There’s enough and more evidence that personalization at scale is the way to go for revenue teams, not just to acquire or retain customers but to deliver true buyer delight.
Some cold hard facts that will not be easy to ignore:
- Epsilon reports that 80% of customers are more likely to make a purchase from brands that offer personalized experiences.
- Neuroscience also proves that people buy on emotion and justify with logic.
- But it’s not all roses and sunshine. Back in 2019, Gartner predicted that 80% of revenue teams will abandon personalization efforts by 2025.
What Makes Personalization at Scale Challenging
The Gartner prediction, though a bit outdated today, is still massive! 80 out of 100 revenue teams are giving up on personalization simply because of implementation challenges, despite knowing the fruits that lay ahead.
So we decided to dig a little deeper on why personalization is such a challenge. All sources point to lack of data or actionable insights. Experian reports that 78% of brands struggle with relevant personalization due to “data debt” or not having enough quick data about their customers. Gartner confirms that suspicion.
Our friends at MarketingWeek, in an admittedly funny takedown against personalization, reduced their case against personalization to two simple words:
- Couldn’t
- Wouldn’t
Let’s tackle them one simple word after the other, shall we? 🙂
- Personalization At Scale – Couldn’t Work
Top reps of the world will tell you what a world of difference authentic personalization can bring to the table. Tools like Humantic AI (or even Crystal Knows) can help you personalize 1-1 conversations like never before.
That said, how do you do it at scale? How do you target thousands of people in one go, while still hyper-personalizing your messaging? This is a very real problem.
Or at least, it was. Until recently, it was humanly impossible to personalize revenue activities at scale. Strong emphasis on humanly. With the right kind of Artificial Intelligence in place, human limits simply go out of the picture. Humantic AI enables personalization at scale with its open API. Our customers use it for a variety of use-cases, but almost all of them are tied to the magic metric: ‘revenue’.
One of Humantic AI’s early customers, a global FinTech organization, knew personalized sales outreach would be a key pillar in their new market acquisition strategy. While they were on the lookout for a solution, they came across Humantic AI’s open API.
Now, the world’s foremost fintech company has seen firsthand that personalization at scale is not a pipe dream or a nice-to-have, but rather a real possibility with real benefits. They’ve since gone global with their Humantic AI rollout, thanks to a 36% improvement in time to first engagement, which is a significant bump – especially in new markets.
Learn more about the company and how they used Humantic AI here.
- Personalization At Scale – Wouldn’t Work
In the MarketingWeek takedown, there’s an argument that there has never been a wildly successful piece of personalized communication in human history.
A question: how would you measure the success of a personalized message?
By definition, a personalized communication is not set up for virality. Instead, it’s set up for a seemingly simple action – an email open, a click, a sales objection handled well. But that seemingly simple action has the power to turn a million dollar deal around. The success metrics here are determined by whether the recipient took the desired action, and that alone.
Sounds like a no-brainer but it bears repeating: personalized messaging is not replacing one-size-fits-all comms. It’s in addition to it.
For example, a personalized ABM campaign would make no real impact unless the audience has at least heard about you through a contextual awareness campaign.
You can’t make a PB&J without peanut butter. You can’t make one without jelly either. That’s just as true.
To adopt a holistic go-to-market strategy, you need creative campaigns that speak to a wider audience just as much as you need personalized communications that drive individual buyers to action. It’s not an either-or situation by any means.
Then there are some concerns whether personalization at scale works at all. Without sounding too biased, all I’ll say is that revenue teams have already started to adopt personalization at scale, and the results are astounding. See it for yourself.
To answer the question at hand, no, Personalization at Scale is not a paradox. It used to be… because of human limits. But with the power of AI, and in particular, the power of Personality AI, it’s not anymore. In fact, it’s simpler than you can imagine. We don’t have a 10/10 on the G2 Ease of Use scale for no reason. 🙂
