RightMessage is an extremely powerful personalisation tool. By segmenting your audience, you can give people the content that is more relevant to their needs and interests. And you can personalise website copy, call to actions and even more to suit their needs. It’s better for them and better for you – a win-win!
In this article, I’m going to walk through how I’m using RightMessage to personalise a landing page after readers click on an internal link. This is useful if you write articles covering a variety of topics and you want to emphasis one of those topics. When a reader visits the landing page from an article about the particular topic, you can personalise the landing page to that topic.
For example, I have a newsletter that helps break down barriers to using email automation tools. One of those tools is ConvertKit. I have articles that are about ConvertKit. When I link to the newsletter landing page from an article about ConvertKit, I am in effect saying:
Sign up to get more ConvertKit articles delivered to your inbox.
I could have a different newsletter landing page for each major category. But then I’ll end up with a lot of landing pages. And not everything changes – all subscribers get the same base level content (advice on email marketing automation). But if I know someone uses ConvertKit, I’ll include bonus material for them. This could come in the form of links to how to implement specific strategies in ConvertKit.
Why is this necessary?
You can personalise a landing page for people who are already in a segment using RightMessage. So if someone has filled in an on-site survey already that segments them as a ConvertKit user, then I don’t need to worry about these specific links. But the problem is, not everyone will have completed a survey. And I still want to be able to show them a personalised version of the landing page based on the link, they have clicked on, to get to that landing page.
Summary of the problems this solves:
- You want to personalise a landing page when referred from an article
- Not all people will be segmented
Steps
This is a two step process:
- Create a new segment for the link.
- Use that segment in the personalisation campaign.
Create segment
The first step is to create a new segment for the query parameter. It will use RightMessage’s auto-segment feature to set the value of the segment based on the query parameter. Then you can use the query parameter in any link to the landing page and it will automatically segment users who click on it.
When you set up the segment, you’ll need to create a question in the Question Wording field. The exact words don’t matter in this case, as users will not see the question (since it will auto-segment).
For the possible answers, use a simple Yes / No combination.
Go to the Auto-Segment settings and click on Define this segment for the Yes answer. In the drop down, select Query Parameters: Custom. And in the remaining fields, you can construct your query parameter. In my case, I have set it up like this:
This means that it will auto-segment to yes when someone clicks on a link with ?article=ck added to the URL for a landing page (or any page). So if I’m linking to my newsletter landing page, I can automatically segment people with the following URL and query parameter:
https://blairwadman.com/newsletter?article=ck
Use the segment in personalisation campaign
Now that the segment is set up, it’s time to set up the personalisation campaign. Click on the Site Personalization link in the top menu, and then Campaigns. And then click on the Start a new campaign button.
Give your campaign a meaningful name and under Which group of segments are you personalizing for, select the segment you created in the step above.
In the URL bar, add the URL for the landing page you want to personalise.
And then click on any element on the page that you want to personalise. You’ll then be able to add alternative copy for each element. This is the copy that users who belong to the segment will see. In other words, it’s the copy they’ll see after they click on the specific link with the query parameter.
Change the opt in form
Like I said at the beginning, I want to be able to send highly relevant bonus content for people who are interested in a particular topic. To do that, I need to store this information in ConvertKit, so that I can then customise the emails for them. There are two ways to achieve this:
- Sync the segment with ConvertKit
- Change the CTA opt-in form
Sync the segment with ConvertKit
RightMessage will sync segment data to a custom field in ConvertKit. So the first step is to create the custom field in ConvertKit.
To add a custom field in ConvertKit, head over to any subscriber’s profile page. In the left hand column, you’ll see the email address and first name. Click on the “+ Add a new field” link and add the name for your custom field.
And then head over to the segmentation group in RightMessage. In the “Sync with ConvertKit” field, select the custom field that you created in ConvertKit. The value in the field can simply be yes and no for the respective fields.
Once this is set up, every time someone clicks on the link on your website, the custom field for their subscriber record in ConvertKit will be updated. You can then use this to make the emails to them more relevant.
Change the CTA opt-in form
The second option is to change the form entirely. This is useful if you want to completely change the copy on the form itself for the segment.
To do this, create a new CTA. Click on the + symbol and select “Split by segments”. And then choose the segment you have setup for this. This will then create a branch and you can add a different CTA offer for each branch.
Here is an example of mine:
In this example, if someone has a ConvertKit status of Yes, then it means they have clicked on the link from an article about ConvertKit, so I know that they either use or are interested in ConvertKit. They will go down the “Yes” branch. I have added a specific CTA form for them.
And in that form, I’ve added a specific tag that identifies them as being interested in content about ConvertKit, which I will use to personalise the emails.
Wrapping up
The goal of personalisation is to give people more of what they want, and less of what they don’t want. In other words, to make the content we give them more relevant to their needs and interests. To do that, we need ways to identify what it is that they are interested in. Leveraging RightMessage to create special internal links on your website is one of the ways that you can do just that.