Personalization gets more than its share of hype. But 80% of firms that have invested in it will drop the whole thing by 2025, according to a study by Gartner Inc.
The reasons are lack of ROI and/or the perils of customer data management.
In fact, 27% of marketers list data collection, integration and protection as the chief barriers to personalization.
Gartner also projects that one third of all brand public relations disasters will be caused by data ethics failures by 2023.
In addition, CMO budget allocations for influencer marketing will decrease by a third as consumers lose trust in brands and entities they don’t know.
“Consumers have developed an increasingly jaundiced eye toward marketers’ efforts to embrace them,” states Charles Golvin, senior director analyst in the Gartner for Marketers practice.
Golvin adds that "their increasingly cluttered email inboxes and mobile phone notification centers may lead them to ignore even the most carefully personalized and contextualized message.”
Gartner also predicts that:
I'm confused. Author after author proclaims that consumers want brands to know what they want when they want it and deliver it seamlessly. This seems to fly in the face of those pronouncements. Take away our personalization and we might as well step back to the 2000s.
I believe Gartner is correct if we continue to do marketing like we are now. However, it's never to early to re-invent marketing models that address consumer and political calls for change. If we keep looking at the past, we will never see the future. Don't abandon personalization. Re-energize it for the 2020s.