Dive Brief:
- Personalization is a marketing goal, and buzzword, but is difficult in practice for most marketers.
- Research from VB Insight found that 80% of surveyed marketers and vendors don’t know anything about their customers beyond basic demographics and purchase history.
- In the same study, 96% of respondents said building a comprehensive view of individual customers is a challenge.
Dive Insight:
Any marketers reading about what they should be doing are likely finding out that personalization should be a marketing goal. There’s a wealth of data available from many source and touch points, from email to the website to social media, and the savvy marketer is taking advantage of all that information that provides detail down to the individual level. In reality, this is a serious challenge for marketers. Recent research by VB Insight found 96% of the responding marketers and vendors reported building a comprehensive view of individual customers was a challenge, and 80% said they didn’t know anything past basic demographic information and purchase history about their customers.
Andrew Jones, an analyst at VB Insight and author of the report, told VentureBeat, “The first element is data collection. This is all about picking up the digital breadcrumbs from each customer interaction.”
One particular challenge is prospective customers aren’t letting marketers know who they are until right before they decide to make a purchase. According to the study, B2C 98% of buyers don’t log onto the ecommerce until they are ready to purchase, and B2B prospects go 57% to 90% down the pipeline before they ever raise their hand and let the marketer know they exist.