What is progressive profiling?
Progressive profiling with a Customer Data Platform (CDP) is a game-changing approach for marketers looking to deepen their understanding of customers over time, without overwhelming them. By asking small, relevant questions at the right moments in a user’s journey, you can build rich customer profiles while maintaining a seamless, user-friendly experience.
Progressive profiling not only creates more personalized, relevant experiences but also builds trust, as customers share details at their own pace. BlueConic enables business teams to centralize this data collection and automatically enrich customer profiles, ensuring that every interaction becomes smarter and more tailored.
Benefits of progressive profiling
- Improved customer experience: By only asking for the most relevant information at specific touchpoints, you avoid overwhelming users with too many questions at once. This results in higher completion rates and more accurate data.
- Richer profiles: You can collect more granular data about your customers and their preferences over time, which helps in delivering personalized experiences and better targeting.
- Data relevancy: Information is gathered in a contextually appropriate way, ensuring that the data collected is timely and useful for both marketers and users.
Value-Based Outcomes
All BlueConic use cases are associated with one or more Value-Based Outcomes, which are defined areas of focus that help you measure the value of a CDP to your overall business. This use case can be closely related to the Value-Based Outcomes of Higher Data Quality and Smarter Customer Engagement.
Case Studies
- Raycom Sports Leverages Progressive Profiling for Enhanced Viewer Insights
- HEINEKEN USA’s Consumer Data Journey: An Inside Look
Use Case Configuration Steps
In BlueConic, a unique profile is created for every visitor. Progressive profiling allows you to update these profiles over time by adding data as users engage with your website or other digital channels.
Follow these simple steps to set up progressive profiling:
Step 1: Define Key Data Points
Start by identifying the key data points you need to collect about your customers. This might include basic demographic information, preferences, behaviors, or purchase intent. For example, you may want to gather a visitor’s email address on their first visit and later ask about product preferences during future interactions.
Step 2: Map Out the Customer Journey
Identify key touchpoints in the customer lifecycle where you can collect additional data and build rich, unified profiles without overwhelming the user. This can include registration forms, surveys, quizzes, or email interactions.
Step 3: Set Up Listeners to Capture Data
To collect specific data points, use BlueConic Listeners to track user behavior and interactions. Use BlueConic Listeners and Lifecycles to set up data collection triggers at relevant points in the journey. These could be based on specific behaviors (e.g., browsing a category), interactions (e.g., opening an email), or time-based milestones (e.g., after a first purchase).
Step 4: Personalize Experiences in Real-Time
As you collect data, unified customer profiles allow you to personalize content in real-time across channels using BlueConic Dialogues and Lifecycles. Use this data to recommend products, deliver targeted content, or offer promotions tailored to their preferences.
Step 5: Measure Outcomes
As you embark on this use case, measure your baseline KPIs, to make tracking your ROI easier once you’ve established progressive profiling for your customer profiles. For example, you can track the percentage of profiles with identifiable email addresses, the percentage of known versus unknown profiles, customer engagement scores, and KPIs specific to your data collection strategy (interests, demographics, or usage patterns that are key to your marketing strategy).
Best practices for progressive profiling
- Start small: Ask for basic information upfront, such as name or email, and progressively add more questions as the user engages more deeply with your brand.
- Be contextual: Align your questions with the user’s behavior. For instance, after multiple visits to a product category, ask about specific preferences related to that category.
- Personalize in real time: Use the data collected to tailor user experiences. For example, once you know a customer’s preferences, show them personalized product recommendations or targeted content.
- Limit number of questions per dialogue: To avoid form fatigue, ask only one or two questions per dialogue and keep the process seamless.
Next Steps: Use Cases that Build on Progressive Profiling
Personalized Content and Offers: As you progressively learn more about your users, you can personalize the content, offers, and messaging they see. For example, based on the product categories they’ve shown interest in, you can recommend similar products.
Email Campaign Optimization: Use the data collected through Progressive Profiling to tailor your email marketing campaigns. This could include segmenting users based on their preferences and sending more relevant and engaging emails.
Lead Scoring and Qualification: As you gather more data, you can improve your lead scoring and qualification processes. You’ll have a clearer understanding of where users are in the buyer’s journey, allowing you to better tailor follow-up interactions.