time approach might immediately feature a banner: “Gear up for your hike! 10% off hiking backpacks today.” It’s contextually relevant to what they’re doing in that moment. Achieving real-time tweaks used to be complex, but now many personalisation tools offer this capability out of the box. As a small merchant, consider implementing features like exit-intent popups (which appear when a user is about to leave, perhaps offering a discount to complete a purchase) or on-page product suggestions that update as the user adds items to cart (“You added X, how about Y to go with it?”).

Additionally, adopt an agile testing mindset: try different personalisation tactics and measure what works best. Maybe you test two versions of a personalised homepage – one that greets by name vs. one that highlights category of interest – and see which yields more engagement. Many platforms have A/B testing features or you can do informal tests by switching strategies weekly and tracking results.

The idea is that personalisation isn’t static; you can continually tweak rules or offers based on what customers respond to. The trend is that personalisation strategies are becoming more data-driven themselves—using analytics to refine personalisation (yes, it’s a bit meta!). For an actionable step, set aside a little time each month to review your personalisation performance: which recommendations get clicks, which email segment had the best response, etc. Then adjust your tactics accordingly. This iterative improvement will ensure your personalised marketing stays effective and doesn’t go stale.

Personalisation for the Small-Team Merchant

Finally, it’s worth noting a trend in the tools landscape: solutions are increasingly packaged for smaller teams with automation and ease in mind. This means you don’t need a dedicated analyst to crunch data or a coder to implement changes.

👉 For example, some modern e-commerce platforms have personalisation dashboards that plainly tell you, “Customers similar to John Doe are interested in X,” and you can act on it with a button click.

Keep an eye out for integrated personalisation features in the software you already use. If you’re using a popular e-commerce platform (Shopify, BigCommerce, Magento, etc.), subscribe to their updates or blogs – they often roll out new features like personalised coupons, customer segmentation tools, or AI product sorting. Early adoption of these features can provide you with a competitive advantage. Also, consider leveraging customer data platforms or data enrichment tools on a trial basis to see what value they provide. Some services might offer free trials or affordable tiers for small businesses, allowing you to experiment with predictive segmentation or advanced profiling without a big commitment.

The landscape in 2025 is very much about empowering businesses of all sizes to deliver personalisation. The playing field is levelling to an extent – a savvy small retailer can implement much of the personalisation that a big retailer does, by smartly using out-of-the-box tools and focusing on the most impactful tactics for their niche.

Personalised marketing in e-commerce is a journey, not a one-time project. You can start small: add a recommended products section, personalise one email campaign, segment your audience into a few key groups and talk to each a bit differently. You don’t need to do everything at once. Even incremental personalisation can show results, and those results will provide the enthusiasm (and revenue boost) to take it to the next level. Remember, the heart of personalisation is treating your customers as individuals – listening to their behaviour and feedback and responding in helpful, human ways through your digital shopfront.

In doing so, you build stronger relationships. For a small or medium business, that loyalty and engagement is priceless. By using the techniques, data, and tools we’ve discussed, you can create a shopping experience that feels less like a cold transaction and more like a conversation between your brand and each customer. And that’s the kind of experience that keeps customers coming back, happy and engaged.

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