Even with AI-powered tech functionality and piles of readily available data, marketers continue to struggle with personalization initiatives. New research from customer engagement platform MoEngage takes a deep dive into the obstacles and shortfalls, with input from more than 100 senior-level marketing execs.
The firm’s new report, Future of Marketing: Why Personalization Matters, with research partner ClickZ, reveals that marketing executives do not believe that their current personalization efforts are strong enough. Just 34 percent of respondents ranked their satisfaction score as a 4 or above regarding their personalization results. Among the possible reasons for their dissatisfaction, marketers cited budget limitations or a lack of resources (64 percent) as the most significant barriers to successful personalization, followed by a lack of visibility and actionable data (41 percent) and an inability to move fast and personalize campaigns (40 percent).
In perhaps the most revealing data point from the survey, 40.2 percent of marketers admitted that the inability to move fast and create personalized campaigns is the most significant barrier to achieving successful personalization. Over half of the respondents indicated that “translating data into action” can take weeks or even months.
“Consumers are willing to permit brands to use their personal data in marketing communications; however, that permission is given with the expectation that customers will get something meaningful back from the brand,” said Meagan White, vice president of marketing, North America for MoEngage, in a news release. “This survey shows that brands still have a long way to go towards delivering on that promise of a truly personalized experience for every customer across every engagement channel.”
“This research confirms what many of our global customers have already shared with us: marketers have volumes of data about their customers, but they suffer from a lack of analysis and insights to use that data correctly,” said White.
Other key findings from the report include:
Marketers need better data to move faster
When asked to score their satisfaction with available customer data, almost 60 percent of respondents ranked 3 or below. As a result, it takes more than four days for a large share of respondents to turn marketing data into actionable campaigns.
Marketers are spending more, but they’re still dissatisfied
Just over half of survey respondents (51 percent) will invest more in marketing technology in the coming year to help personalize their customer’s experience.
Email remains the top marketing technology
Email marketing (66.3 percent), marketing automation (56.7 percent), customer data management (54.8 percent), personalization (50 percent), multichannel customer engagement (46.2 percent), mobile marketing (37.5 percent), and artificial intelligence (32.7 percent) are some of the top technologies where brands are focusing their investments when it comes to marketing technology.
Investment priorities are shifting for personalization
In the past, brands have focused their marketing personalization efforts on traditional channels such as email (69 percent), content (56 percent), and web pages (24.3 percent). However, teams are likely to shift where they focus their personalization going forward. SMS/text messaging, chat apps, and mobile-in-app marketing were respondents’ top three channel priorities when it came to personalized marketing.
Download the full report here.
The firm surveyed more than 100 senior-level marketing executives, who shared their opinions on the current state of their own personalized marketing.
