The Design Business Show 224: Taking E-commerce Personalization to a New Level with Eric Melchor

Eric Melchor is the Partnerships and Personalization Ambassador at OptiMonk. He previously served as a Marketing and CX Director for publicly traded companies based in Houston and is currently building an ecommerce business from scratch.

He’s also the host of the Innovators Can Laugh podcast interviewing over 70 entrepreneurs from all over Europe.

He claims he is a mediocre tennis player and currently provides guidance on how to personalize online shopping experiences for small and mid-size businesses.

Here’s what we covered on the episode:

Eric’s Background + Ideas for Personalization

Eric shares that his experience is in digital marketing and only recently started thinking more and more about personalization when working with a startup called Bonjoro that sends personalized videos at the right moment during their customer journey
OptiMonk specializes in giving marketers the tools to personalize an experience in real-time on their website – They’re focused on giving small to mid-sized businesses the superhuman power that big players have, like Netflix and Amazon
Before working with Bonjoro and OptiMonk, Eric worked in the retail energy space specializing in partnerships, managing PPC agencies, copywriters, and social media strategists
Eric had wondered if he was as good as he thought and said the only way to prove that he was good at what he did was to work for a startup because, at a startup, every customer counts
Over the past year, Eric says he has talked to more customers than he ever did in all his years working for large companies
An important part of making a good experience is having the right messaging on your website – customers won’t care about most of the jargon on your website; they care that you have a solution that solves their problem
Eric walks us through an example of a customer in need of an engagement ring that is on a jeweler’s website and says you wouldn’t want a message to pop up that says, you could win a designer necklace; you want one that says, here’s 10% off our top wedding rings
One thing you can do is micro engagement, where if someone has been on your site for a while but hasn’t clicked on anything to tell you what they’re looking for, you can send them a message and ask what they’re interested in – it’s like holding their hand and showing them to the right part of your website, just like you would in a physical store
OptiMonk specializes in helping SMBs (Small to Mid Businesses) where accounts fall between $500,000 – 1 million annually and specialize in e-commerce but says there are some B2B (business to business) companies that are starting to use them
Every website visitor is important, so we should try to customize their journey as much as possible
Eric shares that Winc, a subscription wine website, does a really good job gamifying its website so it’s interactive and interesting for visitors
When OptiMonk started, they focused on popups but now have transitioned into a personalization platform and have integrations with over 100 different platforms
When thinking about personalizing your customer experience, Eric says to put yourself in their shoes and think about where you can make the experience more pleasurable and says to get rid of the annoying stuff, like an automatic popup that happens in the first 10 seconds
If a quarter of your website traffic is international, Eric says to give those international visitors a personalized message
Eric says if you get a lot of sales during the holidays, you could present a nice message that asks if they are shopping for themself or somebody else and take them where they need to go based on their response
If you are running Facebook ads or Google paid ads, Eric highly suggests automatically changing the headings on your landing page based on the messaging that you are using in your ads

All About OptiMonk

When Eric moved to Europe a couple of years ago, he wanted to make friends, and because he worked at a startup thought it would be interesting to interview other startup founders, which is how he started his podcast, Innovators Can Laugh, and what led to his role with OptiMonk
In OptiMonk, Eric delivers their personalization boot camps that happen every 2 weeks – if you want to learn more about personalization, you can come to their free boot camp, where Eric walks you through their process
OptiMonk just launched E-commerce Revolution, the first e-commerce business reality show – over 3 months, they’re going to help brands by implementing best practices when it comes to personalization
Eric shares that OptiMonk is also launching The Art of Personalization podcast
When you sign up for OptiMonk, Eric says you’ll be able to see your results in your dashboard and can implement different features like A/B testing
You can sign up for different plans when using OptiMonk; Eric says there is a free plan where you can get started and then walks us through their different plans, what they include, and pricing for each
Eric explains how easy it is to use and customize their templates, and when you set the template up, any other campaign you create in OptiMonk will be aligned with your brand
We talk about inclusivity and trends in the personalization space, and Eric shares that he saw a fashion tool where instead of putting in your size, you select a model that has a similar body type to you, and then anything you pick in the store, can be seen on that model
Try OptiMonk’s free plan, check out their free personalization boot camp, and reach out to Eric if you have any questions