Marketers agree that creating a one-to-one marketing , personal experience, is the best way to convert and acquire customers. Many marketers falsely think that a unified login and registration process across digital properties is the best way to deliver a personal experience.

Security is a pain point

Security is a pain point — unless you are dealing with personal and private information. Findings from Blue Research reveal that 86 percent of consumers dislike having to log in to attain information that is not private. The research also found that 9 out of 10 consumers give false information and/or purposely leave form fields empty when creating a new account.

In our digital engagement study of 10 automotive lenders, we found that when customers are required to log in to access non-private content, it greatly reduces click-to-open rates. Click-through rates may be good; the targeted email gets them to the website. However, when they are confronted with entering their login information, they abandon the webpage.

The mobile factor

The combination of too little time plus the aversion to entering a password increases page abandonment even more. Smartphones have become indispensable. SimilarWeb’s State of Mobile Web US 2015 report estimates that 56 percent of consumer traffic comes from mobile phones. This means that when people are visiting your site, the chances are good they are on their mobile phone.

One of the common ways people use a mobile phone is to kill time. While waiting in line, people check their phones. When watching television, people check their phones during commercials. On breaks at work (and even when they are not on breaks), they are checking their phones.

If in the quest of delivering a personal experience you ask for unnecessary login information, visitors do not feel like they have the time to enter it between life’s other daily demands. Logging in is a needless hassle.

Remove the login and increase engagement

A personally relevant experience does not mean you have to require a login. The analysis of automotive finance lenders reveals that when you remove an unwarranted login requirement, engagement and conversion rates increase. With one click, a customer can see relevant information such as his or her vehicle lease miles, contract end date, vehicle service messages and consumer education. Lenders that provide personal information via one-click achieve click-to-open rates that are more than double the industry average.

The two-step marketing combination of an email or text message partnered with a personal microsite is a great way to offer a one-to-one experience without requiring a login. A personal microsite, or Personal URL (PURL), is a web destination that incorporates a recipient’s name: brandwebsite.com/JaneSample. You can customize the personal experience so that visitors only have to log in when they want to access their private account information.

Using PURLs, you can manage the entire customer lifecycle, from creating the first impression, lead capturing and lead nurturing to sending a welcome message, setting up a customer’s online account and integrating your social channels.

The more you can personalize an individual experience, the more engagement and retention will increase. When access to content that is personal but not private or confidential is behind a firewall, you have a security fail. And that fail may just scare your customers away.