Dynamic Yield, the Experience Optimization platform, announced the results of its fourth annual report on the State of Personalization Maturity, exposing greater levels of adoption than in recent years, synchronous with the pandemic’s acceleration of digital.
Representing the most comprehensive study in the market, every year, Dynamic Yield elicits global responses from individuals in the C-Suite, Marketing, Merchandising, CX, Product, and IT to understand how companies are tailoring the customer experience as part of their larger business strategy. Designed by seasoned personalization practitioners, the survey is made up of 16 questions that assess criteria such as internal commitment to personalization, allocation of resources, process implementation, access to data, technology stack integration, and more to determine a company’s maturity level: Absent, Basic, Advanced, Pioneer.
Over the last two years, the world has seen COVID-19 force businesses to transform operations to not only meet the increased demand for digital but also keep a new wave of competition at bay. And in 2021, Dynamic Yield’s research definitively shows that personalization has been an integral part of that work, reflective in the majority of companies now reporting an Advanced level of maturity, moving the industry forward from Basic for the first time in years.
The supporting findings are as follows:
- Consistent over the last four years, the vast majority of organizations believe in the value of personalization (93%), with its benefits continuing to crystalize as the lion’s share of experiences have moved online, and the need to cater to an individual’s in-the-moment needs, intrinsically clear.
- Up more than 10% from last year, 50% of companies have made personalization a top priority within the company and plan to invest more in the practice as a way to better position and future-proof the business throughout the growing digitalization of commerce in 2021 and beyond.
- To actualize the benefits of personalization versus merely recognizing its value, companies have finally started to invest in the proper people, time, and resources for orchestration, with 39% sharing that support is available on-demand when a business case is made for it (up 15% from 2020).
- Up 20% from 2020, 42% of companies now have at least a small team and some level of defined personalization processes in place to launch campaigns for certain channels, highlighting an important step after resource allocation to align and establish cooperation between key stakeholders.
- Historically difficult to make sense of or put into practice, as a result of the improved collaboration and efficiencies, more companies (45%) reported their data is available in real-time to inform marketing activities, a 17% uptick from last year.
- Overall, this has led to heightened instances of personalization on the site, with 31% of companies now able to tailor most digital interactions (up from only 10% in 2020), and 35% reporting quantitative success stories to back up their impact.
“The effect that the pandemic has had on personalization maturity can’t be understated,” said Yaniv Navot, the CMO at Dynamic Yield. “Companies that once simply valued the idea of personalization have finally started pumping sufficient resources into the people and processes required to turn data into scalable strategies that are leaving a tangible impact on their bottom line, which is a trend we believe will continue in 2022.”
According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the pandemic has created a swell of digitally enabled economic and social activity that is likely to remain high even as the pandemic dies down. To keep pace, this will necessitate ongoing investments in the area of personalization, specifically as it relates to unifying technology for the tailoring of cohesive experiences across channels, a major growth limitation flagged by most companies in the report.
Dynamic Yield’s 2021 State of Personalization Maturity Report included more than 450 responses across roles and sectors in the Americas (AMER), Europe and the Middle East (EMEA), and the Asia-Pacific (APAC) regions.
To participate and discover your own company’s personalization maturity level, visit: dynamicyield.com/personalization-maturity-survey.
About Dynamic Yield
Dynamic Yield helps enterprise brands quickly deliver and test personalized, optimized, and synchronized digital customer interactions. Marketing, Product, Development, and eCommerce teams from more than 400 global brands are using Dynamic Yield’s Experience Optimization platform as the technology layer that works alongside existing CMS, Commerce, or ESP solutions to iterate faster and algorithmically match content, products, and offers to each individual for the acceleration of long-term business value.