The ROI of Upgraded Personalization

By Latane On Nov 7, 2019

New research shows marketers something entirely intuitive and yet somehow still surprising. Advanced Marketing Personalization tactics have the potential to drive much higher payouts than basic tactics—to the tune of $20 or more for every dollar invested.

That’s the key finding of a recent report on the value of personalization from The Relevancy Group. The research takes a big-picture look at Personalization trends and outcomes and examines how retailers are approaching relevance and using it to drive revenue.

Most marketers will say that individualized, relevant experiences drive better business results—and the more personalized they can make the experiences, the better the results. As the report explains:

“Consumers of all ages and genders agree that a lack of relevance [or a repetitive send button] makes them less receptive to engage. Fifty percent of consumers state they opt-out and ignore Email Marketing messages that are irrelevant and 64 percent state the same for brands that send too frequently.“

But even the staunchest advocates might be taken by surprise at the actual data-backed dollar value of investments into personalization. $20 or more in ROI is a huge lift.

Advanced vs. Basic: Where Do You Fall?

Achieving that kind of drastic ROI movement is only accessible to brands that implement what the report calls advanced personalization. The report goes on to reveal that brands reaching advanced personalization see about 17 percent higher revenue than those that don’t. But what does that mean?

The analysis identifies advanced personalization tactics as those that “leverage real-time data to deliver superior individualized experiences.” That includes rules-based personalization that leverages real-time signals (think live inventory levels or stream-based click behavior) as well as personalization of email messages at the time of open (adapting to immediate environmental data like time of day and weather, or real-time profile information like current loyalty account status).

Despite advanced personalization’s tremendous potential to propel ROI and revenue forward, many brands fall short on delivering that crucial component of real-time relevance. Almost 90 percent of marketers say they’re implementing some kind of personalization, but that figure is largely limited to elementary tactics like an individualized ‘First Name’ or subject line.

The adoption of more sophisticated tactics falls off quickly after that for ‘intermediate’ personalization based on factors like purchase history and CRM-recorded location. And barely half of the respondents reported using any real-time data at all.

Real-Time = Real Results

It’s clear that advanced personalization can be a driving factor in improving Marketing effectiveness and achieving that stellar $20+ in ROI. Further, the key between advanced personalization and more rudimentary individualization is the use of real-time data to deliver immediate, persistent relevance.

This brings up an obvious question; if you’re one of the many Marketing programs not currently making widespread use of real-time personalization, how can you upgrade your Marketing from basic to real-time relevance?

Fortunately, adapting real-time personalization into your messaging has never been more accessible. And no, you don’t need an army of developers, a mountain of surplus budget to spend, or even a huge amount of data.

According to the report, many of the obstacles to advanced personalization are quickly becoming more manageable for Marketing teams. And next-generation advanced personalization technology is making it possible to generate highly-personalized experiences on a very broad scale, even with limited technical resources.

Read the full report to learn more about what’s possible with real-time personalization and how leading retailers are achieving it, with an inspiring case study from Hot Topic!