There is much hype about email personalization. Yet only 49% of retailers have personalized their email, according to Ecommerce Personalization Benchmark Report 2021, a study from Netcore, conducted by Wakefield Research.
At that, email is the leader. Only 48% are are providing personalized search results, while 47% are providing product displays, 45% are giving discounts and 38% provide home pages.
Despite that, 62% of retailers claim they have improved their personalized shopping experience over the past year. However, only 45% of consumers say they see first-rate personalization.
And execution does seem to be lagging — 41% of retail executives say their ecommerce platform is somewhat personalized at best. And only 13% provide a completely personalized experience.
Why this trouble? Retailers cite these challenges:
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There’s a price for brands that fail to overcome these problems: For one thing, 36% of shoppers are more likely to unsubscribe from emails if the messages aren’t relevant to them.
And 24% of shoppers are more likely to abandon their cart if the offers are not relevant.
Worse, 91% would abandon an online retailer over a poor shopping experience in general.
On a more positive note, 60% of retailers say their average order values leaps by 10% or more after personalization. And 41% see a similar increase or more in average revenue per user.
And 75% report pulling 10+ page view per customer post-personalization, versus 51% before.
Moreover, they see a 1.65% average conversion rate afterwards, compared to a 1.14% rate prior to personalization. And personalization helped them reduce the average cart abandonment rates from 60% to 46%.
Retailers seem to be ahead of shoppers in several areas.
For instance, 59% plan to focus on visual search, while 40% of consumers are waiting for it.
And 56% of retail brands plan to focus on hyper-personalization. But only 21% of shoppers are awaiting that
Another 46% of ecommerce companies expect to focus on touchless shopping, and 29% of shoppers are waiting.
Expectations are closer when it comes to augmented and virtual reality — 34% of firms plan to concentrate on them, and 27% are waiting.
Here’s one more state to keep in mind. Of the brands polled, 71% have seen at least 4X ROI with personalization. But 87% acknowledge they could improve their personalization efforts.
Wakefield Research surveyed 200 U.S. ecommerce executives and 600 consumers between Feb. 24 and March 10, 2021.