#Achieve Personalization with Hygraph's Variants

Personalization delivers tailored experiences to your users by matching content to the right audience segment at the right time. Nowadays, users are more likely to engage with your brand if you personalize their journey. Providing this level of personalization influences purchasing decisions, conversions, customer loyalty, and ultimately drives revenue and growth for your brand.

With Hygraph, you can implement personalization consistently across all channels.

#Key terms

• Variants - These define WHAT you deliver. You can create multiple variants of a main content entry.
• Segments - These define WHO you deliver the content to. Define segments based on user attributes, behavior, or context, via a Customer Data Platform (CDP).
• Personalization rules - These define HOW and WHEN you deliver the content. Set up your own logic or use a personalization engine to decide which content should be delivered to which segment in real time.

#Solution components

• Hygraph (Headless CMS) – Centralizes content variants and segment creation, as well as tagging for omnichannel delivery.
• Customer Data Platform (CDP) – Maintains unified, real-time user profiles and generates user lists that map to the segments created in Hygraph.
• Personalization engine – Applies business logic to deliver relevant experiences across different touchpoints.

#How it works

Personalization - How it works

1. To deliver a personalized experience to a user, some internal logic determines the applicable segment for a user by evaluating attributes and context data of the user. In this example, the user matches Segment 2.
2. The personalization engine looks up content to be delivered, and, if available, finds the content variant. In this example, Variant 2 was assigned to Segment 2 by the editor.
3. The user sees the variant as the personalized experience. If no matching variant exists, the default content is delivered to the user.

#Example: Personalization with Hygraph

Let's make the following assumptions:

• The content team created content entries, such as the main content entry and its variants in Hygraph.
• The Customer Data Platform (CDP) contains real-time behavioral and contextual user data.
• The personalization engine decides the content, products, offers, or UI that a user sees based on their data and context.

The following example illustrates a headless personalization workflow for a returning customer to your website.

1. A customer returns to your website. The HTTP request from their browser to your server includes a cookie from their last visit. This cookie contains a unique, anonymous ID.

2. Your web server receives the incoming request, and recognizes a unique ID in the request. Instead of fetching the default, static page, it launches server-to-server API calls to other personalization components.

3. The server sends the customer's anonymous ID to the Customer Data Platform (CDP). The CDP immediately returns her unified customer profile to the web server in its API response, which includes the following data points:

   • Segments - High-value customers, Running enthusiasts
   • Browsing history - Recently viewed Running shoes model X
   • Purchase history - Running socks
   • Location - Cold weather region

4. The web server sends this customer profile to the personalization engine. The engine's AI model processes the inputs in real-time, and makes the following decisions:

   • Show a banner featuring waterproof running shoes Z
   • Recommendations for gear frequently bought with running shoes
   • Highlight offer - Free Shipping This personalization engine returns a structured list of specific content components required to build this experience for your customer, in its API response to the web server.

5. Now, the web server requests the following from Hygraph:

   • Variant HeroBanner with information for waterproof running shoes Z linked to the Running enthusiasts Segment
   • Variant RecommendationSection with information for trail gear linked to Running enthusiasts Segment
   • Variant OfferText with information for VIP shipping linked to the High-value customers Segment

   In its API response, Hygraph returns raw JSON objects for content entries, including fields such as image URLs, product IDs, and text, which are passed to the web server.

6. The server combines the frontend presentation template and the personalized content from Hygraph, and displays it in your customer's browser.

If the customer is using your mobile app instead of a web browser, they would see the same personalized content there. Likewise, if they were shopping in-store on a kiosk, the same experience would be displayed. By using a headless CMS like Hygraph, you can ensure that content remains consistent and up-to-date across all channels, delivering a seamless digital experience regardless of how customers choose to interact with your products.

#Next steps

Learn how to set up personalization step by step, beginning with a simple approach that does not require a CDP or a personalization engine. You can use existing customer data and rules to deliver tailored experiences, without any additional, dedicated tools.

Example - Set up personalization with Hygraph's Variants and frontend logic