Will personalization fail (by 2025)?
In 2019 Gartner predicted that personalization will fail by the end of 2025 (1). Here is why I think they are still right, and how we can fix it.
5 min readJun 25, 2024
Personalization promises both increased value to the customer and impact to the business. But it all hinges on the first part: value to the customer — and this is where personalization easily fails.
a. Where personalization fails
What is personalization and how do we get there?
Commonly organizations have been sold on the narrative that behavioral data like click-throughs, opens, content tagging, conversion etc. are all valid proxies helping us understand and include our customers.
They aren’t.
The only thing this data: web channel performance data, helps us do is optimize the design of our own channels.
Behavioral data is a window into the effectiveness of our own designs, NOT our customers situations, emotions, culture, relationships or needs.
