How to drive sales and improve customer experience in B2B ecommerce with the right personalization strategy

B2B buyers’ preference for digital channels continues to increase year over year, driving manufacturers to provide B2B ecommerce channels to their customers. According to Forrester Research, B2B ecommerce has a projected annual growth rate of 10.7% over the next five years — while traditional offline sales grow at a much slower rate (0.5%).

In this new digital environment, personalization is crucial to meeting B2B buyer demands and delivering the differentiated experience that customers have come to expect. However, basic personalization, like customer-specific pricing or including customers’ names upon login, isn’t enough anymore. On top of that, the deprecation of third-party cookies has decreased the available data marketers and ecommerce teams can use to personalize their B2B ecommerce websites.

As a result, brands and manufacturers must shift to use first-party data to personalize their B2B ecommerce channels and increase the sophistication of the personalization strategies they are implementing.

So, how do you deliver B2B personalization that drives higher conversion rates and average order values?

In this blog post we’ll walk through B2B personalization strategies to help you move beyond basic personalization, including how to build a strong data management foundation and proven personalization strategies to implement across your digital storefront.

Recognize the shift toward ecommerce for B2B buyers — and the need for personalization

Business buyers are actively choosing digital engagement throughout the purchasing journey, not only for repeated or small orders but also for large, highly considered purchases.

To meet that preference, today, almost two-thirds of companies offer some kind of B2B ecommerce experience for their customers. This doesn’t mean that B2B companies have abandoned offline sales. Instead, these companies take an omnichannel approach — where now only 5% of the B2B customer journey is completed with a sales representative.

In fact, 74% of B2B buyers now expect product availability online from their suppliers. And 72% seek the flexibility to buy through their preferred channels, including B2B ecommerce, or they will look for an alternative supplier.

At the same time, B2B buyer expectations are constantly set higher through well-designed and convenient B2C customer experiences. Those experiences are complete with personalized commerce experiences — including tailored promotions, dynamically updating product category pages, and curated recommendations.

The results speak for themselves. According to McKinsey, companies that implement personalization strategies see an average revenue increase of 10% to 15%.

As a result of improving B2C experiences, your customers are bringing the expectations of a personalized B2B ecommerce experience to your digital doorstep — and they will move on to other suppliers if you don’t provide it. Meeting this customer expectation has become a business imperative, not just a secondary goal of B2B ecommerce.

From basic to sophisticated personalization

Winning B2B companies differentiate themselves by developing sophisticated marketing strategies that include account-based and contact-based approaches. 

Delivering personalization in B2B ecommerce is about enabling each business buyer to do their job more efficiently, not just catering to individual preferences. To accomplish that, B2B sellers need to use additional data points about the buyer — including their company, industry, role within the buying process, and organization.

In addition to more data types, B2B buyers expect different types of personalized experiences including replenishment reminder email notifications, personalized request-for-quote experiences, and tailored bulk ordering recommendations.

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Seven strategies to supercharge your B2B ecommerce personalization

The following strategies go beyond basic personalization, requiring you to target both known and unknown users, as the data about each user is gathered. There are several personalization tactics to do that, including:

1. Personalizing from first interaction to anonymous users
2. Personalizing experiences and repeat journeys for returning users
3. Showing content and product recommendations using industry data or company size
4. Using company data to create a more cohesive experience for visitors from the same organization
5. Using data about an individual buyer’s role to personalize experiences
6. Personalize content and next best action based on where buyer is in the funnel
7. Provide location-specific experiences and product availability based on buyer’s location

1. Personalizing from first interaction to anonymous users

When a user is anonymous, has no previous data stored in their browser, and isn’t logged in, companies should begin to lay the foundations for a personalized experience.

Tactics include:

• Encouraging email sign-ups or account creation.
• Companies can set up a customer segment in Adobe Commerce for anonymous users to convert users from unknown to known.
• Companies can also offer B2B buyers first order benefits such as reduced shipping fees or other promotions.
• And during an anonymous session, Product Recommendations, powered by Adobe Sensei, can immediately personalize which products are displayed based on the user’s individual clicks or show the most popular products from categories the user is browsing.

