A microsite is a branded content site that exists independently of a company homepage and URL, so it’s the perfect space to offer multi-level, interactive engagement for a highly specific campaign or topic. Microsites allow audiences to get detailed information about a product or service without getting lost (and distracted) in the layers of content on an all-encompassing company site.

An interactive microsite helps audiences find relevant information at a touch, rather than forcing them to slog through pages of irrelevant content hoping to stumble upon the information they’re looking for. Microsites are also great for drawing new leads that might have been lost on a larger page.

A microsite can answer both problems by providing specific, personalized information about products, but they can also go one step further. Marketers can actually create personalized URLs for each contact on a list, which is a particularly effective solution for account-based marketing, or marketing to an entire organization instead of an individual. Personalizing microsite URLs can make a campaign tailored to an entire company feel as 1:1 as an individually targeted campaign.

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What impact does this have on your marketing? Here are a few things that will be change.

1. Activity Profiles Will Be Incomplete
Do people visit both your microsite and your core site? (Hopefully they do, otherwise why do you have a microsite?) You will have two profiles for every visitor and you will not have a complete view of what a visitor has done.

2. Dynamic Content Triggers Will Misfire
Someone may be highly engaged on your microsite, but your dynamic content triggers will show basic 101 content when that same person comes back to your corporate site to learn more. All of the inferred preferences you picked up about a visitor, from content formats to industry, is lost when someone crosses domains.

3. Visitors Will Need To Register Multiple Times
Many marketers today recognize a return visitor and don’t ask visitors to register a second time.

However, if someone registered on your microsite and then visits your corporate site, they will need to register again. Your content, which could have been freely distributed, now is put back behind a registration form, limiting its distribution.