By Simon Dale, Managing Director, Southeast Asia & Korea at Adobe
According to the Malaysian government’s MyDigital Progress Report, Malaysia’s digital consumers have increased up to 88% of the population in the past year, with 46% of them actively involved in online purchases. However, the quick and comprehensive shift to online channels over the last two years has exacerbated some of the struggles that brands have always dealt with in terms of scaling personalized digital experiences.
Research by Econsultancy and Adobe in the 2022 Digital Trends Experience Index indicates that the pace of change is not going to slow down any time soon. In fact, 87% of senior executives believe we’re operating in a new world, with digitally rewired customer expectations, that’s impacting how businesses should sell to and engage with customers moving forward.
Importance of accelerating personalization at scale strategies
Personalization at scale is imperative because, quite frankly, customer expectations require it. Customers are interacting with brands through more channels, which means more data is coming in from more (potentially disjointed) sources. It also means that tailored content must be delivered to more places.
Change is happening fast, and it’s not just a matter of keeping up. Digital consumers today have increasingly sophisticated expectations, and they are always comparing their experience with the brand, as opposed to the most recent best experience they had. Because many organizations are scrambling to respond, now is the time to take action.
Personalization at scale: the basics
While many organizations have incorporated a digital-first strategy into their marketing efforts, that may not be enough. Customer expectations demand a more personal and consistent experience. Utilizing the right data at the right time through an end-to-end personalization strategy at scale is how you can meet that demand.
It’s an approach that makes sure businesses are ready to personalize any and every customer touchpoint based on immediate context as well as previously observed behavior. The ultimate purpose is to present the most relevant and personalized experience possible every time, in real time.
Of course, this requires that businesses to ask a handful of key questions about their data:
- How do we structure and unify all our data so that we can draw insights and activate it into personalized experiences?
- How do we ensure proper data governance, privacy, and security?
- How do we identify the right data at the right time to build the right experience?
- How do we connect and analyze our data in the moment to activate personalized experiences across any channel at scale?
To win customer attention and loyalty, businesses need to know how to use the right data at the right time – this is where technologies and data sources can help organizations deliver more personalized experiences. For example, Adobe’s Real-Time Customer Data Platform allows organizations to collect, normalize, and unify consumer and professional data into real-time customer and account profiles for personalizing, targeting, and engaging customer experiences at scale. What’s needed now is an authority that can provide a roadmap for moving forward.
The return on investment of personalization at scale
While accelerating growth through personalized customer engagement can feel like a daunting endeavor, the benefits you can achieve are well worth the effort.
Adobe’s own research on customer engagement and personalization reveals that experience-driven businesses are more likely to:
- Drive greater customer retention and lifetime value
- Have happier employees
- Cultivate competitive advantage at every stage of the customer life cycle
Implementing a scaled personalization strategy that aligns with an organization’s objectives and specific customer expectations not only fosters greater customer and employee contentment, but it’s ultimately good for a business’ bottom line.
