Marketing personalization trends

If you've seen AMC's hit show Mad Men, then you've had a glimpse into a bygone era of marketing: the era of the "ad man." The show is set in the 1960s and features old-school copywriters and creatives crafting sweeping advertising messages at scale.

Unfortunately for tailored suits, chain-smoking and chauvinistic attitudes, the "ad man" is a dying (if not dead) breed of marketer. Fast-forward to the present, and marketers like that simply don't have a place with a Millennial audience who are exchanging their personal details for more relevant and personalized experiences.

Simply put, audiences are refusing to settle for mass-produced messages. It's out with ad men in tailored suits, and in with Millennials with tailored experiences.

Personalization by the numbers

Researchscape conducted a Trends in Personalization survey to better understand the behaviors, uses and attitudes marketers have towards personalization.

Below, we’ve summarised the results of the survey to highlight what marketing directors, managers and even entry-level marketers have to say about personalization. From these results, we’ve devised a list of six personalization trends that will appear in 2019.

1. Audiences are expecting personalized experiences

88 percent of respondents said that their customers and prospects expect a personalized experience, and an astronomical 98 percent agreed that personalization helps advance customer relationships.

Features like personalized emails and dynamic, AI-powered conversations are not only becoming more effective — but they're expected.

2. Personalization budgets are increasing

97 percent of the organizations surveyed in the study plan to increase budgets related to personalized marketing. Of all the marketing professionals responding, 77 percent (more than three quarters) believe personalized messaging should have more precedence.

Going forward, in 2019 these companies will also need to make budgetary considerations beyond just the price of data acquisition. Onboarding and training procedures can add up, and internal changes can be necessary to implement automation. In 2019, offset implementation costs by finding marketing automation software that's affordable, as well as people with the right skills for marketing personalization.

3. Marketers don’t know how to activate customer journeys

In considering the capabilities marketers have when it comes to content personalization, a small 12 percent say they are "very" or "extremely" satisfied.

Why? The roadblock to creating personalized content is customer data. 55 percent of marketers don't feel that they collect the right data and insights to create personalized messages. Many store their data in a mean of four different software systems, making the data harder to access and action.

Marketers who integrate their CRM system with their marketing automation software can tackle personalization challenges head-on. With both systems working together, marketers can customize customer journeys across multiple channels and derive insights all in one tool. By integrating a CRM like Salesforce or Pipedrive with Autopilot, marketers can create personalized customer journeys and measure their impact on ROI and conversion rates.

4. Quality data is critical for creating effective, personalized experiences

Three-quarters of companies in the study reported that they're using customer's first names and/or company names in email subject lines or body text— and here's a good reason for it. A study published by Salesforce indicated that 66 percent of consumers were "extremely" or "somewhat likely" to switch brands if they felt like a person, rather than a number.

It's possible to create rich, personalized experiences for these consumers through email, but it doesn't have to stop there. Marketing automation software can create personalized experiences across channels such as direct mail, SMS, and on-website or in-app.

5. Integrated software is essential for multi-channel personalization

72 percent of consumers said they would rather connect with brands and businesses through multi-channel marketing than any other method. But Researchscape's study reported only 27 percent of brands have their channels in sync.

With a range of hard-to-use marketing automation software (MAS) on the market, the onboarding experience of MAS as a whole is poor. In fact, three in five companies state that the implementation process is “difficult.”

Autopilot was built to fix this problem; being easy to use and implement. It also features native best-of-breed integrations that allow for personalization content creation across channels without complex coding or processes.

6. Marketers are seeing room for improvement in their personalization efforts

When it comes to personalization in 2019, many marketers will see room for growth. During Researchscape's study, only 70 percent were "moderately" or "slightly" satisfied, and 18 percent weren't satisfied at all. Some feedback from respondents reflects on key takeaways for marketing personalization going forward.

Marketers are saying:

"We don't have the people in place to make personalization happen. We've invested in the tools, but not the people."

Read our blog on hiring the right people to make marketing automation and personalization happen.

"The personalization we do is quite limited to a handful of campaigns. Personalization should be done and/or be applicable to the majority of email campaigns."

Use Smart Segments, Custom Fields and Lists to share personalization efforts across every email campaign in Autopilot.