Every marketer knows what personalization is, that’s why first names are so common in emails. But only half of marketers will personalize content beyond this, putting customer relationships at risk.
There has been a greater focus on personalization and customer experience among marketers in recent years, but where do your industry peers actually stand?
At the turn of this year, DESelect ran a survey of marketers across the Salesforce Marketing Cloud ecosystem, finding 90 percent of marketers increased personalization efforts in the last year, but about half that number said their results didn’t return an appreciable ROI.
Our research revealed the challenges marketers face with personalization and ways to make those efforts truly resonate with subscribers. Plus, we recommended new solutions you can adopt for teams too reliant on technical personnel.
Read on to gain key takeaways from our 2023 State of Marketing Personalization report.
1. Marketers’ personalization efforts in the last year were time- and resource-intensive
Many marketers highlighted challenges in the past year with their personalization efforts. A primary challenge is the lack of resources to properly measure results from these efforts. Salesforce Marketing Cloud comes with many handy personalization features. However, marketing teams often rely on technical members who write the code necessary to leverage these tools.
According to many interviewed marketers, coordinating technical personnel with marketing teams is cost- and time-intensive. On average, most marketers need at least 17 people, including technical personnel, involved in every marketing campaign. The resulting back-and-forths between these expansive teams mean most marketing teams waste about 16 hours a week.
This reliance also keeps teams inflexible amid constantly changing marketing environments. Altering the scope of a campaign, even changing the criteria of a single send, can drastically delay operations as technical marketers have to spend hours realigning segmentations.
2. Marketers say they will increase their personalization efforts this year
Despite the disappointing results many marketers had from their personalized campaigns last year, more creative marketers are willing to increase investments in their personalization efforts this year. According to our findings, 54 percent of Marketing Cloud marketers are looking beyond out-of-the-box solutions to better personalize their messages.
As customers now seek more unique experiences from companies, businesses seeking long-term relevance must discover how to improve their personalization strategies to meet demand.
Pro tip: When organizing your creative briefs, ask yourself “What is personalization going to look like in this campaign?” Establishing the data you’re going to need and the personalization strings you’re going to include during the planning stage prevents audience targeting from becoming an afterthought.
For example: A banking company running a late payment campaign would need to plan how to access data extensions with fields for Customers, Next Installment Date, and Fee Calculation to incorporate them into messaging.
3. Making the most of Salesforce Marketing Cloud’s segmentation, dynamic content, and AMPscript requires technical knowledge
Marketing teams without the technical resources to leverage Salesforce Marketing Cloud’s personalization tools, such as dynamic content and personalization strings, spend more time than desired writing SQL and AMPScript queries or use surface-level personalization techniques, often with unimpressive results to show.
Conversely, teams with technical marketing members still have to endure high costs, wasted time, and misappropriated talents to leverage Salesforce personalization tools. These factors eat into team budgets and pull technical experts away from other priorities. These challenges call for more effective Salesforce Marketing Cloud solutions.
4. Automated solutions are becoming more popular alternatives
Considering the disconnect between what is driving personalization and actual resources available, nimble marketing teams need reliable third-party software that non-techy marketers can quickly understand without extensive training. Such tools can help marketers personalize messaging beyond just the customers’ names and increase the chances of converting their target consumers.
As one of these reliable marketing enablement platforms for Marketing Cloud users, DESelect Segment is an automated segmentation tool that allows marketers of any background to create specific segments and open the door to extensive personalization. Segment lets you get personalization right with a simple, intuitive drag-and-drop interface anybody can quickly learn. Revitalize your marketing team and redirect your technical team to higher-value tasks.
Now the power of Segment is instantly available!
With DESelect Segment Free, marketers take advantage of the same easy drag-and-drop segmentation features – with none of the cost.
