[Webinar Recap] Join the Movement: Personalization 2.0

Personalization is an important aspect for delivering the customer experience your target audience demands, and it’s only going to get more important as the bar for customer experiences rises every day. As Forrester Research’s Brendan Witcher mentioned at our webinar last week, nearly nine in 10 digital professionals are making personalization a priority in their investments moving forward—a clear sign that businesses see a lot of value in personalization.

However, many still struggle with how to meaningfully utilize personalization to drive better experiences and interactions. When you consider that 61% of customers say they are unlikely to return to a site that does not provide a satisfactory experience, poor personalization can lead to many missed opportunities.   

Why Many Businesses Aren’t Getting the Most from Personalization

So, why do so many companies have issues personalizing the customer experience? It comes down to two major obstacles.

First, many businesses lose track of the customer value as they integrate personalization. They take simple steps, such as sending birthday messages or adding the customer’s name to communications, and call it a day. These are nice gestures but ultimately don’t provide any real value to customers. And in some instances, poor personalization may even creep customers out.

Second, data tends to be a mess, which makes it difficult to deliver meaningful personalization. It’s not unusual to see businesses spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on personalization tools, but their data is in such a horrible spot that it derails all of their efforts. Data gets trapped between different departments and external partners, which means brands don’t have a full 360-degree view of their customers.

Five Steps for Getting Your Personalization Efforts Online

Despite these challenges, it’s pivotal that enterprises are making full use of personalization to drive better customer experiences. Of course, this is much easier said than done. However, if you’re looking to get started, here are five steps from Brendan that could offer you some guidance.

1. Consolidate all of your customer data into a single database so you can get a true picture of your customers and prospects
2. Identify digital gaps that may hinder your ability to deliver personalization throughout the customer journey
3. Keep every customer touchpoint in mind and always be aware of how you can use each one to collect data
4. At the same time, make sure you aren’t overly focusing on specific touchpoints and missing opportunities to use data from one touchpoint with others
5. Be transparent as you collect data from prospects and customers and tell them how you plan to use it, but when it comes to using this data to deliver experiences, be subtle

For more insight on using personalization to craft great customer experiences and how Sitefinity can help along the way, be sure to check out the webinar recording.