Personalization is more crucial than ever, according to Deloitte Digital’s latest research.* Since our foundational study two years ago,¹ consumer interest in personalization has increased 20%, and 50% more brands consider it a core component of their customer strategy.
Yet despite heightened attention, only a quarter of brands are delivering the kind of personalization consumers recognize and want. How do these standouts do it? They recognize personalization as a mutual exchange in which customers share information about themselves—and brands reciprocate by delivering spot-on experiences that bring value to customers’ lives.
In a new series of articles, Deloitte Digital is delving into ways that brands can unlock the potential of personalization. Modernizing thecontent life cycle is one of these ways—it allows brands to create timely and authentic content, at scale, that brings value to customers.
Modernizing the content lifecycle
So how can brands transform their content life cycle to make it faster, effective and impactful? The key lies in infusing the traditional content life cycle with modern processes and technologies. Through our work with clients across various industries (including health care and life sciences, travel and hospitality, technology and telecommunications, consumer goods and retail), we’ve identified crucial actions that facilitate this change, ensuring not only quicker content delivery but a boost in quality and relevance.
While many brands have invested in platforms to distribute personalized content, they lack a cohesive content strategy. This strategy should be based on the outcomes your brand wants to achieve. It needs to reflect the brand’s content pillars—but most important, it needs to be anchored in an understanding of who your core audiences are and what kinds of personalized messaging/content truly move them. Often, brands see a stronger return on investment when they focus on fewer, more valuable customer segments.
Brands need a clear plan for collecting, managing and using the right data to drive personalized content creation, activation and measurement. The best in personalization know this well—85% of the surveyed top performers said they collect extensive data to enable a 360-degree view of customers. Almost 3 in 4 of them are using customer data platforms (CDPs) to leverage first party data, and around one-third of all surveyed brands are also using data clean rooms to blend second- or third party data with their own in a privacy compliant manner.
The impact of personalized content should be measured continuously to help verify it is performing the right way. Our research found that analytics, testing and measurement is the most significant capability gap for brands—with 45% of respondents citing it as lacking. We’ve found that the most successful content organizations help bridge this gap by assigning clear ownership for tagging and tracking content.
Many brands have ample tools and technologies for creating and delivering personalized content but are hampered by inefficient processes and review cycles. Conducting a technology audit can help identify bottlenecks where new workflows and governance would streamline processes and enable existing technologies to perform more effectively and efficiently.
Business demand for content increased by 54% in 2023, but marketers could only meet that demand 55% of the time, according to another Deloitte Digital survey.2 This has made Generative AI (GenAI) a top priority for many brands seeking ways to produce higher volumes of content and design at lower cost than traditional production. Of surveyed brands, 34% said they had already invested in GenAI to support personalization, and another 51% cited plans for GenAI spending by the end of 2024. However, to fully realize its potential, GenAI must be embedded into automated workflows. If it’s not, brands could miss out on its potential cost- and time-savings benefits.
Get in touch
Jenny Kelly
Managing director
Deloitte Consulting LLP
Rachel Whitt
Senior manager
Deloitte Consulting LLP
* This report highlights results from a January–February survey of 500 business executives who are responsible for personalizing the customer experience at US business-to-consumer companies, plus 1,000 adult consumers who had interacted with a brand online or through an app in recent months. Unless otherwise noted, the statistics and insights highlighted in this article are based on that research survey.
1. Leala Shah Crawford, Embrace meaningful personalization to maximize growth, Deloitte Digital, July 2022, p. 2, accessed August 6, 2024.
2. Mike Brinker and Jenny Kelly, GenAI powers content marketing advantage for early adopters, Deloitte Digital, October 2023, accessed August 21, 2024.
