Personalization isn’t just another marketing buzzword. At a point in time when consumer demands and expectations have never been higher, brands that deliver personalized experiences and messages have a competitive edge.
As a marketer, you understand that when you engage prospects there is a higher probability they will convert to customers. And when customers feel that you know them as an individual, they will bring more lifetime value to your company through ongoing sales and brand advocacy.
While many companies are succeeding with contextual-based personalization, it’s the more advanced levels that are challenging to achieve.
60% of marketers are unsure of how to deliver personalized content in real-time — Direct Marketing Association
Marketers say these are the top three challenges to personalization:
- No single view of the customer
Without a complete view of all customer data, it’s difficult to know who your customers are and how to anticipate their response at any given time.
This boils down to a data management issue for organizations. According to a study by Experian, companies struggle to gain this single view because they can’t connect data across different systems, they suffer from poor data quality, and they lack relevant supporting technology.
Overcoming this hurdle means building the right foundation to achieve a complete view. This includes:
- Unified login and registration process across digital properties to recognize customers
- Data and analytics to mine customer data for targeted insights
- Customer profile data management capabilities to collect, store, manage, and analyze profile data
- Ability to gain and apply insights quickly
Consumers engage with their favorite brands across a variety of different channels and devices. These interactions happen quickly, not to mention that customers engage with you anywhere at any time.
To create a personalized experience in the moment, you can’t limit yourself to optimizing it for one channel, nor can you solely rely on historical and basic customer profile data.
However, you may have thousands or even millions of customers, so you also need to be able to scale these personalized experiences. To do this, your digital experience platform needs to be able to harness and analyze customer data to automatically deliver customized content, offers, and pricing to individuals.
- Lack of internal resources to execute
Securing internal resources to execute a personalization strategy is another major challenge. A recent study by Forrester reveals 66% of marketers stated this a major obstacle for implementing personalized marketing programs.
Part of the problem lies with ownership of this role. Does it belong to the digital marketing team or a specialist in corporate marketing? What role does IT play, and to what extent are they involved in the implementation?
Answers to these questions will vary based on the structure of your organization. However, it’s important to consider – and assign dedicated resources – as you move from planning to executing your personalization strategy.
How can your company overcome these challenges and move forward on the path to personalization?
Take a look at our guide that addresses these points and outlines different personalization strategies to consider based on the maturity of your organization’s digital marketing.
