Study reveals brands are failing to personalise

Marketers are prioritising personalisation but most are failing to deliver real-time, behaviour-based marketing across channels, a new report claims.

The Contextual Marketing Imperative: The evolution of personalisation from push messaging to one-to-one personal customer experiences, conducted by Forrester Consulting on behalf of Hybris, an SAP company, found only 16 per cent have the ability to capture customer intent and deliver real-time, behaviour-based marketing across channels.

It showed brands are failing at personalisation, causing customer experience to suffer and demonstrating need for contextualised experiences. The study also uncovered a distinct gap between consumers’ expectations of personalised marketing and what marketers are actually delivering.

While 66 per cent of marketers rate their efforts at personalisation as “very good” or “excellent,” just 31 per cent of consumers report companies are consistently delivering personalised, cross-channel experiences, the report found. Forty per cent of consumers said most promotions don’t deliver anything of interest and 44 per cent said they receive too many offers and promotions.

Meanwhile, 37 per cent delete most email offers and promotions without even reading them and 40 per cent have unsubscribed or opted-out because they feel overwhelmed.

The report is based on an in-depth survey in the US, EMEA and APAC regions of 1200 consumers and 200 advertising and marketing professionals at organisations with 500 or more employees.

Because consumers are sharing so much personal data with brands, they expect value in return – in the form of transactional perks and improved customer experience, the report found.

Seventy per cent of consumers surveyed said they are aware companies use personal information to send them targeted offers, and 74 per cent of consumers are “somewhat” or “very comfortable” with companies using data about them to provide personalised experiences.

“Consumers today are bombarded with more marketing messages across more channels than ever before, and the vast majority of these communications are irrelevant,” SVP product strategy and marketing solutions at SAP Hybris, Charles Nicholls, said.

“For this reason, it’s paramount that organisations 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 personalisation and towards contextualisation by leveraging real-time signals of customer intent at the moment when the customer chooses to interact with the brand.”

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