Playbook Theme: Weather-based Personalization
Business Goal: Discovery
Effort: Low
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Weather targeting is a great way to tap into the moods, needs, and purchase intentions of shoppers. You can promote seasonal products and collections and target users based on their local weather forecast. In this use case, we set a personalized hero banner on the homepage, but you can do the same with notifications and overlays across the site.
Step 1: Create a Dynamic Content campaign
Because it's an in-page banner (as opposed to notifications), we'll create a Dynamic Content campaign. Begin by configuring the campaign’s settings:
- Go to Experience Web › Create Campaign, and click Dynamic Content.
- Assign a Name to the campaign (say, Weather Hero Banner). A meaningful and clear name helps you manage the campaign later. You can also add Notes and Labels for the same reason.
- Select the banner’s Layout. In this case, we'll use Single, where only one variation out of all available variations is chosen and displayed upon each pageview (learn about different layout types).
- In the Location area, select Replace Element from the dropdown, and then click Select element on site
. Paste your homepage URL to get a preview of your page. Hover over the element you want to replace, and then click. This pulls the element’s selector back into Experience OS.
- Select for which page, category, or page type you are inserting the campaign. This is particularly relevant when you have the same selector on multiple pages. By default, the OS brings in the URL from the page preview. Because we're implementing the banner on the homepage, change the default value from Page URL to page type is Homepage (see image).
- Click Next.
Step 2: Create a variation
The content you'll serve your targeted visitors is a variation. You can create a single variation (as in this example) or multiple variations and test or optimize which variation most resonates with your audience.
But first, give your experience a name. Use a name that clearly defines this experience (for example, Homepage Weather Banner). Then go on to create the variation:
- Click New Variation.
- In the template collection page, select the Weather Forecast Template (click Show More if necessary).
- Assign a meaningful Name to the variation (say, "5-day forecast"). In the reports, a descriptive name helps you quickly distinguish between the success of one variation compared to another.
- Edit variables as needed. The template variables enable you to make changes without a developer’s intervention. In this particular template, you can change the image, text, and design of the various elements.
- Click Save Variation.
- You can add more variations for this weather targeting. Learn more about creating or adding variations.
Step 3: Set up allocation and the primary metric
In this case, we can use the default settings.
Allocation: The default is Dynamic Allocation. In a different campaign scenario, such as changing page layouts or the color of the Add to Cart button, you'd probably want to set this to A/B Test.
›› Allocate 10-15% of traffic to your control group.
Primary Metric: The default Click-Through Rate is good for this use case because our goal at the top of the funnel is discovery. We want the user to engage with the content. In a different campaign scenario, you might want a different primary metric.
Note: In the report, you can view all the other metrics as secondary metrics.
Click Next.
Step 4: Add targeting
Now it's time to decide who is targeted for what. In this case, each experience will be served to users based on specific weather conditions in their location, and includes promotions for the relevant weather condition.
- Assign a Name to the experience. Use a name that clearly defines this experience (for example, Rainy Weather).
- Define the targeting conditions:
- Who: Select Weather from the dropdown, and then select Weather Conditions › Rain.
- Where: In this case, we've already established the banner's placement within the campaign settings, so you can leave the default setting All pages.
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When: Unless you want to limit the banner's exposure to a particular date and time, you can leave this with its default value All the time.
- Click Next.
- If you're ready to launch the campaign, set the experience status to Active. Otherwise, leave it in draft mode. Click Save Experience.
Step 6: Create additional experiences and launch the campaign
- Repeat the previous steps for as many experiences (different weather conditions) as you want to target (say, clear weather or snow).
- Save and publish your campaign.