Using the data you have at your fingertips, you can send messages people will care about! Learn how page personalization works in Ontraport.
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Page personalization
Course Instructor
- How cookies identify visitors
- The problems with cookies and a more secure way to identify visitors (hint: membership site login)
- The difference between anonymous, identified, and logged in visitors
- How to save your customers’ time by prefilling fields with their existing data.
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Transcript
People pay attention to what they care about — their own interests, problems and concerns. That’s why Netflix is so successful. When you login, they show you movies and shows they know you’ll want to watch. It’s addictive, because it’s designed for you. Same for Amazon, Google, Facebook and all the most successful companies online. They’re showing you what you personally care about.
In Ontraport, you can add that kind of personalization to your own pages making prospects and customers feel more confident about doing business with you, which is a strategy that’s proven to increase conversions and sales online. In this video, I’ll show you how Ontraport makes that happen.
Page personalization can be as simple as including your contact’s name on the page, or you could get fancy and adapt your whole page to each visitor.
You could refer to whatever ad your lead clicked, mention something they told you in a form, or talk about a product they’ve purchased. Whatever you want to do, personalization boils down to one thing — using the data you have to send messages people will care about.
Now let’s talk about how it all works.
There are two ways to personalize your pages in Ontraport: With merge fields or conditional content. We’ll talk about each of these in the next two videos — but first, in order to make any of this work, the system has to know who each visitor is. So the first step in personalizing your pages is identifying the visitors on your site. It’s worth understanding how this works in Ontraport.
When your leads fill out a form in Ontraport, we add a cookie to their browser. A cookie is a little text file with an ID we create. Next time your lead visits, the cookie will remind the system who they are. This method works really well… most of the time.
But sometimes cookies get deleted or go missing.
For example, say a visitor fills out your form on their laptop and then visits again later on their phone. Your cookie won’t carry over to their new device, so as far as Ontraport knows the visitor is anonymous again, which means we can’t personalize their pages.
But Ontraport is fancy and we take every opportunity to re-identify visitors and add that cookie to their browser again.
Of course, we can add the cookie back if they fill out a form again.
We can ALSO cookie your contacts whenever they click a link in your emails. That means email clicks won’t just boost your deliverability — they’re also a great strategy for identifying your page visitors.
Keep in mind — these methods are pretty good, but they are NOT SECURE.
Let me explain. Soon, you’ll learn how to display certain contact information on your pages. Sometimes, that information is personal or private. That’s totally fine — as long as you’re showing it to the right person.
But when you identify people with cookies — whether it’s from form fill-outs or link clicks — you can sometimes get it wrong.
For example, let’s say someone loves one of your emails and forwards it to a friend, and that friend clicks a link in the email. In this case, Ontraport will think they’re the same person who received the original email. If you put the original user’s personal information on the page, the person’s friend will be able to see it.
So, don’t put anyone’s private information on a page, just because you’ve “identified” the contact.
Instead, identify visitors in a way that IS secure: using a membership site login.
To access a membership site, every contact needs an email username and password. Before they can get those credentials, we confirm their email address. That’s a positive, secure identification.
This means it’s OK to display private information — like purchase histories or personal data — But ONLY on pages secured by a membership login.
One more thing to keep in mind about identifying contacts: There’s a difference between “anonymous,” “identified,” and “logged in” visitors. You’ll personalize your pages based on these identification levels.
For example, say you show one block of a page to someone from Colorado but show another to someone from New York. Here, you’d want to use “identified” visitors because, in the rare event that we get it wrong, it’s not going to reveal anyone’s sensitive information.
But if you merge someone’s government ID onto a page, you’ll definitely want to make sure it’s only for “logged in” visitors.
That’s it! Now you’ve seen the kind of personalization that’s possible in Ontraport. At this point, I’m sure you’ve got some ideas for your own pages.
Check out “Personalizing With Merge Fields” and “Personalizing With Conditional Display Blocks” to dive into how to get this stuff done.
In Ontraport, you can add that kind of personalization to your own pages making prospects and customers feel more confident about doing business with you, which is a strategy that’s proven to increase conversions and sales online. In this video, I’ll show you how Ontraport makes that happen.
Page personalization can be as simple as including your contact’s name on the page, or you could get fancy and adapt your whole page to each visitor.
You could refer to whatever ad your lead clicked, mention something they told you in a form, or talk about a product they’ve purchased. Whatever you want to do, personalization boils down to one thing — using the data you have to send messages people will care about.
Now let’s talk about how it all works.
There are two ways to personalize your pages in Ontraport: With merge fields or conditional content. We’ll talk about each of these in the next two videos — but first, in order to make any of this work, the system has to know who each visitor is. So the first step in personalizing your pages is identifying the visitors on your site. It’s worth understanding how this works in Ontraport.
When your leads fill out a form in Ontraport, we add a cookie to their browser. A cookie is a little text file with an ID we create. Next time your lead visits, the cookie will remind the system who they are. This method works really well… most of the time.
But sometimes cookies get deleted or go missing.
For example, say a visitor fills out your form on their laptop and then visits again later on their phone. Your cookie won’t carry over to their new device, so as far as Ontraport knows the visitor is anonymous again, which means we can’t personalize their pages.
But Ontraport is fancy and we take every opportunity to re-identify visitors and add that cookie to their browser again.
Of course, we can add the cookie back if they fill out a form again.
We can ALSO cookie your contacts whenever they click a link in your emails. That means email clicks won’t just boost your deliverability — they’re also a great strategy for identifying your page visitors.
Keep in mind — these methods are pretty good, but they are NOT SECURE.
Let me explain. Soon, you’ll learn how to display certain contact information on your pages. Sometimes, that information is personal or private. That’s totally fine — as long as you’re showing it to the right person.
But when you identify people with cookies — whether it’s from form fill-outs or link clicks — you can sometimes get it wrong.
For example, let’s say someone loves one of your emails and forwards it to a friend, and that friend clicks a link in the email. In this case, Ontraport will think they’re the same person who received the original email. If you put the original user’s personal information on the page, the person’s friend will be able to see it.
So, don’t put anyone’s private information on a page, just because you’ve “identified” the contact.
Instead, identify visitors in a way that IS secure: using a membership site login.
To access a membership site, every contact needs an email username and password. Before they can get those credentials, we confirm their email address. That’s a positive, secure identification.
This means it’s OK to display private information — like purchase histories or personal data — But ONLY on pages secured by a membership login.
One more thing to keep in mind about identifying contacts: There’s a difference between “anonymous,” “identified,” and “logged in” visitors. You’ll personalize your pages based on these identification levels.
For example, say you show one block of a page to someone from Colorado but show another to someone from New York. Here, you’d want to use “identified” visitors because, in the rare event that we get it wrong, it’s not going to reveal anyone’s sensitive information.
But if you merge someone’s government ID onto a page, you’ll definitely want to make sure it’s only for “logged in” visitors.
That’s it! Now you’ve seen the kind of personalization that’s possible in Ontraport. At this point, I’m sure you’ve got some ideas for your own pages.
Check out “Personalizing With Merge Fields” and “Personalizing With Conditional Display Blocks” to dive into how to get this stuff done.
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