Retailers Need to Step up Personalization Efforts

For those selling products aimed at holiday shoppers, the gift-giving season is here (and has been a focal point for quite some time). 

Retailers' efforts start long before even the most prepared shopper takes out his or her credit card to begin stockpiling gifts. Despite their efforts, many online shops are not personalizing critical communication points in the shoppers' journey. For instance, Listrak found that only 50 percent of retailers are featuring personalized product recommendations in "marketing" emails. Since the majority of the emails retailers send are marketing emails (versus messages like transactional emails), it's safe to say blast-and-batch emails are inundating shoppers' inboxes, even though they shouldn't be - especially for those who have actually purchased or viewed items. 

While only 22 percent of retailers are including personalized product recommendations in browse-abandonment emails, these are the perfect moments to suggest complementary items to ones shoppers have already showed interest in - encouraging them to re-visit the site, possibly buy what they already viewed or buy the suggested product as well (or in place of).  

For more information on where personalization stands this holiday season, as well as shoppers' expectations and buying habits, check out Listrak's infographic below (and click on the image to zoom in).