80% of Marketers Believe Personalized Content is More Effective Than ‘Unpersonalized’ Efforts

According to a recent study, 80 percent of B2B marketers who personalize content say it’s more effective than generic content efforts.

Out of 186 marketers surveyed in Demand Metric’s “Content Personalization Benchmark Study Report” in partnership with Seismic, 61 percent currently personalize their content.

The methods marketers use to personalize content vary: 27 percent have a manual process, 40 percent use some automation with manual processes, 28 percent mostly automate the process with occasional manual intervention, and 5 percent use a completely automated process.

According to researchers, “In some cases personalization technology isn’t being used for understandable reasons: personalization done well can increase content effectiveness significantly, but when automated processes aren’t tuned and managed well, personalization efforts can miss the mark.”

The majority of B2B marketers employ segment specific, persona specific, and account specific content personalization.

The respondents who do not currently personalize content cite lack of technology (59 percent), lack of resources (59 percent) and lack of necessary data (53 percent) as the top reasons for not personalizing.

The report also showed that 70 percent of B2B marketers cite generating leads is a top objective of content marketing efforts. An additional 64 percent of B2B marketers use content marketing to support the sales team and 58 percent use it to establish thought leadership.

Marketing Creatives See Content Personalization as Top Challenge

The “Future of Content” report from Rapt Media discovered that 83 percent of marketing content creators name personalization as their top challenge. In order to overcome this, marketers are using technology.

Ninety-four percent of respondents said better content technology is the key to creating personalized content that engages recipients. Jen Bergen, director of content marketing at Rapt Media says, “The results clearly show that we’ve reached a turning point where the need for better, more personalized content that can be measured and optimized is here.”