Personalisation? It's beyond a joke

Clients and their agencies might talk a good game about personalisation but a quarter of UK consumers continue to be bombarded with six or more irrelevant direct marketing messages a day – that’s over 2,000 messages a year – a new study claims.
In the latest of a growing dossier of evidence, “The 2015 State of Consumer Privacy & Personalisation” report from Gigya chimes with a recent survey by Aimia and shows a frustrating lack of personalisation in many campaigns.
Not only is this causing consumers to tune out of a brand’s marketing comms, but also to actively avoid it in the future. This in turn, effectively pours marketing budget down the drain, loses you regular customers and incurs win-back costs.
Gigya’s study reveals that almost half (44%) of UK consumers say they will ignore all future communications from a company that doesn’t target them effectively. Even worse, 15% will stop buying products from the company.
The study also explains how UK consumers perceive and respond to privacy and personalisation at a time when organisations are increasingly hungry for data and insight.
The results confirm that 91% of UK consumers are at least “somewhat concerned” about how companies are using their data, highlighting a need for brands to be transparent and honest about the way they collect, store and use personal information.
Gigya director of Northern Europe Richard Lack commented: “Despite earning the trust of their customers to collect first-party data, many marketers continue to undermine the brand equity of their organisations with the widespread use of untargeted, irrelevant marketing communications.
“First-party customer data is one of the most valuable assets a business can have. The benefit is clear: brands that leverage this rich data to provide personalised, relevant offers and experiences will be rewarded with significantly higher conversion rates than brands that do not.”