The power of personalization and 5 key steps to achieving it

Every day, consumers are hit with more messages than they can count. Emails, texts, push alerts, ads, pop-ups, all competing for attention. Generic messaging has no chance of cutting through this level of marketing noise, making personalization a vital element for marketers looking to create campaigns that deliver results.

But there’s an opportunity to be seized here: 82% of marketers think they’re not personalizing enough, and only 23% of consumers think the marketing messages they receive are truly relevant. So, marketers know there’s some way to go to deliver the kind of messages customers really want. Brands that take the time to create a personalization strategy will be able to create the kind of marketing that cuts through the noise and delivers results.

What effective personalization actually looks like

Great personalization isn’t guesswork. It’s powered by meaningful data, unified insight, and a clear understanding of customer behavior. That’s what allows brands to produce moments that feel relevant, timely, and genuinely helpful – with relevancy being key to building customer connections. The good news is that creating successful, cross-channel, personalized campaigns doesn’t have to be overly complicated, and can actually be broken down into six key areas:

1. Relevance at every touchpoint

Every message is an opportunity to get closer to the customer, or lose them. When marketing communications are relevant, as well as personal, conversions improve across the board.

2. Email

Email is still the reigning king of marketing channels. A customer’s inbox is where they expect to find real value, tailored recommendations, helpful content, loyalty updates, and personalized offers. When done right, personalized emails see 29% higher open rates and 41% higher click rates.

3. SMS and WhatsApp

Mobile marketing channels like SMS and WhatsApp are short, direct, and high-impact. That’s why they’re perfect for reminders, stock alerts, delivery updates, or time-sensitive nudges. Personalized SMS activity can increase click-through rates by 41% and 72% of consumers have made a purchase directly after receiving a text from a brand.

4. Push notifications

Messages are strongest when they’re timely, and push notifications deliver messages directly to the palm of a customer’s hand. Push notifications can be used as a reminder triggered during browsing, a stock-running-low nudge, or a timely alert that builds urgency. And, when personalized, they can generate 59% more engagement than non-personalized push messages.

5. Social and retargeting ads

Social and retargeting ads deliver impressive results when they’re driven by real-time customer behaviors like browsing on-site products, creating wish-lists, and adding items to a cart. When aligned with genuine customer interest, retargeted users are 43% more likely to convert.

6. Website experience

Websites are often overlooked despite being one of the most valuable spaces brands own. When a site adapts to behavior, intent, and preferences, it stops acting like a static storefront and starts becoming an active part of the customer journey. Overall, personalized web experiences consistently drive higher conversion, more repeat visits, and stronger loyalty.

Creating personalized customer journeys 

Customers don’t separate channels in the way that marketers do. Their experience with a brand is an ongoing relationship. Behavioral science even shows that familiar brands activate areas of the brain linked to emotional processing, similar to how we react to seeing people we care about.

Consistency across touchpoints strengthens that relationship. When a personalized web experience is followed by a relevant SMS reminder or an email that reflects what someone browsed, it creates a smooth flow that feels natural. Brands that deliver seamless experiences see 10–15% revenue uplift on average.

The move toward predictive personalization

Predictive personalization has enhanced the experiences marketers can create, moving marketing moments from reactive to predictive and genuinely relevant.

Instead of waiting for customers to act, marketers can now anticipate behavior and meet needs proactively. Predictive analytics and AI help forecast what customers might want next, allowing you to deliver helpful content ahead of time – a strategy that has been shown to lift conversion rates by up to 20%.

This connects directly to behavior-based messaging and real-time activity: what someone browses, adds to cart, or repeatedly returns to, creates a live understanding of intent. If a customer spends time comparing running shoes, an automated email or push notification showing that product, a relevant alternative, or a timely incentive feels natural, not forced.

Over time, these behavior patterns build deep understanding. Customers who prefer sustainable products can be invited to early access to new eco-collections, and seasonal gifters can enter journeys that help them find the right items faster each year. This is how personalization becomes an adaptive system rather than a series of isolated tactics.

Measuring what matters

Getting to the predictive, adaptive stage is the goal, but every personalized experience, regardless of sophistication, only gets better when you can actually measure it. Real success is about figuring out the customer behaviors that genuinely impact your results. To discover this, you can look at the following metrics: 

• Engagement: Are people opening, clicking, or just browsing? 
• Conversions: Which personalized elements drive checkouts, recovered carts, or higher-value purchases?
• Retention and loyalty: Are customers coming back more often? Are they spending more over time? What’s changing in your churn rate and NPS (Net Promoter Score)?
• Revenue attribution: How are your personalized campaigns contributing to average order values and customer lifetime value?
• Channel performance: Where do personalized messages perform strongest? What needs rethinking?

The more crystal clear you are on these metrics, the easier it is to scale what works and ruthlessly edit what doesn’t.

Your five-point personalization action plan

Often, marketers struggle with implementing personalization tactics because they lack confidence in their data. The good news, however, is that small steps can build momentum quickly. Here are five quick and easy steps you can take to begin your personalization journey:

1. Start with a clear goal

Decide what matters most: increasing full-price sales, boosting loyalty, recovering carts, re-engaging lapsing customers, or reducing reliance on discounts. Clarity here shapes everything else.

2. Audit the data

Review what you collect, how it’s collected, and whether it’s connected to your campaigns in a meaningful way. The quality and connectivity of your data directly impact your ability to act on customer intent.

3. Review the tech

Ensure your marketing tech-stack delivers a single customer view, real-time triggers, cross-channel reach, and simple workflows that make personalization manageable. Dotdigital can help with all of this.

4. Prioritize fast wins

Focus on activities that make a big difference. Example tactics include:

• A personalized welcome journey
• SMS cart recovery
• Dynamic product recommendations
• Behavior-based segmentation

These are high-impact, low-complexity steps that deliver immediate value.

5. Choose partners that support your growth

The strongest results come from platforms and partners that help unify data, simplify workflows, and support long-term adoption. The best technology providers combine amazing software with human understanding, which helps teams test, learn, and scale efficiently.

Make every campaign count with the power of personalization

Delivering relevant personalization for your customers isn’t about perfection; it’s about progress, one touchpoint, one message, and one meaningful interaction at a time. The opportunity to rise above the noise is too significant to ignore. By getting your data in order, focusing on the metrics that matter, and acting on intent, you can build creative marketing campaigns that treat your customers as individuals and deliver serious returns.