MarketingCharts staff
Through a special arrangement, presented here for discussion is a summary of a current article from MarketingCharts, a Watershed Publishing publication providing up-to-the-minute data and research to marketers.
A survey of digital marketers by Evergage found that e-mail (72 percent) and websites (57 percent) are the only channels in which a majority of respondents are using personalization.
Far fewer respondents from the 206 organizations interviewed across businesses have cracked the code for mobile websites (28 percent), web apps (20 percent) or mobile apps (18 percent).
Meanwhile, personalization experiences remain fairly limited. E-mail campaigns are the most common type of personalized experience, used by almost two-thirds of marketers. Home pages (58 percent) and recommendations (58 percent) are also fairly popular areas of personalization, while half are personalizing interior pages. Given that website content personalization is considered quite difficult, these could be seen as encouraging results.
Again, however, there’s less uptick in other areas: fewer than one-third are personalizing navigation (29 percent), search (27 percent), pricing (22 percent), videos (18 percent) or sorting (16 percent).
Overall, more than half of marketing professionals (55 percent) said the industry isn't getting personalization right. And nearly half (46 percent) gave their company's personalization efforts a "C" grade or below — although that's an improvement from 55 percent in last year's study.
Other findings from the survey:
Other findings from the survey:
- As a result of personalization programs, marketers say they've realized a measurable lift in business results (88 percent), increased conversion rates (63 percent), improved overall customer experience (61 percent) and increased visitor engagement (57 percent).
- Marketers report personalizing based on location (60 percent), demographics (56 percent) pages/content viewed (54 percent), campaign source (50 percent), previous behavior (48 percent), persona (46 percent) and stage of customer journey (42 percent).
- Nearly half (46 percent) says their personalization budget will increase next year (up from 35 percent last year), while 50 percent said their budget will stay the same.
- Only one in three were "very" or "extremely" confident they have the tools they need for website or in-app personalization. One-third are using machine learning, more than double last year’s proportion.