The Drum research finds budget and technology constraints are the biggest hurdles to personalisation
Almost 70 per cent of marketers believe personalisation is very important to the customer experience but only 40 per cent are unifying data across channels to fuel personalisation, according to research carried out by The Drum.
While 80 per cent believe personalisation has a significant positive impact on brand perception and customer engagement, 50 per cent feel constrained by budget and technology in delivering this.
The findings come from The Drum’s second Market Insight Report, The Pressures of Personalisation.
The Drum partnered with customer data platform and solutions firm Tealium to discover how marketers are reacting to the rising pressure to personalise content across an exponentially increasingly number of consumer touchpoints.
Personalisation is one of the hottest area of marketing, as brands look to build deeper relationships with customers that are now living across multiple digital channels.
McDonald’s recently announced plans to implement “mass personalisation”, while Sainsbury’s views 2016 as a significant year in its plans to “fulfil our customers’ needs on a more personalised basis,” according to chief executive Mike Coupe.
However, The Drum Market Insight Report, in association with Tealium, found that although much industry discussion around personalisation centres on digital touchpoints such as apps, marketers are still focused on the traditional digital channels such as their company website, email and mobile.
The Drum surveyed 200 brand marketers to better understand the barriers they face, the channels that they favour, and the organisational changes they have put in place to ensure that their brands are ready to provide personalised experiences to their customers.
Over 80 per cent of marketers surveyed believe that personalisation leads to a significant positive impact on both brand perception and customer engagement.
Due to this and despite of some of the outstanding budgetary constraints, marketers used 2015 to focus on hiring teams with the skills necessary to drive forward their personalisation efforts in 2016.
For 2016, the vast majority of marketers will be focusing on organisational and process changes to ensure personalisation is at the core of their marketing efforts, with 20 per cent investing in new technologies and platforms to better serve this vision.
The full results of the survey can be found in The Drum Market Insight Report, in association with Tealium, which is available to download here.