Report: Majority of Marketers Give their Personalization Efforts a Grade of ‘C’ or Lower

A large percentage of marketers are focusing on personalization, but the majority grade their efforts as average or below average, according to a new report.

The “2016 Trends in Personalization” study from Evergage has discovered that 85 percent of marketers are using personalization. However, 55 percent give themselves a grade of “C” or lower.

“Over the last 12 months, personalization has seen rapid and widespread adoption,” said Karl Wirth, co-founder and CEO of Evergage. “Now, companies must dig deeper into their initiatives, fine-tune what is working and embrace newer, more sophisticated methods of personalization.”

About 67 percent said they most frequently use personalization tactics in email, while 56 percent stated that they do so on their websites. Twenty-seven percent claimed they personalize their mobile websites, and 20 percent stated that they apply it to their mobile apps.

Approximately 74 percent said that personalization is “very” or “extremely” important to their company. This percentage trails closely behind other well-established marketing strategies such as SEO (79 percent), email (78 percent) and content marketing (75 percent).

However, 39 percent stated that a lack of an effective solution/technology, budget constraints, and a lack of knowledge/skills/people are holding them back.

The Impact of Personalized B2B Marketing Content

Despite the challenges, research shows that B2B marketers still value personalization based on its effectiveness. Demand Metric’s “Content Personalization Benchmark Study Report” found that 80 percent of B2B marketers who personalize their content believe that it’s more effective than generic content.

About 61 percent of B2B marketers say they currently personalize their content. Twenty-seven percent have a manual process to do so, while 40 percent use some form of automation in combination with manual processes.