The power of personalized customer engagement is a concept that is bandied about in the loyalty marketing world quite often. When done correctly, personalization can greatly impact customer engagement and the overall customer experience.
How are brands doing when it comes to personalization?
According to the findings of a commissioned study conducted by Forrester Consulting on behalf of Persado, a leading cognitive content generation platform, the answer is not so well.
The study reveals that 40% of marketers struggle to make sense of such data for use in content creation, especially when the aim is to resonate on an emotional level with audiences. To overcome this challenge, marketers are turning to content automation.
What’s more, consumers rate brands poorly on the ability to send personalized messaging or offerings, and yet, only 28% of marketers surveyed place a high priority on making improvements to that area in the next year. Forrester defines personalization as “the ability to present customers with relevant products and offers that accurately reflect their stated and unstated needs.”
Here are some other key study findings:
Up to 89% of marketers surveyed believe they are excellent or very good at using behavioral and attitudinal customer data to create the right content based on insights and emotions across channels.
Only 15% of consumers are very satisfied with brands’ ability to understand the emotions that will inspire them to interact, transact, and communicate with brands.
Up to 58% of consumers rated brands’ ability to make their offering resonate on an emotional level as poor, regardless of the channel brands use to reach them.
“The survey data confirms consumer demand for more personalized experiences, even as marketers struggle to create emotionally relevant content that consistently performs,” said Alex Vratskides, Co-founder and CEO of Persado.
In the first quarter of 2016, Forrester surveyed 100 cross-industry marketing professionals at the director level or above in the U.S., U.K., France, Germany, and Italy, along with 300 U.S. consumers who go online at least weekly.
Persado’s cognitive content platform generates language that inspires action. Powered by cognitive computing technologies, the platform eliminates the random process behind traditional message creation.