Concerns are growing among the enterprise community about the future of hyper-personalized communication. The influential advisory giant, Gartner, has predicted that, by 2025, poor return on investment (ROI) and the risks of customer data management will force 80% of marketers who have invested to abandon it. Indeed, it goes on to cite burgeoning regulation, increasing distrust by consumers and technology companies erecting tracking barriers as further contributors to personalization’s impending disappearance. However, there are solutions which can address these problems.
For any company wishing to adopt hyper-personalization, having a comprehensive overview of the customer is vital. This, however, requires the breaking down of operational silos between different departments so that all the data can be brought together. It also requires an intelligent platform that provides absolute visibility across all consumer touchpoints. The omniscient understanding of the consumer that this offers, gives brands the opportunity to deliver an enhanced customer experience and drive lasting value.
Overcoming communication challenges
In order to put a viable solution in place, for instance, many companies are seeking to utilize an array of enabling technologies, from AI, to data analytics, and advanced marketing tools. Unfortunately, such an approach can pose many trials, none moreso than the resultant significant in-house investment.
With regard to concerns over ROI, a single platform’s capacity to deliver the timely creation, approval and delivery of omnichannel communications ensures consumers are provided with the most appropriate information at the right times and via their preferred channels. This enables companies to build a platform from which these opportunities can be leveraged to increase sales.
The increasing value of data
Data is essential for personalized communications, but for companies to make effective use of it, they need better ways to harness its potential. Today, this means analyzing it using advanced technologies, such as artificial intelligence (AI). These tools provide meaningful insights which empower companies to devise customer- engaging communication strategies that deliver incisive targeting, end-to- end customer journey mapping and, when the most appropriate communication channels are employed, cost-efficiencies.
A key feature of hyper-personalization is omnichannel communication. Its importance lies in its ability to ensure that all interactions are carried out via the customers’ preferred channels, e.g. print, email, SMS and app notification, as this increases the likelihood that customers will see and act upon any messages in a timely manner.
Although personalization comprises 14% of the marketing budget, more than one in four marketing leaders cite technology as a major hurdle to its adoption. The increasing need to implement personalized communication strategies, therefore, puts companies in somewhat of a quandary as there is often a requirement for an intelligent technology- led approach.
The value of a managed service Modern customer communications management (CCM) systems offer the infrastructure needed to create a single, centralized platform that is capable of supporting high-volume, end-to-end, personalized communications, on demand. The value of a centralized communications platform that works across the entire customer journey is that it breaks down silos and increases the visibility of all communications between company and customer. As a result, customers receive a more unified communications experience from which conflicting messages or branding, distributed by differing internal departments, is eradicated. In doing so, some of the mistrust that has increasingly been seen as a major issue for personalization strategies can be avoided.
One solution being embraced by many companies is to work with a single, experienced communications partner. Such a partner can help overcome many of the issues that Gartner sees as hindering hyper-personalization and which are preventing companies from adopting data-driven communications. They empower companies to use their data to greater advantage and provide the intelligent technologies needed for complete customer overviews. At the same time, they supply the capacity to design, manage and deliver high-volume, personalized communications to customers, on-demand and via the channel of their choice, all from a unified, centralized platform.
