In present times, consumers get drawn to brands that provides exclusive customer experiences, and are ready to listen to them, along with delivering the right content at the right time. This is the age of personalized experiences and brands are increasingly creating relevant, contextual, and exclusive information and experiences - specific to every user's profile and persona.

For effective personalization, brands need to ask relevant questions from the perspective of their customers, such as whether one would like to receive personalized recommendations & offerings, or whether one would want to be offered relevant content pertaining to recently bought products/services, etc.

Here are some stats to substantiate the immense value that personalization brings with itself:

77% of consumers have chosen, recommended or paid more for a brand that offers a personalized service or experience - Forrester

Personalization can reduce acquisition costs by as much as 50%, lift revenues by 5–15%, and increase marketing spend efficiency by 10–30% - McKinsey

The top five benefits of personalization include increased visitor engagement (55%), improved customer experience (55%), improved brand perception (39%), increased conversion rates (51%) and increased lead generation and customer acquisition (46%) - Evergage

Now, let's talk about the top 10 personalization trends that marketers will leverage 2020 onwards - to offer superior personalized experiences.

1. Omnichannel Personalization

When personalized experience is offered to customers based on the real-time data collected from all the channels & extended to them across every touchpoint, to build a connected & consistent relationship with the customer, it is referred to as "Omnichannel Personalization"

The year 2020 will see a growth in omnichannel pursuit by brands as the new-gen customers tend to research and gather information about a product on one device and make the buying decision on another device. The approach by brands till now, was to focus on a variety of siloed channels, preventing them from getting a deep understanding of customer’s journey and delivering unique interactions across different channels however in today’s competitive world, it is imperative for brands to ensure seamless and personalized experience for their customers every-time, everywhere.

2. Personalization to become Top Priority

With the growing expectation of customers for contextual and relevant buying experiences, personalization has emerged as the top priority for brands and this will continue to be the trend for many more years to come. Personalization as an approach has been in vogue for past few years, however its actual implementation is still in question.

With the emergence of innovative tools & technologies, the year 2020 will see a dramatic shift towards execution of personalization efforts as the Marketers, today, are seeing tremendous growth in the results with their personalization strategies. In a recent survey, 90% of marketers reported a lift in their business results, owing to their personalization efforts & 77% of the marketers leveraging Machine Learning reported a lift greater than 10%, emphasising the importance of personalization in their marketing strategies

3. Increased Personalization Budgets: Higher Spending

A study based on a survey of 600 marketers in North America and Europe, ranging from different sectors including insurance, hospitality, travel and retail, found that 74% businesses have a dedicated budget for their personalization strategy. A vast majority of companies (86%) garnering higher ROI reported to have spent more than 21% of their marketing budgets on personalization activities.

A new SoDA study has reported a significant increase in personalization budgets by brands despite of lag in capabilities, which signals that with the growth of technological innovations & enhancement of capabilities, brands will be increasing their personalization spends even more to execute these strategies. The findings also revealed that 97% of market leaders plan to increase their investments in 2020.

4. Website Personalization to be Trendier Than Ever

The website is the most important and powerful touchpoint for brands to attract, engage & retain customers on the go. A highly responsive/personalized website is essential to offer above-par customer experience with personalized & dynamic content

Website personalization addresses, user expectations & needs and delivers unique customer-centered solutions to visitors based on their personas, attitudes, behaviours and purchase patterns for a unified experience. Emergence of Big Data, Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning, is helping brands to provide highly personalized and contextual experiences for customers, resulting in boosted conversion rate, higher site visits, increased orders and higher return on investments.

5. Focus on Mobile First Approach

With the staggering growth in the mobile devices across the world, the number of users accessing the mobile platform has far outpaced the desktop users with 80% of global web traffic spanning smartphones. This has increased the importance of providing superior experience to customers on the smaller screen. The year 2020 will continue to see the increased adoption of mobile-first marketing approach by brands.

Delivering positive experiences with the robust mobile user experience during the customer’s journey has thus become a trend for brands today. A research by Google reports states that the majority of consumers refused to buy products from companies with poor mobile experience while 90% of users with great mobile experience recommended the product. A recent study by Boston Consulting Group states that a rapid growth of 10% has been observed for companies embracing mobile personalization indicating that the future for brands seems to be shifting towards a mobile-first strategy.

Conclusion:

With the advent of revolutionary technologies led by Artificial intelligence, NLP, Predictive Analytics, Big Data and Machine Learning, the capabilities of brands in 2020 will see a tremendous growth, helping them to offer more personalized and automated conversations. Brands can now reach millions of customers with ease and target them with relevant communications, by leveraging huge data at hand and availability of information pertaining to customer behaviour, buying patterns, device type used and browsing activity of the customer.

Watch out this space for the concluding part of this series, where we will deep dive into other personalization trends that would be creating a buzz in 2020.

Espire's Digital Experience Platform (DXP) solutions are empowering businesses and marketers with the ability to engage with the hyper-connected, on-the-go customers of today in a more meaningful, highly personalized and contextual manner seamlessly across all brand touchpoints - globally and locally. We provide an agile, collaborative and connected framework that leverages your technology ecosystem to intelligently arrange and orchestrate fragmented engagement systems and existing silos. Get in touch with us at marketing@espire.com for any query, free demo and assistance.