The Time is Now for Personalization

You have likely heard about the practice for years, but if you're a 'Net professional today, chances are excellent that you're about to start using it more often.

A new report from real-time personalization provider Evergage found that 91 percent of marketers either use or intend to use personalization for online customer interactions within the next year. What's more, nearly 1 in 2 marketers surveyed (49 percent) intends to increase their budgets for personalization over the next year, with 80 percent planning significant increases of more than 10 percent.

Several other interesting findings were revealed in the survey, including: 

+ The primary places for personalization are on the website (76 percent), mobile sites (29 percent), Web applications (22 percent) and mobile apps (16 percent)

+ The most common methods for personalized content delivery are inline content (53 percent) and call-outs (41 percent)

+ When segmenting visitors, marketers use several different methods, the most popular being the type of content viewed (48 percent), location (45 percent) and time on site (36 percent)

+ One-third of those using real-time personalization report increased ecommerce revenues, and 73 percent see increased visitor engagement

"Personalization is an age-old concept, but extending the customized experience to online visitors in real time - based on deep customer analytics - is a new way to ensure each and every interaction with a prospective customer is relevant and engaging," said Karl Wirth, co-founder and CEO of Evergage. "When nearly 90 percent of marketers realize lift from personalization initiatives, it's clear that those who embrace this strategy will outperform those who do not."