Personalization is an omnipresent buzzword in the loyalty marketing industry, especially during the hectic and furious holiday season. Yet, many brands are not achieving the personalization levels they yearn for, revealing a need for more contextualized customer experiences.
An October 2015 study from hybris, an SAP company, which was conducted by Forrester Consulting, reveals a distinct gap between consumers’ expectations of personalized marketing and what marketers are actually delivering.
The study titled, “The Contextual Marketing Imperative: the evolution of personalization from push messaging to one-to-one personal customer experiences,” comprises an in-depth survey in the U.S., EMEA, and APAC regions of 1,200 consumers and 200 advertising and marketing professionals at organizations with 500 or more employees.
In the wake of this disconnect and the need for brands to contextualize each customer engagement, the study highlights the following key takeaways:
While 66% of marketers rate their efforts at personalization as “very good” or “excellent,” just 31% of consumers report companies are consistently delivering personalized, cross-channel experiences
40% of consumers say most promotions don’t deliver anything of interest
44% of consumers say they receive too many offers and promotions
37% of consumers say they delete most email offers and promotions without reading them
40% of consumers have unsubscribed or opted-out because they feel overwhelmed
Among those consumers reporting less-than-satisfactory personalized experiences, 61% said they were “somewhat” or “much less likely” to take advantage of future offers
While most marketers seek to improve personalized customer experiences from this customer data, their strategies are immature and their marketing efforts are falling short in this regard, the study notes. Many still rely on segmentation methods that target certain demographics, such as a specific age group, which is not nearly enough to engage customers.
According to the study:
70% of consumers surveyed said they are aware that companies use personal information to send them targeted offers
74% of consumers are “somewhat” or “very comfortable” with companies using data about them to provide personalized experiences
While 66% of marketers use demographics to create targeted content offers, and 44% say they use demographic categories to create at least some level of personalization for unidentified prospective customers, just half are using more sophisticated methods, such as leveraging data extracted from loyalty programs (52%) or behavior-based data (48%)
In fact, 91% of marketers surveyed are prioritizing improving customer experience through personalization over the next year
“Consumers today are bombarded with more marketing messages across more channels than ever before, and the vast majority of these communications are irrelevant,” said Charles Nicholls, SVP Product Strategy, Marketing Solutions at SAP Hybris. “For this reason, it’s paramount that organizations are able to break through the noise and engage with customers on a one-to-one basis. To make this a reality, marketers must go beyond traditional personalization and towards contextualization by leveraging real-time signals of customer intent at the moment when the customer chooses to interact with the brand.”