70% Of Consumers Want More Personalized Shopping Experiences

Sur­vey shows that the major­i­ty of con­sumers expect brands to offer per­son­al­iza­tion as stan­dard.

Pat Hong By Pat Hong from Linkdex. Join the discussion » 0 comments

With the busiest ecom­merce peri­od of the year now upon us, brands should look to col­lect the data nec­es­sary to bet­ter under­stand their con­sumers, with a view to deliv­er­ing per­son­al­ized expe­ri­ences in the near future. Increas­ing­ly, research is show­ing that this is what con­sumers are com­ing to expect from brands.


The mod­ern mar­keter faces many chal­lenges. While every­one else was enjoy­ing their Thanks­giv­ing turkeys last week, many mar­keters were acute­ly aware that the hol­i­day marks the begin­ning of the sin­gle most impor­tant com­mer­cial peri­od of the year.

For ecom­merce retail­ers, often months of plan­ning, strat­e­gy, and prepa­ra­tions will hinge on the results of sea­son­al mar­ket­ing per­for­mance. Suc­cess means not only hav­ing made the right call on which cam­paigns to run with, and on which chan­nels, but hav­ing the right tools, ana­lyt­ics, and mea­sure­ment set up to col­lect the data to empow­er future per­for­mance.

The sea­son­al shop­ping peri­od is cru­cial because suc­cess breeds suc­cess. Data col­lect­ed from high-per­form­ing cam­paigns is a pow­er­ful resource for mar­keters to bet­ter under­stand and devel­op insights about the way cus­tomers are behav­ing on their brand jour­neys.

Above all, data allows brands to cre­ate per­son­al­ized, unique and opti­mized expe­ri­ences for con­sumers – fine­ly tuned for each indi­vid­ual pref­er­ence. Often there’s a ten­sion between the lev­el of per­son­al­iza­tion being deliv­ered and the amount of data that con­sumers are being required to give up, and brands have had to tread this line care­ful­ly.

How­ev­er, recent research has shown that increas­ing­ly, con­sumers feel ready for per­son­al­ized expe­ri­ences and are will­ing to divulge a lit­tle data if it means mak­ing their lives eas­i­er.

Consumers Expect Personalized Experiences

In a sur­vey of more that 3,000 adult con­sumers in the U.S. and UK by dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing agency AgilOne, more than 70 per­cent of con­sumers said they expect per­son­al­ized expe­ri­ences with the brands they inter­act with. Above all, con­sumers expect­ed brands to “remem­ber how long a per­son has been a cus­tomer,” and to “remem­ber past pur­chas­es.” personalization-expectation The sur­vey’s find­ing are par­tic­u­lar­ly poignant as they present a direct rep­re­sen­ta­tion of how con­sumers feel about the data that is being col­lect­ed front them, and how it is being imple­ment­ed.

Key stats from AgilOne’s “Mar­ket­ing Per­son­al­iza­tion Pref­er­ences” report:

  • More than 79 per­cent of U.S. con­sumers and 70 per­cent of UK con­sumers expect per­son­al­ized expe­ri­ences from the brands they shop with.
  • More than 50 per­cent of con­sumers in the U.S. and UK expect­ed ecom­merce sites to remem­ber their past pur­chas­es.
  • Among U.S. shop­pers, the most pop­u­lar per­son­al­ized expe­ri­ences were emails offer­ing dis­counts on prod­ucts they pre­vi­ous­ly viewed (66 per­cent), alerts when prod­ucts they like are on sale (57 per­cent) and VIP cus­tomer appre­ci­a­tion rewards (51 per­cent).
  • Con­sumers in the U.S. were gen­er­al­ly more like­ly to expect online retail­ers to per­son­al­ize expe­ri­ences than those in the UK. For exam­ple, where­as half of Amer­i­cans said they would like to receive a new cus­tomer wel­come greet­ing, only 34 per­cent of UK con­sumers agreed.
  • Mil­len­ni­als, or shop­pers aged 18–34, were much more like­ly to appre­ci­ate almost all forms of per­son­al­iza­tion, with 52 per­cent expect­ing brands to remem­ber their birth­days com­pared to just 20 per­cent of shop­pers aged 65 and over.
  • Per­son­al­iza­tion of emails is much more pop­u­lar and well received than per­son­al­iza­tion of dis­play adver­tis­ing, with 66 per­cent of U.S. con­sumers and 57 per­cent of UK con­sumers wel­com­ing email retar­get­ing, but only 24 per­cent of U.S. con­sumers and 17 per­cent of UK con­sumers wel­com­ing web-based retar­get­ing.

personalization-appreciation

What Personalization Really Means

While con­sumers may expect per­son­al­iza­tion from the brands they pur­chase from, deliv­er­ing real per­son­al­iza­tion can be com­pli­cat­ed. The exact lev­el of per­son­al­iza­tion that con­sumers expect varies from per­son to per­son. For exam­ple, many peo­ple appre­ci­ate email dis­counts (66 per­cent), while many less appre­ci­ate pop-up offers (24 per­cent in the U.S., and just 17 per­cent in the UK).

As con­sumer expec­ta­tions grow, it won’t be too long before a defin­ing char­ac­ter­is­tic of lead­ing brands will be in the lev­el and qual­i­ty of per­son­al­ized expe­ri­ences that they are able to pro­vide. In the future, it will be crit­i­cal for brands to iden­ti­fy and tar­get shop­pers with con­tent, offers, and mes­sages they want to see, and will be recep­tive to, with insights gained from analysing the data they are able to col­lect.

In the mean­time, just one thing is cer­tain: mar­keters have a busy month ahead.

You can down­load AgilOne’s full report here.

Pat Hong

Written by Pat Hong

Editor at Linkdex/Inked, Linkdex

Pat covers the SEO industry, digital marketing trends, and anything and everything around Linkdex. He also authors Linkdex's data analysis and reports, analysing the state of search in various industries.

Inked is published by Linkdex, the SEO platform of choice for professional marketers.

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