3 Personalization Trends that are most relevant in 2022
According to Gartner.com, Personalization is “A process that creates a relevant, individualized interaction between two parties designed to enhance the experience of the recipient.”
With the growing online presence of consumers, the digital platforms are constantly evolving. Personalized experiences are becoming an important part of the customer journeys as brands are competing heavily for their presence in the digital market.
In our current online experiences, chiefly for shopping, we are spoiled by the platforms that are intelligent enough to learn our likes-dislikes. These platforms then recommend options for further purchases along with options that could be bought together with our current purchase. Now that we are accustomed to such personalization, it is difficult to go back. One can only look forward to more pleasurable digital experiences.
Why do we need Personalization?
Personalization helps us in the following ways:
- Consumers prefer brands that provide them customized offers and recommendations as per their search history and preferences.
- Companies that use personalization see valuable ROI as they provide better visitor engagement and customer experiences.
- Personalization isn’t just about increasing revenue, it can also help to reduce customer acquisition costs.
- Marketers feel that personalization improves the customer-brand relationship.
- Brand loyalty increases among customers if they receive customized marketing communications.
Is Personalization the same as Customization?
Many marketers use the terms personalization and customization interchangeably but they are not the same and they represent a different use case and purpose. Let us understand these terms better.
Personalization is achieved when the platform tailors an experience based on customers’ past behavioral data. Here the customer data is used to predict future preferences and make recommendations. For example, Netflix personalizes its home page for each user based on that user’s previous searches and views.
Customization, on the other hand, is performed by the customer or user himself to suit his needs. For example: Facebook users can choose the content that they like best or they can turn on notifications for individual people, pages, or posts.
As per Google I/O 2021, the new responsive designs would use the user customizations to provide personalized experiences. For example, the preferences a user has set in their operating system, can be used to build a more robust and personalized web experience, especially for those with accessibility needs.
Personalization trends that are most relevant in 2022
Now that we’re aware of how important personalization is, let us have a look at some of the most relevant personalization trends in 2022.
Personalization Trend 1: Personalization in Metaverse
As the marketing strategies in the digital world and real world converge, the importance of personalization will only increase. Not just Artificial Intelligence and machine learning technology, but with recent developments in natural language processing, reinforcement learning, and emotion recognition, companies can provide hyper-personalized experiences across platforms and dimensions.
With the advent of Metaverse, personalization will take on a new form for an immersive experience as consumers would traverse through Metaverse. Just as mobile once did, the metaverse will increase the diversification of audience behaviors. Marketers will need to improve their personalization tools to deliver hyper-relevant and engaging ads.
Personalization Trend 2: Omnichannel Personalization
Meet the customers along the most appropriate path, triggering interactions where they are or on the channel they prefer, including owned, social, and paid media. As the consumers switch between multiple devices and channels, it is mandatory to support uniformity across these mediums for consistency. With technology it is possible to connect user data across multiple touchpoints.
Unify the messaging by providing connected customer experience that is consistent, relevant, and timely across web, app, email, and human channels.
Personalization Trend 3: Cookie less Personalization
We have reached the end of the third-party cookie era, with browsers removing support for them. It would now be important to collect first-party data. Since this data is owned by companies themselves, they can use it to deliver offers and provide personalized content and experiences. It will be important to plan exactly what information would be useful and to use CRM to integrate all the data to ensure companies can deliver a cohesive and strategic experience.
Google has also come up with Interest-based advertising (IBA) which is a form of personalized advertising in which an ad is selected for a user based on their interests, inferred from the sites they’ve recently visited.
Overall there could be a shift in personalization strategy and could be based on generic popularity, or tracking mouse-hovers and clicks, or geo location, local weather and referral data.
Conclusion
It is important for companies to have well-crafted personalization strategies. The strategies need to continuously evolve based on changes to the digital landscape and customer behaviors. Continuously test the outcome of your strategy by keeping a tap of what hits home and what doesn’t. This can be achieved by a continuous optimization test and learn loop that uses customer data, analytics, and insights to improve digital interactions and experiences interactively.
While crafting the personalization strategies note that as users become more aware of their digital footprint, they would like to control how and when their personal data is used. They expect full transparency in return for granting permission to their data.
Keeping in mind the above trends it’s absolutely clear that the customers want to be in control in 2022. Whether it is about meeting their expectations through relevant marketing, the experience journeys, or meeting their privacy concerns, the companies that will emerge at the top will strategize their digital experience by putting the end users first.
