How to Get Started With Personalization

Personalization can seem like a daunting initiative to take on, but it has been done by many others before you and has brought success to those organizations. So, you can take on this task with the learnings and insights we’ve gathered for you, and the confidence of knowing that when you pull this off, you’ll come out looking like the hero. Here are the steps to take to get going:

Step 1: Get leadership support.

You’ll need to work with people across various departments including IT, Marketing, Data Analytics, Product Dev/Engineering, and Sales to think and do things differently than they have been done before. This will require significant time, and therefore it’s essential that leadership not only buy into the initiative but that they champion it.

Step 2: Start small.

Rome wasn’t built in a day, and neither was Amazon’s recommendation engine. If you want to be successful, don’t try to solve everything in your first quarter. Pick one objective: retention, acquisition, loyalty, increased basket size, etc. Then, pick just one persona and one channel to run a small test pilot. This makes it manageable for you and most importantly it’s an idea your CEO and CFO can easily get behind. Once you have some success, then you can begin to scale. 

Step 3: Assess your resources.

Start with an assessment of where you are and what your resources are. You will need to decide whether you have the resources and skillsets in-house to fulfill the roles/capabilities you will need in order to begin delivering on personalization. 

Step 4: Assess your tech stack.

Whether this is done internally or by an outside party, an objective audit of your tech stack is also essential to determine what gaps exist and what integrations are necessary.

Step 5: Assess your data.

This involves an analysis of not only what you are capturing but how you are handling and processing your data. This includes your partners, who may be processors and must comply with the latest pesky privacy laws in effect. Consent-driven data must be managed and used carefully, that’s why the word ‘governance’ is creeping its way into Marketing and Data. Consumer privacy is important and when leveraged correctly, it can build trust with your consumers. But, you need to understand all of this in order to put your data to work for you.

Personalization is no small feat, but it’s time to get started or risk being left behind, and you don’t have to do it alone.