Highlights From VentureBeat’s Marketing Personalization Report

We’re excited to share the findings from VentureBeat Insight’s latest report, “Marketing Personalization: Maximizing Relevance and Revenue”. This future-focused report is based on a survey of over 500 marketing professionals and interviews with brands like Salesforce, Optimizely, Autopilot, and Segment. The report offers a deeper analysis of marketing personalization, defined as, “using technology to tailor messages or experiences to the individuals interacting with them.”

Summary: Personalization drives results, but there’s still a long way to go

The marketing personalization report provides insight into what drives marketers in the first place: reaching more prospects, increasing sales and conversions, raising retention, growing lead count, and reducing acquisition costs. The report builds the case for why personalization matters and takes a deep dive into the three-part process to implement personalization - identity, content, and delivery. The key takeaway is that while personalization is still in its infancy, the future looks promising with “between 70% and 94% of marketers surveyed seeing an increase in the effectiveness of various key metrics by employing personalization.” The numbers speak for themselves: The Effectiveness Of Personalization On Key Metrics

Personalization in a multi-channel marketing world

Email is the primary channel marketers use to deliver personalized content, with social media messaging coming in at a far second. This makes sense, considering email remains the best digital channel for ROI and many companies kickoff their personalization efforts by leveraging the data available in their existing contact base. However, today’s world is becoming increasingly multi-channel with consumers engaging with brands through online, offline, and mobile channels. The below image ranks the channels where marketers are currently delivering personalized content. Digital Channels For Personalization

What are the roadblocks to personalized marketing?

VentureBeat reports that the three keys to personalization are identity, content, and delivery. “Companies able to align these three components unlock the ability to personalize the customer experience,” said Andrew Jones, the lead researcher behind the study. So what roadblocks are marketers hitting in the process? The main obstacle is collecting data from each customer interaction and unifying the data for a 360-degree view of the customer. Charles Nicholls, SVP product strategy for SAP Hybris said it best: “In order to personalize, you have to understand the individual. That’s stating the obvious, but it’s very, very hard to do.” The chart below reveals the data points marketers are using to understand the customer identity to deliver personalized content. Identity Sources For Personalization Once marketers grasp a more complete view of their customer, the next two steps are creating and delivering personalized content to target audiences. Where companies hit a wall is skipping the first step of identity and hopping right into creation and delivery. As the report insightfully points out: “Content without audience insight cannot be personalized.” Delivery represents its own set of challenges. The primary being the tug of war between the marketer’s primary objective to “reach more prospects” and the lack of data available to personalize content for unknown, anonymous strangers who haven’t become “known” leads yet. Types Of Users For Personalized Content

But this is just the beginning of personalization…

With customer attitudes towards personalized content being shaped by recommendation engines like Amazon, Spotify, and Netflix, consumers are becoming more used to receiving what they want, when they want it, on every channel. Since 80% of consumer-facing companies don’t understand their customers beyond basic demographics and purchase history, the stage is set for solutions (like marketing automation) that can capture real-time data from silo’d storehouses and automatically send personalized content for every stage of the customer journey. The big takeaway here is that marketers are beginning to feel the rumblings that “personalization is the single most important capability for future marketing efforts.” The most up-to-date data and case studies are unveiling how personalization is driving dramatic results and helping marketers build better relationships with customers. Personalization works - and time will tell how today’s modern marketers will make the most of it. Interested in learning more? Download the full report and please share your comments below.