Personalizing the experience for anonymous users aids in acquiring new leads and facilitates the transition from anonymous to identified — kicking off an effective first-party data strategy.

2. Personalizing buying experience for returning B2B customers

This strategy involves the customization of offers based on previous order history or past interactions — to improve lead nurturing, engagement of returning leads, and potential deal conversion.

Tactics include:

• Analyzing a returning user’s behavior and shopping history to display related or recommended products on the home page, in the search results, product page, or in the follow-up page.
• Enhancing search functionality to display relevant results based on preset algorithms, including recommended for you, most viewed, most purchased, most added to cart, or trending, using Adobe Live Search powered by Sensei.
• Allowing returning users to save their favorite product or create a wish list. Send reminder notifications about availability or price drops of wish-listed products.

These tactics help increase conversions of new leads and significantly boost customer value by using upselling and cross-selling effectively.

3. Show relevant content and products based on the visitor’s industry and company

This strategy uses firmographic data — not just user data — to personalize the buying experience. When a B2B buyer visits your website or B2B ecommerce portal, product recommendations, banners, and offers can be personalized based on the industry they belong to or the company they work for.

Tactics include:

• Creating compelling CTA or display messages that are industry specific. For example, showing an upcoming webinar for the automotive industry only to users from automotive companies.
• Creating a customized product catalog that would fit the needs of specific company revenue threshold. It could highlight enterprise-level solutions for large companies and cost-effective options for smaller businesses.
• Offering accelerated shipping options or priority support for large companies.

Personalization based on industry and company size are examples of world-class personalization rather than basic personalization. Personalization leaders have seen a 1.5 times higher revenue per customer and loyalty metrics, according to Deloitte Digital.

4. Using company data to create a cohesive experience for multiple buyers from the same organization

This strategy is built around utilizing company data, including CRM account IDs, opportunity IDs, and purchase history to provide special prices for established customers or specific conditions for high-value customers.

Tactics include:

• Pre-negotiated prices for top-tier customers. For example, logged-in customers might see unique discount offers or product pricing based on their account ID or purchase history.
• Companies can offer special product catalogs based on their different customers — so only approved items will show up on the product page.
• On the home page, special deals and communications can be pushed to specific accounts.

Organization-based personalization helps increase customer loyalty and retention by creating special treatment for VIP customers.

5. Using role data to personalize experience for individual buyers

This strategy delivers tailored relevant content to a specific role within the company or in the buying process such as an engineer or scientist who confirms technical specifications for a purchase and a procurement manager who negotiates pricing and terms with the supplier.

• Companies can send special email campaigns targeted for specific job roles within a company to nurture potential customers or propose new services to current customers — like sending technical reports to engineers or invitations to executives for an industry trend webinar.
• Web personalization tools can recognize known customers and present different product values based on job role needs, including buying power, level of seniority, or department of interest.
• Companies can create a filter in the catalog based on the customer job role.
• There can also be a dynamic UI that adjusts the navigation for a specific user.

Role-based personalization helps in nurturing potential B2B buyers by engaging with different influencers and decision-makers within the company.

6. Personalize based on funnel data

This strategy customizes communication and experiences based on where customers are in their decision process and customer lifecycle.

• Companies can push brand-related messages to prospects that are in the awareness phase. For example, they may send communication about the brand, who they are, and what they stand for.
• It is possible to stop communication with customers who are in a particular negotiation phase or experiencing issues with the product or service.
• A referral program can be proposed to satisfied customers to recommend your brand to decision-makers at other businesses.

Implementing funnel-based personalization helps maintain engagement with prospects and customers, effectively reducing lead drop-off rates.

7. Personalize based on geolocation

This strategy tailors experiences based on the customer’s physical location. This is possible by using location data from the user’s device or browser, such as IP address. These data points can be particularly effective when users access B2B ecommerce channels when at or near a company’s physical location.

