23 Data-Backed Reasons to Personalize Your Marketing

When Knight first set out to study the online customer experience, one thing became immediately clear: content is where customers focus their attention. As the concept of inbound marketing has spread from Western markets into China, more and more companies have shifted away from one-size-fits-all mass email blasts and begun adopting personalized email strategies. But just how many customers actually expect personalization at different stages of the buying journey? Our research — download the “2019 Marketing Automation Enterprise Adoption Report” — found that nearly three-quarters of respondents felt frustrated when brands failed to recognize them or match their interests. Customers’ tolerance for generic, push-style marketing has reached a breaking point.

Because inbound marketing has been widely adopted in Western markets for years, the data below is drawn primarily from well-known international companies and research firms, offered here as a reference for B2B marketers.

The Advantages and Challenges of Personalized Marketing — Try Knight’s Personalized Marketing Journey for Free!

• Email personalization is the number-one strategy marketers use to improve audience engagement. (HubSpot)
• More than 20% of marketers say personalization directly increases email engagement rates. (HubSpot)
• 99% of marketers say personalization helps advance customer relationships. (Evergage)
• When brands implement personalized marketing strategies, more than 80% of consumers are more likely to make a purchase. (Epsilon)
• 90% of US consumers find personalized marketing content appealing. (Statista)
• 78% of marketers identify email as the most personalized channel; 56% rank the website second. (Evergage)
• The biggest challenge facing ABM teams is developing individualized strategies for each account. (HubSpot)
• 40% of marketers say their greatest personalization challenge is connecting data across technologies, while 34% struggle with poor data quality. (Experian)
• 38% of brands say they are battling “data debt” — lacking the timely customer data needed to launch relevant personalization initiatives. (Experian)

What Consumers Want from Personalization

• 92% of marketers say customers and prospects expect a personalized experience — up significantly from 85% in 2019. (Evergage)
• 45% of consumers say the “coolest” personalization they’ve ever encountered was when a brand proactively apologized for a poor shopping experience. (Accenture)
• 74% of consumers believe it is valuable for brands to build a “customer profile” that can be used to manage what offers and product experiences they receive. (Accenture)
• 67% of consumers say it is important for brands to automatically adapt their content to the current context. When brands fail to do so, 42% of consumers say they feel “annoyed” by content that doesn’t match their needs. (Adobe)
• 82% of consumers primarily engage with marketing content on their smartphones, while 63% primarily use a computer. (Adobe)

Data Privacy Preferences

• 83% of shoppers are willing to share their data in exchange for a more personalized and rewarding shopping experience. (Accenture)
• In a 2019 study, 79% of consumers felt that brands know too much about them — yet 90% were still willing to share behavioral data in exchange for cheaper, more convenient brand experiences. (SmarterHQ)
• Three-quarters of consumers say they have never felt that brand interactions online were overly personal or intrusive. (Accenture)
• The “creepiest” personalization tactics cited by consumers include receiving a text or push notification when physically near a brand’s store, and seeing ads for products they browsed on a brand’s website appear in their social media feeds. (Accenture)

Anonymous vs. Permission-Based Personalization

There is ongoing debate in the marketing world about when, across the customer lifecycle, the right moment is to begin applying personalization.

Some believe personalization should only kick in after the end user knowingly shares information with a brand. Others leverage anonymous data — such as location inferred from an IP address — to target users geographically before any direct interaction has taken place. When designing your personalization strategy, you will need to decide which approach is the right fit for your business and your customers.

• No matter how sophisticated your martech stack becomes, what matters most is that your strategy starts and ends with the customer’s needs and preferences. For many brands, this means waiting until a customer has actively engaged before personalizing.
• 42% of surveyed marketers say they use anonymous data as part of their personalization efforts. (eConsultancy/Adobe)
• 57% of people are willing to provide personal information on a website, as long as it is used for their benefit and handled responsibly. (Janrain)
• 77% say they would trust a company more if it clearly explained how their personal data would be used to improve their online experience. (Janrain)
• Among adults under 34, 62% are willing to share their location data in exchange for more relevant content.

Wrapping Up: The Case for Personalized Marketing

Whether you’re a marketer or a customer, we all live in an era where technology makes virtually anything possible. The ability to craft a unique experience for every prospect inevitably leads to more relevant, more useful, and more enjoyable buying journeys. As we explore this new frontier and shape our strategies, it is important to keep an open mind — to honestly discuss what works and what doesn’t in a world built on personalization. These data points help businesses think through how to structure early-stage customer communication, and we hope they inspire more companies to embrace personalization as a way to bring greater humanity back to marketing.