Introduction

It is an innate human craving to be understood. We choose life partners that understand us, and it should not surprise anyone if customers prefer a brand that understands them better.
This makes the knowledge of consumer behavior and customer journey highly significant. Those who understand better can create personalized experiences, products and services for their customers. Personalization is a very powerful differentiator. 

In the wake of a global pandemic, majority customer interactions largely moved online, making personalization more relevant for the digital customer experience.

Let’s look at some key stats:

• 80% of consumers are more likely to purchase from a brand offering personalized experiences.
• 63% of consumers will switch loyalty due to poor personalization tactics.
• Personalized shopping cart recommendations influenced 92% of buying decisions. 

What is Personalization Technology?
Personalization technology refers to a set of software tools that collect, store, and manage customer data to choreograph individualized experiences.

Here is a tech stack worth considering:

• Product recommendation engine
• Dynamic pricing software
• Intelligent site search
• Conversational commerce bots

According to the latest ITSMA survey, this is the typical personalization marketer’s toolbox:

The benefits of personalization technology 

• Better customer experience: The customer journey is now more, and generic content frustrates customers, and half expect personalization as a standard service.
• Higher conversion rates: According to a Monetate report, the more personalized pages a customer sees, the higher the conversion rates, a 20% increase in sales.
• Reduced Cart Abandonment: A staggering 80% of users abandon their carts. Personalization helps lower it.
• Increased average order value (AOV): A Salesforce’s report states that 69% of buyers expect Amazon-like buying experiences
• Improved customer loyalty: Loyal customers are the holy grail of long-term, sustainable business success. Build brand loyalty and stand out in the noisy digital world by implementing data-driven personalization strategies.

Personalization maturity curve: The right technology initiates the company in the right direction. It depends upon the digital maturity of the company to choose a technology that looks futuristic or is efficient. The personalization maturity curve signifies the different phases, tactics, and expected returns of a personalization strategy. 

Personalization technology trends for 2021

Here are the trends not to be missed:

Trend #1: Unified Personalization Solutions : The rise of eCommerce personalization from consumers and businesses spills over everywhere. Yieldify’s “Personalization after COVID-19” report sheds light on the current challenges:

• 37% say lack of expertise 
• 36% said tools still lack functionality;
• 34% said tools are too expensive;
• 23% said drafting a personalization strategy is a too complicated project;

The rise of this unified solution, an all-in-one solution makes sense as it facilitates all or parts of the functionality, such as segmentation, real-time optimization, testing, and experimentation. Omnichannel experiences across the web, mobile, email, SMS, etc. are solutions for present times. 

Trend #2: Decoding the Anonymous Visitors: Given the challenges for ordinary users are high, the task is further uphill to personalize for an anonymous user. There are ways and personalization technology is increasingly developing on its own or integrating with customer data platforms (CDPs) and 3rd-party data service providers (DSPs).

Trend #3: Leveraging IoT devices: IoTs are the newest cradle of data. Smartwatches, smart speakers, TVs, smart appliances, home automation, health tracking devices, and much more. These devices run our lives and are a source of valuable data that can be used for effective and true 1:1 personalization.

Trend#4: Personalized Offerings: Though the trend of allowing personal products is very old, giving power to the customer to design the product or service it needs is still new. Companies are following a platform approach to allow customers to create their personalized products. For more information, Case Study. 

Trend#5: Platformization: From Amazon to Slack, the remarkable success of platforms has solid reasons behind it. It integrates a variety of stakeholders on the value chain and thus diverse customers also come to the platform. It is also a treasure trove of data to create personalized offerings as better customer understanding can be achieved with a platform approach. 

Conclusion

Personalization is just a way of saying you care; care enough to listen to your customers and willing to make changes to serve them better. Technology is just a means to deliver on the promise of customer delight. A whole host of technology personalization tools help automate a lot of processes and versatile platforms are perfect places to listen and change.