12 December 2019

MARKETERS DITCH PERSONALISATION

Gartner predicts that 80% of marketers will abandon personalisation efforts by 2025 due to lack of ROI, the complexities of customer data management or both.

The research and advisory company made the prediction as part of an analysis by Gartner for Marketers, which provides information on marketing trends and strategies to business leaders.

Further research by Gartner found that 27% of marketers believe data is the key obstacle to personalisation, and that personalisation’s success is also threatened by a continuing decline in consumer trust, increased scrutiny by regulators and tracking barriers put in place by tech companies.

However, many in the industry questioned the likelihood of demand for personalisation declining.

Personalisation is a key part of many cross-media campaigns. In the print industry data personalisation enjoys widespread use in direct mail, something First Move Direct Marketing managing director Rachel Smith can’t see slowing down.

“On the level of basic personalisation, if you’re just using a customer’s first name on a letter or something very simple, it doesn’t have the impact it used to.

“However, personalisation can be as complicated as you like, in direct mail and elsewhere – I guess you could call it hyper-personalisation. And I think that has more relevance than ever.

“It’s proven that if you use personalisation as part of your marketing mix, it improves response rates; so I would say it’s vitally important and likely that more detailed, complex personalisation will continue to be used, in our industry and beyond.”