This fragmentation usually results in work about work.
Ensure your personalization platform has strong integrations with the tools and platforms where your data is stored. Also, make sure the platform enables a holistic view of the customer and allows you to efficiently manage your audiences.
Start small
Walk before you run, run before you scale and stick with your most reliable data points while focusing on relevant business outcomes.
If you don’t have a ton of data or it’s spotty, focus on the data you do have, and what you can most accurately measure.
Personalization will only lead to new business opportunities when it’s nearly fully operational. If you’re struggling to get your personalization off the ground, focusing on your most trusted data and tried-and-true segments will help you build a solid foundation for the future.
Keep an eye on content
You won’t get very far with personalization if you don’t have a large inventory of content or products.
All of the workflows you’ll design, strategies you’ll implement, and data you’ll collect will all be done with one clear goal; to deliver the right content to the right customer at the right time.
The problem is that you’ll need a ton of content or products to effectively enable personalization. Your customers won’t really need a nudge in any direction if you only have 5 pieces of content on your site or a handful of products.
At some point, if you want to succeed with personalization, you’ll need a scalable content strategy that provides a diversity of content assets to customers at various stages of the customer journey.
Start experimenting
If you’ve already begun personalization but it’s not going well, consider how experimentation can help. Multi-armed bandits, which refer to a type of A/B testing that uses machine learning algorithms to dynamically allocate traffic to variations that are performing well, while allocating less traffic to variations that are underperforming, are effective since they show the best-performing option in real-time and automatically direct traffic to the best experience. This approach not only optimizes engagement but also continually refines your strategy to ensure your campaigns are always aligned with user preferences.
In fact, executives are already recognizing that experimentation provides benefits including:
Identifying mistakes (40%).
Allowing for data-driven decisions (40%).
Testing strategies before they run them (39%).
Personalizing customer experiences (39%).
Discovering which personalization strategies work (39%).
Organize your data
Earlier, we mentioned 44% of executives noted omplicated or fragmented data is a top challenge, while about the same amount noted a lack of effective analytics holds them up.
One way to guarantee data won’t be an issue is with a powerful customer data platform (CDP).
Instead of tearing everything down and starting from scratch with your data that’s strewn about countless data warehouses and data clouds, leverage a CDP to keep track of constantly accumulating data. This is especially important for personalization, as you want to ensure you’re surfacing the right data at the right time to the right customers.
Ever hear of AI?
Do you need AI to execute personalization? Well, no, but it would make things a whole lot easier.
Scalability – AI will dynamically adjust workflows and route users towards personalized experiences instantly.
Enhanced user experience – Adaptability and real-time personalization are also much more attainable with an AI engine steering the ship.
Content recommendations – Manually surfacing content will take an extraordinary amount of resources. At some point, the juice won’t be worth the squeeze. Allowing AI to scan your content repository to surface relevant content will drastically save time.
Recap
Personalization isn’t just some fancy buzzword or corporate jargon. It’s changing the way organizations are connecting with customers. As companies continue to step up their personalization game, those who successfully navigate these challenges will be better positioned to meet rising consumer expectations, build stronger customer relationships, and deliver personalized experiences.
Optimizely Personalization is a purpose-built solution that empowers organizations to create 1:1 personalized experiences. With Optimizely Personalization, brands can create targeted experiences that drive conversions, deliver high-performing experiences in real-time, measure ROI, and plan and ideate, all from a single platform.