• by Joe Mandese  @mp_joemandese, August 22, 2016

What’s in a name? Turns out, it’s a demonstrably better user experience. At least that was the case for the savvy consumer targeters at Ancestry.com, when they decided to make the shift from obligatory forms of programmatic retargeting -- you know, the kind that leads to banner blindness and, how shall we say, less-than-desirable user experiences.

After years of using the former model and stalking with a “shopping cart” mentality in order to get them to convert, Ancestry.com realized it needed to “make targeting more personalized,” Riddhi Goradia, Director, Display and Content Marketing, Ancestry.com said during an opening keynote conversation with MediaPost’s Steve Smith at the Programmatic Insider Summit on Lake Tahoe this morning.

“We realized very quickly that we had the best in class technology from a re-marketing perspective,” she said, adding, “We really started to question, ‘Are we creating the best experience possible?’”

The answer, she said, was no, because Ancestry.com’s marketing department was “being too literal” in its messaging and applying too much of a sales conversion mindset vs. a user experience approach.

She said the company came up with a “hypothesis” that “We are probably limiting ourselves in the way we speak to people.”

Ancestry.com’s solution: Shift from retargeting’s surly approach to one that leverages surnames.

Ancestry.com’s new message: “Hey, do you know what your last name means,” said Goradia, adding, “And use that as a hook to get interested in your family.”

Interviewer Steve Smith said that would hook him. Even though Smith is one of the most common surnames in the U.S., he said he is acutely interested in his family’s history.

Another benefit of the new messaging approach, said Goradia, is that it has opened Ancestry.com up to younger users.

“We were traditionally speaking to an older audience, but by speaking ot people about something that is as intrinsically interesting as your last name, we are able to talk to younger people,” she said.

Interestingly, I was not able to find the meaning of the name Goradia on Ancestry.com, but a number of other surname meaning sites attributed it to numerology.

“In numerology the name Goradia has the birth path 1 and it's meaning is connected to confidence, assertiveness and creativity,” according to www.meaningaz.com.

As for the meaning of the surname Smith, that’s easy. It’s an Old English word for someone who works with metal. Or in the case of MediaPost’s Steve Smith, someone who works with words. You know, a wordsmith.