In today’s ultra competitive environment, it’s vital that today’s modern marketers get the most out of their marketing efforts. By gathering and analyzing data analytics, marketers are able to gather valuable insights into customer preferences and trends.

Rather than responding reactively to the metrics, however, today’s technology offers marketers the ability to track, analyze and respond to customer behavior in real-time, allowing for a more personalized experience which can lead to greater online conversions.

We recently sat down with Boaz Grinvald, Founder and CEO of BrightInfo to discuss the importance of real-time analytics in customizing the prospect experience. He also shared with us how this approach is helping marketers see a 20%-80% increase in online conversions. Here’s what he had to say:

Tell us a little about your role at BrightInfo.

I am the Founder and CEO of BrightInfo, where we help businesses increase online conversion by personalizing their websites dynamically and automatically for each and every anonymous visitor. In my many years in B2B marketing, I have always been on the lookout for automated solutions to amplify marketing success without a huge investment.

In my current position, my main focus is driving the rapid adoption of the BrightInfo technology across the globe. We are excited to see a wide range of organizations, from small companies to sizeable, publicly traded companies share similar challenges in online conversion and are benefiting from our low touch solution.

We made BrightInfo low touch and affordable in order to drive the BrightInfo adoption.  We firmly believe that in the near future all websites will be dynamic – for example, you want your webpages to move a returning visitor to the next step in the buyer journey, taking into account the previous visits and the actions taken there. There is no sense in suggesting to a visitor a white paper that that visitor has already downloaded in the past.

What challenges are marketers currently experiencing when it comes to lead generation?

The two main challenges are costs and resources. On the cost side, rising advertising costs—combined with the huge drop off between visitors and leads—make the cost per online lead high (industry average around $40). This is why conversion optimization is increasingly critical to the business, as it leverages the cost already spent on advertising and produces more leads from the incoming visitors.

On the resources side, marketing departments across small and medium size businesses are swamped and are having a hard time taking on additional tasks.

Combined, these two challenges mean marketing departments are having a hard time taking on new initiatives. We specifically created BrightInfo for the small to medium marketing shops, and see a huge opportunity for them by using the BrightInfo platform.

How can marketers use real-time analytics to personalize the user experience?

Tracking and analyzing the individual visitor’s online behavior is key to moving an anonymous visitor through the buyer’s journey.  Online attention span is diminishing so as a marketer you have a short window of opportunity to engage with your visitors and get them to take the next step, leveraging all that you know about them. For example, if a visitor arrives to a web page following a search engine search and the search keywords are available it can allow the personalization solution to respond in real time and offer a very specific next step to the visitor. In a more sophisticated example, returning visitors to a web page that have already viewed the product brochure on that page and the video should now, in their second visit to the same page, see different next steps that are more appropriate to their place in the buyer journey, possibly a case study or a white paper offer.

This can become even more sophisticated, taking into account what actions have already been taken by other visitors, similar to the current one, at the same stage in the buyer journey.

In short, without real-time personalization based on real-time analytics, websites take a one-size-fits-all approach which is not optimal.

In your opinion, what are the key metrics that marketers should be focusing on?

The key metrics for marketers are the business metrics of marketing, meaning customer acquisition costs (CAC) and customer lifetime value (LTV). It’s important for marketers to understand the complete costs around acquiring a new customers and what the ratio is between that cost and the revenue received from such a customer (on average and net of gross margins), across the time he is a paying customer with the business.

Understanding this will allow you to tune the cost/benefit ratio using $ figures and taking a top down look at your marketing activities. If the ratio of CAC to LTV is lower than 3X you will want to optimize your CAC typically. Solutions such as personalization can optimize conversion rates for you, lowering lead acquisition costs and accelerating prospects through the buyer journey so that they contribute to a lower CAC.

What tools can marketers use in conjunction with their metrics to better support their lead generation efforts?

Most marketing shops had become pretty good at acquiring traffic and nurturing leads through the buyer journey. The next waves are personalization and behavioral targeting solutions that can help optimize between these two stages, allowing businesses that leverage them to convert more traffic into known leads. However, picking the right personalization or targeting tool needs to be done carefully. As we discussed earlier, marketing shops today are very resource constrained. Make sure to only consider solutions that are:

• Low touch: Pick a solution that is automated and based on machine learning
• Dynamic: A dynamic system will create a personalized experience on every page/interaction.
• Able to offer immediate results: Machines work quickly to learn about your visitors and content, so expect results within a day or two.
• Integrated: A worthy solution must easily feed metrics to your main marketing

What successes are marketers reaping as a result of embracing real-time analytics?

Our experience with our wide range of organizations shows 20%-80% increase in online conversions and even a higher percentage in engagement and consumption of marketing materials. As our software amplifies the organization’s marketing content for the online visitors the results vary depending on the quality of the organization’s traffic and content.

For more information on the benefits of personalization, be sure to check out this exclusive case study where, in less than 20 minutes, BrightInfo was able to help increase online form conversions by 30%.