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 Site Personalization › 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 page view (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: Add a targeted experience
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? This is where you indicate the page where the experience should render. In this case, we've already established the placement of the banner within the campaign settings. So you can leave the default setting All pages.
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When? Unless you want to limit the exposure of the banner to a particular date and time, you can leave this with its default value All the time.
- Click Next to add your content Variations.
Step 3: Create the content
The content you'll serve your targeted visitors is a variation . You can create a single variation (as in this example), or you can create multiple variations and test or optimize which variation most resonates with your audience.
- Click New Variation.
- In the template collection page, select the Weather Forecast Template (click Show More if necessary to find it).
- 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 against 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, texts, and design of the various elements.
Note: Begin by hiding the template warning in Notice › Template Warning. This is an internal message describing how Dynamic Yield receives its weather data.
- Click Save Variation.
- You can add additional variations for this weather targeting if you want to test or run optimization. Learn more about creating or adding variations .
- Set a Control Group . This is essential for measuring uplift. You can set the control to show the original content or to randomly select a variation. We recommend setting the control group to 10%-15% of your traffic.
Step 5: Setting 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.
Primary Metric: The default Click Through Rate is good for this use case, because our goal is discovery, at the top of the funnel. 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.
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.