Personalisation remains at the top of the agenda for retailers.  89% of respondents to a recent survey by Persomi*, stated personalisation is crucial to business success, with 79% stating that investing in personalisation is a ‘must’.

Retailers who are getting personalisation right are reaping the rewards. Ellis Brigham, for example, enjoyed a 788% ROI on personalisation spend on just one personalised recommendations banner.

Other personalisation campaign metrics quoted by retailers are equally impressive - for example, which retailer wouldn’t want to see 20 x higher clickthrough rates on personalised banners?  Or an increase of 312% on email sign ups from only one personalised pop up?  Or generating 16% of monthly income from one personalised pop up?

Katie Latham from Persomi comments “ Statistics like these clearly show that personalisation drives business success, especially when you note that the figures are drawn from relatively simple campaigns that only scrape the surface of personalisation’s full potential   Retailers that combine optimum data sources for personalisation (behavioural, transactional, demographics and context) in order to aid consistent and relevant customer journey’s and ensuring that the journey is device agnostic will win the race”.

But despite this 21% of retailers still think they can afford to ignore personalisation; with only ⅓ of the survey respondents able to demonstrate an ROI on personalisation budget- the average ROI quoted by these retailers was a disappointing 31%.

Katie explores the reason for this low ROI figure “Our experience shows disappointing personalisation figures are linked to a variety of factors including the inability to: personalise across all touchpoints,  bridge the gap between store and online and marry up behavioural, transactional, demographic and contextual data.  In addition nearly a ¾ of respondents are  relying on disparate software to try and achieve personalisation rather than using a tool specifically developed for this purpose”.

Zak Hood, Ecommerce Manager at Ellis Brigham concludes “ It’s unbelievable that the survey shows 12% of the retailers haven’t yet allocated a personalisation budget. My message is simple - retailers cannot afford to ignore personalisation anymore; it must be at the heart of each retailer’s strategy for success”.

*Personalisation - Can you Afford Not To? (A survey of 100 retail professionals responsible for personalisation by personalisation experts Persomi).