Using decision tables to support contextual targeting in your UI

Historically, marketers have given targeting a bad name, with creepy email campaigns and annoying ads that follow you around – but the fact is, targeted messages can deliver a lovely experience if they’re done right.

An ideal restaurant is where the concierge knows your name and sits you at your favourite table. That’s good targeting. There’s a big difference between this and having them say “You almost bought an expensive wine with your meal last time. How about it today?”.

Let’s work through an example. Let’s say we’re designing a mobile app for runners (Imagine we’re the first one on the market to keep things simple). There are certain core activities that users will really care about – in this case tracking running performance and comparing performance with others. Thats pretty much it. However, there are lots of other activities that our business will want users to do, but the users are not yet particularly interested in. For example, if a user is just starting out, they’re probably not going to care much about connecting a heart rate monitor – they’d be crazy to go spend $200 before they’ve even finished their first 5k run.

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