The personalisation mismatch: Rift grows between brand offerings and consumer desires

Buyers want customisation and service but brands offering discounts

Marketers still aren’t getting personalisation right, new research has revealed. According to Epsilon’s new report The Power of me: The impact of personalisation on marketing performance, there is a disconnect between marketers and consumers, with brands failing to understand what their customers want from personalisation.

The personalised experiences most wanted by consumers are customisation and service, with a third of consumers (32%) wanting brands to suit something exactly to them and their needs, and another third (32%) considering service, a company knowing their likes and dislikes, as the most important aspect of personalisation.

However, this does not correlate with the personalised experiences most commonly offered by brands. Brands aren’t focusing on customisation and service but are instead providing consumers with discounts and rewards programmes (31%) or simple recommendations based on previous purchases (22%). In fact, both of these factors are considered far less important by consumers (16% and 8% respectively).

“With the report revealing that 80% of consumers are more likely to do business with a company that offers personalised experiences, it’s a no-brainer. But brands need to be aware that there are so many factors within ‘personalisation’ and this doesn’t always mean saving money on your next purchase,” commented Elliott Clayton, SVP Media UK, Conversant.

Furthermore, beyond brands getting personalised experiences wrong, the report also reveals that almost a third (27%) of consumers feel that brands aren’t improving their personalisation and almost one in 10 (7%) believe brands are actually getting worse at personalisation.

“If consumers feel that brands are offering less personalisation, then clearly something is going very wrong,” concluded Clayton. “The only way for brands to truly understand their customers’ buying motivations and what their consumers want is to access insight on both past and real-time consumer actions and decisions through a true single customer view.

“However, they also need to be able to act on this insight, creating real one-to-one conversations, gradually building them up over time and across all their devices.”