Report: 86% of Marketers Now Have a Budget to Execute Personalized Customer Experiences

Marketers are still turning to personalization to drive customer loyalty, and according to new research, they are using a wide array of data points to achieve this.

Merkle recently published its “Customer Engagement Report” for Q4 2019, and statistics showed that 86% of marketers now have a defined budget to execute personalized messaging today. About 82% have toolsets to prioritize and coordinate personalized customer experiences across channels, and 89% have organizational structure to execute a personalized multi-channel marketing plan.

In addition, marketers are using several data points to achieve their customer personalization goals. The majority of respondents (86%) use third-party customer demographics. Seventy-one percent utilize customer account/history, and 70% use customers’ site activity. About 66% turn to email respondents, and 62% use loyalty redemptions.

Overcoming Customer Experience Obstacles

Despite having customer experience strategies in place, previous research suggests that not everything always goes according to plan for marketers.

Ascend2 conducted the “Strategies, Tactics and Trends for Customer Experience” survey, and statistics found that 47% of marketers have only been “somewhat successful” at achieving their primary goals through their customer experience plan.

Improving customer retention/satisfaction (61%), increasing value/reliability to the user (54%) and improving interactive design/ease of use (30%) are the top challenges for marketers who are trying to meet customer experience goals.

However, marketing budgets are set to grow in the coming months, which may help. The majority of respondents (71%) stated that their total budget dedicated to increasing customer experience is slated to “increase moderately” in the near future.