Behavioral Targeting is a marketing strategy that uses data about a customer's past actions — browsing history, purchase patterns, click behavior, and engagement — to deliver personalized content, recommendations, and offers.
In e-commerce, behavioral targeting manifests as:
- Browse-based recommendations: "Based on items you've viewed..."
- Purchase-triggered cross-sells: "Customers who bought X also bought Y"
- Engagement-based emails: Cart abandonment reminders, restock notifications
- Dynamic pricing or offers: Personalized discounts based on purchase probability
Unlike demographic targeting (which assumes behavior based on who someone is), behavioral targeting is based on what someone actually does. This typically produces stronger results because actions are a better predictor of future behavior than demographics alone.
The key to effective behavioral targeting is having clean, well-organized transactional data and the analytical capability to identify actionable patterns. Modern approaches combine Market Basket Analysis (finding product associations) with customer segmentation (understanding customer types) to deliver highly relevant, timely interactions.
