Personalized product recommendations, social media ads, and emails are now increasingly being adopted by marketers to enhance multichannel experiences and drive sales.
The growing interest in technology is fueling innovation. Based on our knowledge of the latest research and development in this area, here are our five trends in digital personalization that are likely to flourish in 2021 and beyond:
The recommendation engine It uses data analysis techniques to identify items that match the user’s interest. There are different types of recommendation engines such as; product recommendation engine, the content recommendation engine, and the e-commerce product recommendation. According to a report by IndustryARC, the recommendation engine market size is projected to reach $12.03 billion by 2025 up from $ 1.14 billion in 2018, with a CAGR of 32.39% during 2020-2025.
Emphasis on improving customer experience, and the increasing trend of digital technologies, are the main driving factors in the demand for recommendation engines. In 2021, more companies will scale their digital personalization efforts by using a recommendation engine. Moreover, we expect organizations to try innovative ways of using AI/ML to create relevant recommendations. With that, organizations will have better anticipation of the future needs of a customer.
Image Recognition will make a better online shopping experience:- Digital capabilities, such as the ability to recognize the specific image, colors, and visual designs within product images, will become increasingly popular and will help marketers drive richer and more relevant online shopping journeys.
With that, organizations can deliver a more enhanced shopping experience by creating online shoppable content using onscreen images and videos. For example, a shopper could click on a wall painting shown in a living room and place it directly into their cart.
AI-Powered Personalization will be easier to understand:- The use of AI to collect personalization data can be frightening for consumers thinking about what data is being collected and for what purpose. E-commerce brands and tech vendors will start looking for ways to make AI decisions more transparent and reassuring.
We will start to see more examples of product recommendations being automatically accompanied by simple explanations that make it clear to the shopper what data was used to select those relevant products.
Balancing personalization with increased data-privacy restrictions:- In the coming years, we will usher in more browser privacy restrictions building off changes which we witnessed in 2020. Further, with the digital personalization trend towards giving users more control of their data, you may need to consider transitioning from an opt-out to a more direct opt-in approach to reinforce customer trust. To be successful in personalization, it’ll be essential to strike the right balance between delighting users with a relevant customer experience while maintaining their trust.
The objective of personalization is to enhance the individual shopper’s experience but, only a few brands have been able to deliver. Only 12% of consumers say they get customized assistance from brands, according to Gartner research.
Psychographics will create more opportunities:- Personalization and segmentation in online retail have been defined by shoppers’ online purchasing behavior and other demographics.
Now new types of personalization are emerging that rely on psychographic profiling. For example, by analyzing visitors’ behavior, algorithms can understand the visitors’ buying behavior. Content, product information, and recommendations could be customized to reflect that person’s shopping personality.
In today’s digital-first world, personalization is key to success for any online business. With the developing technologies, personalization is more likely to be sophisticated and an even more important part of how the customer experiences are enhanced.