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Definitive Guide: Personalization Statistics to Guide Strategy & Tactics
Personalization works. The challenge for marketers is understanding how to proceed.
This guide will aggregate stats about personalization. We've collected personalization statistics through 2018 to guide eCommerce stores, revealing current trends and a clear picture of which tactics you should implement in 2019.
Personalization Increases Conversions & Builds Customer Relationships
According to research by Epsilon Marketing, 80% of consumers are more likely to do business with a company that offers personalized experiences.
The question is, which "personalized experiences" do customers want? One challenge with personalization is its ambiguity. While we will explore a variety of specific tactics, it is helpful to specify the biggest benefits customers receive from personalization.
Which Personalization Tactics are Working Today?
We covered a number of personalization examples here.
According to the same Epsilon study, the three most common personalization tactics customers cite are:
We've demonstrated how effective personalizing product recommendations can be.
Customers who click on recommendations have a 70% higher purchase rate.
However when we test generic recommendations (such as category best sellers) vs personalized recommendations based on their web behavior and past purchases, recommendations become almost twice as effective (1.7x).
How are Personalization Efforts Effecting Conversion Rates
Instead of looking at the perspective of customers, Evergage surveyed how companies see personalization effect their internal metrics and KPIs, including conversion rates and profits.
They found near consensus about the positive impact of personalization. 98% of markers see how personalization advances customer relationships. Of those, 74% say that personalization has a strong or extreme impact. 53% experience increases over 10% in their main KPIs.
Create 1:1 Product Recommendations: See how Barilliance updates product recommendations in real time here.
Personalization Statistics Demonstrating Positive Effect on Conversions, Profits, and Customer Relationships
Personalization Adoption Statistics and Trends
Email is the most popular channel for personalization
Despite the statistics showing personalization increases conversions and revenues, adoption is still slow.
In 2018, email is by far the most popular channel for personalization.
However, we see a huge divergence in the level of personalization within email. Some companies report personalization despite only using basic tactics like placing customer name or product data into subject lines.
The next level of personalization would be segmenting customers based on past purchases. Pairing specific product promotions to different customer segments is more effective than sending the same email to everyone.
The highest level of personalization incorporates tactics like dynamically changing email messages on open to reflect changes in inventory, presenting "fresh" recommendations, and incorporating offline integration .
Upgrade Your Email Personalization: See how Barilliance helps eCommerce companies create 1:1 experience via email here.
Companies have still not adopted across all necessary channels
Despite the high adoption in email, companies have been slow to adopt personalization in other channels.
Below is a cross-section of survey results from three independent studies. Across the board, there is a significant drop between email and the next popular channel (website personalization).
Channel | Econsultancy | Sailthru | Evergage |
|---|---|---|---|
90% | 91% | 77% | |
Website | 53% | 44% | 52% |
Social Media | 27% | 26% | N/A |
Offline/In-Store | 15% | 2% | N/A |
Mobile App | 14% | 21% | 31% |
Even basic website personalization is lacking.
We’ve shown how important it is to cater to returning customers. Returning customers convert 73.72% more than new visitors, and spend on average 16.15% more per transaction.
Despite this, it is reported that only 36% of companies create personalized experiences for returning customers.
Connecting Digital and Offline Channels Lags the Most
Incorporating omnichannel strategies in personalization campaigns is the least adopted channel.
As low as 2% of surveyed stores had incorporated personalization in offline channels. This is a shame. Offline customer data can fuel store's communication by triggering post-purchase sequences, loyalty campaigns, and personalizing message content.
One bright spot in omnichannel personalization is grocery stores. Grocery as an industry leverages digital channels to stay in front of customers. They use in-store data, such as time since last purchase, previous purchases, and more to personalize digital coupons and offers. These offers are most commonly sent via email, but are also sent through mobile apps and social platforms.
Personalization Adoption Statistics
Next Steps...
This guide gives you a good overview of personalization statistics in 2018.
If you want to improve your personalization efforts, you need to accomplish two things.
First, you need to consider the four major challenges in pursuing personalization. You need to understand data unification issues, the challenges of cross-device continuity, segmentation opportunities, and personalization capabilities. We broke all four done here.
Next, you want to consider which personalization technology partner is best for your store. To see how Barilliance addresses all of these personalization challenges, request a demo here.
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