• by Ray Schultz , Columnist, December 1, 2017

Email is a key data source in personalization, second only to website behavioral data. But there are signs it is maturing, and it is not equally used as a marketing channel by all industries, according to a new study by Monetate. 

For example, retailers use triggered email 75% of the time, compared to 54% for travel and hospitality firms and 35% for financial services institutions. 

Retailers are ahead in other ways, too. They are more likely to use demographics and other attributes to alter digital experiences, versus 51% for travel and hospital and 56% for financial services. And they are at least slightly more likely to derive profit from these efforts.

But they may be moving away from email: The use of that channel as a data source has declined from 2016 among retailers, whereas website behavioral data and purchase history has increased significantly. 

And travel and hospitality providers are the most likely to enjoy 3X return on their investment, and retailers are second.  

Overall, email systems are the most able to receive outputs from personalization technology, especially by financial services firms. But retailers give a slight edge to websites in this area.

Only 13% of the North American respondents rank themselves as advanced in implementing a personalization strategy: overall, retailers lead the way. But the percentage is 6% in the UK. Firms in that country are more prone to be at the beginning stage.

Data quality ranks as the most serious impediment, up from sixth place last year. But retailers are less likely than firms in the other segments to rank that as the top obstacle. In North America, the main hurdles are:

1. Data quality — 23%
2. Understanding buyer behavior in context — 20%
3. Building a sustainable data architecture — 17%
4. Creating compelling offers and content — 13%
5. Integrating third-party data — 10%
6. Automating decisions at scale — 9%
7. Understanding who to personalize (which experiences should I send to each channel) — 8%
8. Assembling a real-time view of your customer will full context — 7%
9. Organizational constraints/silos make it difficult to hold anyone accountable to personalize goals — 2%

The survey also found:

• Over 70% of firms that experienced profitability increases have a personalization strategy, compared to less than 20% for those with decreased profitability.
• North American companies are twice as likely as their British counterparts to be advanced in personalization.
• There has been a dramatic personnel shift — “almost everyone has at least one resource dedicated to personalization, except those with no documented personalization plan,” the study states.  

Monetate surveyed 513 marketers.