Tactics include:

• Proposing events that are happening in the area or personalizing with reference logos that are more relevant to the customer’s geographical location
• Showing products based on the availability in the area and the ability to find them in the local dealers
• Adding a banner or lightbox to the home page that promotes a local event or exhibition to customers in the area
• Personalizing the ecommerce store with local regulation and compliance — like displaying information on local laws or tax calculation

Additionally, shipping and delivery information or payment options can be changed based on the user’s location to set clear expectations regarding order delivery.

Implementing geography-based personalization helps boost customer engagement and mitigate potential friction that could arise due to local inconsistencies in communication.

Gather and use high-quality first-party data in your personalization efforts

Customer data makes or breaks personalization. Traditionally, businesses have leaned on manual customer segmentation, but this process eats up valuable internal resources needed to create and manage segments which can lead to poor data quality and incomplete customer and account profiles.

Alternatively, many companies rely too heavily on third-party ad networks and walled gardens — like LinkedIn, Facebook, and Google — to identify and profile potential customers for acquisition strategies. This increases the cost of acquiring and retaining customers by using advertising programs to engage customers rather than less expensive channels such as content marketing, SEO, or email marketing. And keep in mind, the deprecation of third-party cookies will continue to decrease the availability of third-party data within the organization to personalize B2B ecommerce experiences.

To reduce costs and over-reliance on third-party data and manual segmentation, you need to automatically collect, store, and activate first-party data to power your B2B ecommerce experiences. You can do this through Adobe Real-Time CDP, which integrates all your data sources, builds audiences automatically, and makes that data available across all of your channels.

Use data gathered on your ecommerce site to power sales and marketing journeys

Although many companies collect behavioral and transactional data from their ecommerce platforms, few combine this data with information stored in other systems, such as customer profiles from customer data platforms. This integration prevents them from achieving the advanced and highly personalized customization that modern customers increasingly expect.

The 2023 B2B Commerce Growth Strategies Survey and Report revealed that B2B companies are actively using their data for personalization, but they are using it in silos. 72% of the survey respondents are collecting behavioral and transactional data through their ecommerce portals, and 68% are leveraging data to varying degrees to personalize their websites. However, only 57% use this data in marketing, merchandising, and email campaigns.

B2B ecommerce websites are not only the personalized experiences your buyers want, but they’re also a data goldmine for the entire organization. The first-party data you gather on your B2B ecommerce website is packed with rich, high-intent signals that can be used to enhance sales, marketing, and business strategy operations. Instead of looking at the ecommerce site in isolation, companies can use the data from their sites to customize the entire customer journey. This can be a key component of a multichannel buying journey, providing B2B buyers with a consistent and personalized experience from discovery to support scenarios.

B2B ecommerce websites can also be personalized using data from other systems such as email marketing, customer data platforms, and customer relationship management (CRM) solutions.

Adobe’s B2B ecommerce platform, Adobe Commerce, natively syncs bidirectional data with Adobe Real-Time CDP to share this high-intent data with marketing and sales — and uses audiences from Real-Time CDP to power personalized buying experiences on your B2B ecommerce buying portal.

The effectiveness of personalization in a B2B company depends on building trust, collecting first-party data, and democratizing this data across the organization.

Get started with more personalization B2B ecommerce

Digital commerce will play a key role in the future of B2B businesses and consumer brands. Companies must adopt a first-party data strategy and leverage all available data within their organization to provide a personalized experience to the various decision-makers interacting with the company. This will mean remaining competitive in an ever-changing environment and transforming ecommerce from a standalone entity to an interconnected buying experience.

Carlo Segato is a business strategy consultant at Adobe with more than 10 years of global experience in innovation, brand management, and digital marketing. He has worked in both complex enterprise organizations and venture-backed technology startups. This combined experience has led Segato to discover the power of data and technology to drive digital transformations for companies in all industries.