On every website personalization journey, naturally the first question that comes up is: "What's going to deliver predictable results, fast?"

After seeing dozens of businesses like Notion, Brex, and ClickUp add personalization to their websites, we've learned that it's best to think of your first personalization project as baking a cake. This means starting with the foundations (the cake), then adding some additional details (the icing), and then topping with creative flair (the decorations).  

Once you understand the basic recipe, you'll be able to make dozens of different types of cakes by swapping out ingredients based on your preferences.

It’s with this in mind that we’re sharing the example of DocSend, who doubled their overall website conversion rate in less than a year. DocSend is a company that provides real-time sharing, secure access and engagement tracking for business-critical documents.

DocSend’s strategy included several layered iterations, meaning DocSend tried a tactic, saw the results and then layered in a new tactic to keep increasing the lift in conversion.

Let's dig in.

Step 1: Build a foundation around your core customer segments

DocSend is a horizontal SaaS product. This means that their product solves a specific problem that can be found horizontally across many  industries. As buyers from different industries visit DocSend's homepage, they will expect messaging on the website to align with their pain points.

This makes personalization of the DocSend website – and inside the DocSend application – a key part of the company’s marketing strategy.

DocSend first started by focusing on two of their core customer segments: startups and VCs (venture capital firms). They started with these two segments because they generated the most traffic to the website. This gives DocSend the most opportunities to improve conversion rates without needing to increase inbound marketing efforts.

The first change was personalizing the homepage copy and value propositions specific to each of those core segments.

For example, when a startup visits the DocSend home page, the headline specifically calls out startups, and the sub-header touted the benefits of using DocSend to send pitch decks to investors. 

Here's an example of personalized website targeted to startup founders:

But when VCs visited, all the copy is swapped to match their specific use case.

Once the copy was built, DocSend went a step further by personalizing the social proof section of the homepage to align with the segment. Startups saw the logos of other startups, while VCs saw other VCs. 

Personalizing the copy and logos earned them a 260% conversion lift on these pages.

This is easily achievable within Mutiny's website personalization software by using a data source like Clearbit to define your customer segments (e.g. Startups), and then editing your homepage in our experience editor.

With this foundational layer built, you should already begin to see improvements in your site's conversion. Next, let's take a look at the second step in building a personalized site: additional data. 

Step 2: Layer on behavioral data

Until this point, DocSend had been using Clearbit to identify the industry of the traffic visiting their site. To further personalize the experience, they began layering on behavioral data.

Jenny and her team began by defining audiences within the segment who had  visited specific pages within DocSend's site. 

For example, DocSend mapped its ‘Startup Fundraising’ pillar page to a use case named ‘Startups’ and its ‘Sales Engagement’ pillar page to a use case named ‘Sales professionals’. When a visitor who was not able to be identified by Clearbit visits one of these URLs, they are served the appropriate personalization.

Another instance where DocSend used behavioral data was to identify visitors who are sales professionals. This is important because sales is also one of DocSend’s core use cases, but it is a role and not an industry. Behavioral data allowed DocSend to personalize for this audience as well.

To add richness and depth to the user experience by expanding audience coverage even further, DocSend included a modal (seen in the image below) where visitors without an IP or Behavioral tag could self-identify. But this didn’t just expand coverage for personalization, it contributed to a nearly 29% conversion to trial from these modals.

Step 3: Add some creative flair

You can begin to see how DocSend started with a base and then began layering in elements, almost like making a cake – a very smart cake that converts leads into customers.

The next step after personalizing for their core customer segments and roles was to focus on upselling and delivering more value to current customers.

The DocSend team did this was by segmenting their audience even further: by product plan type. This works by Mutiny identifying the visitor's company through IP and matching it to Salesforce records to identify the current product or plan the visitor is using.

This means that when an existing customer lands on your site, the whole experience can be personalized to offer support and service, instead of trying to get them to signup for a sales demo.

DocSend did this by showing users of their free plan a prompt to upgrade to a full plan (seen in image below). And users on the basic tier saw an offer to upgrade to the next tier. 

To add more nuance to the experience, DocSend used first-party data (gathered when the user signed up) to further personalize by their use case.

At this point in your own execution, you could create an entire experience with a headline and subhead that explains the benefits of how the upsell will solve a problem for the customer. Or you could simply update the CTA from something like ‘Get started’ to ‘Upgrade Now’. It depends on how complex or simple you want your recipe to be.

The DocSend team wanted to be sure that they really were delivering value to their customers. Not only because they believe in realizing the potential of a great product but also because DocSend users would begin to use the platform to complete new tasks and were required to learn new product skills.

For example, while a founder might buy DocSend to send pitch decks while fundraising, they'll probably need to send employment offers when they start to grow the team.

So, the DocSend created banners that drive customers to a personalized resource center where they can explore how DocSend meets their growing needs.

Once the customer lands on the page, they are greeted with a resource center that is customized to their use case and includes their name on the page. This is a simple personalization inside of Mutiny, but it feels 1:1.

Finally, DocSend has several pages translated for different languages. The Growth team’s initial approach was to automatically redirect users from countries where those languages are spoken to the appropriate translated pages. But they saw better results by creating a banner that asked if the user wanted to be sent to the translated page.

ime to serve the finished product

We've walked through how DocSend went from having zero personalizations, to a homepage that changes based on segment, role, language, buying stage, and even customer timeline.

For the most part, these personalizations are simple to execute, and take less than an hour a week to manage.

And individually they got great results, like 260% conversion lift on personalized logos in a social proof section, or 29% conversions to trial from a modal that asks customers their interests.

But the process of learning and optimizing combined with these tactics is what led to DocSend’s overall website conversion rate to double for visitors that were offered these personalization experiences. And like any great recipe, the ingredients and the process are equally important when it comes to making something exceptional.