• by Ray Schultz , May 8, 2017

Email is the most widely used personalization channel in the UK, as it is in the U.S.

Of 250 UK marketing executives surveyed by Jaywing, a data solutions provider, 95% deploy individual-level email personalization. 

Within that group, however, 40% of the emails “are not personalized beyond ‘Hello, first name,’ Jaywing writes. And personalization is used sparingly in other channels: Direct mail is personalized by 43%. Web sites by 37%, display ads by 20% and social media by 9% in social media.

The email results are “unsurprising, based on how far behind most brands are along the personalization maturity curve,” Jaywing writes. 

Overall, 8% said their firms conduct full cross-channel personalization, and 27% that they provide individual customer experiences across some channels.

In addition, 25% offer segmentation-level across some channels, and 35% deploy basic personalization — i.e., “hello first name.” Add 5% have no personalization.

Some of this lag is due to limited ability to parse data. And that may have to do with corporate priorities. Only 23% of the respondents rate data science and analytics as important, compared to 60% who say that about brand management and 37% who prioritize content marketing as important. Yet 92% note that data management is a priority for their marketing function in 2017.

How do they stand up to their competitors in terms of data analytics? About 45% feel they have parity. But 30% say they’re ahead, and 11% that they’re significantly ahead. Meanwhile, 12% say they are behind and 2% say significantly so.

The most advanced companies are telecoms and utilities -- 51% outrank their peers, compared to 41%for retail, and travel and leisure, and 33% for finance marketers.

Asked to name their top three data-driven priorities for 2017, 62% cited improving the customer contact strategy. In addition, 56% identified improving customer retention strategies and 43% cited acquiring more high-level customers 

However, only 30% specified adopting predictive analytics to predict customers’ next steps, and 23% adopting advanced marketing attribution. 

Having a robust data science operation “makes the difference between being able to say “Hello first name” on an email to being able to fully tailor timely communications based on an individual’s current and future needs,” Jaywing writes. 

Meanwhile, 82% of the brands polled rely on single-touch attribution, primarily the first, last and most engaged channel. In addition, 455 measure ROI at the channel level, using free tools such as Google Analytics.

“The majority of marketers (69%) either agree or highly agree that accurately attributing value across channels is vitally important to their organization,” Jaywing writes. “Yet a significant proportion of marketers are still in the process of working out the correct metrics to measure ROI.”  

A recent study by Evergage -- mostly of U.S. marketers -- found that 72% use email for personalization  and that 71% rate it as very or extremely important. But there were challenges here, too, with only 45% agreeing that their personalization is right.