How I amsterdam tripled conversion rates with personalization

SOLUTION

To deliver personalized experiences at scale, the Iamsterdam team needed a more flexible and high-performing setup. The Sitecore platform they originally chose proved too rigid and slow to support their ambitions. So they switched to Prepr CMS — the same lightweight, headless platform already powering the Iamsterdam app. This enabled faster development, better performance, and more control over the digital experience.

This new foundation opened the door to effective personalization — and made it possible to tailor content to the needs of both visitors and locals.

To solve the issues, the team came up with a solution. They wanted to see if creating personalized experiences for specific visitor groups could help increase engagement and, consequently, conversions. 

To test the effectiveness of personalization, I amsterdam used Prepr CMS for the website and came up with two personalization strategies:

• Interest-based content for visitors. Recommend visitors content about places that match their interests and are located in different parts of the city.
• Location-based content for residents. Show residents recommendations for activities to enjoy in their neighborhood.

Let's take a closer look at each of these solutions.

To make sure visitors discover more than just the typical attractions in Amsterdam, the team opted to provide personalized content matching their interests in three steps.

1. The website collects data based on the visitor's interests. To enable this data collection, the website incorporates the Prepr tracking code. When a visitor visits a page, this activity is tracked and the information is sent to Prepr CMS.
2. Prepr CMS adds visitors to segments that match their interests. Prepr CMS includes segments tailored to visitor interests like shopping or museums. This setup ensures that Prepr CMS utilizes tracking information from the website to match each visitor to the appropriate segment.
3. The website displays personalized recommendations based on user interests. Marketers or content editors craft personalized recommendations in Prepr and associate them with the appropriate target audience (segment). When a visitor requests a page, Prepr CMS delivers personalized content relevant to the segment that the visitor falls into.

Iamsterdam.com offers a special promotion for locals, providing discounts for events and attractions happening nearby. To increase participation I amsterdam implemented a location-based personalization solution in three steps:

1. The website collects postal code data. The I amsterdam team uses marketing campaigns to offer discounts to locals on social media. They click through to the website, where they enter their postal code to redeem the discount. The website stores this postal code in Prepr CMS.
2. Prepr CMS adds locals to a segment matching their Amsterdam neighborhood. Prepr contains segments for each neighborhood and conditions to match visitors by their postal code.
3. The website provides personalized recommendations for nearby events. Marketers and editors create personalized content for different neighborhoods using Prepr, linking it to the relevant segment. When a visitor accesses a page, Prepr returns personalized content based on the visitor's neighborhood.