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SPONSORED BY PERSONALISATION APRIL 2015 Our survey of top executives highlights how retailers are tackling the increasingly important need to get personal with shoppers REPORT AND

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SPONSORED BY

PERSONALISATION

APRIL 2015

Our survey of top executives highlights how retailers are tackling the increasingly important need to get personal with shoppers

REPORT

AND

Drapers & Retail Week Personalisation Report / APRIL 2015 1

WELCOME

A sk any retailer or brand where they are focusing their multichannel strategy, and you’ll likely hear personalisation is at or near the top of the list. Rather than

becoming less important in the digital age, offering a personalised service is critical to reach out to the customer on their computer, mobile or tablet, or to enhance the in-store experience.

The retailers and brands making a success of this are the ones thriving, but strategies are seldom the same. So it is with this in mind that we bring you our first Personalisation Report, produced by Drapers and Retail Week, in association with Monetate.

We have surveyed 200 retailers and brands, asking them questions around personalisation, to try and explore best practice.

We begin the report on page 2 by asking ‘What is personalisation?’, revealing that some 80% of retailers see it as encompassing all channels and with nearly the same number noting that a personalised strategy towards consumers is increasingly important.

Of course, businesses have had to adapt organ-isationally to deal with the demands of offering a

personalised service within a rapidly developing multichannel context, and on page 3 we find out where the responsibility now lays.

On page 4 we ask how retailers are personalising, and perhaps unsurprisingly, email marketing and product recommendations remain key, with the latter cited as a central area for investment this year.

However, challenges remain. On page 6 we find out how cost, the reluctance of consumers to divulge information and the ability to prove return on investment pose significant hurdles.

Finally, on page 7 we ask what the future of person-alisation looks like as shopping behaviours evolve, with some interesting findings. Our survey found a significant minority of 26% see personalisation as their business’s main priority this year.

What is clear is that unless retailers and brands employ an effective personalisation strategy, they won’t be giving the consumer a reason to shop with them, and in the longer term will lose out.

We hope you enjoy this report, and as ever, we would be pleased to hear your [email protected]

In today’s digital world, consumers are able to flip-flop from one brand to another in a mere click, swipe or touch of a button. They are increasingly connected to brands,

both in and outside the retail space. As a result, the modern shopper now expects retailers to fully understand what they want, when they want it and how they want to buy it. Understanding each of these considerations is important if retailers are to succeed and thrive in what is one of the country’s most competitive industries.

The need to better understand and target the consumer has given rise to personalisation as a concept. The ability to tailor an offer to a consumer’s needs, based on criteria linked to their everyday behaviour, is giving retailers the ability to drive engagement and grow sales. Perhaps a few years ago the idea of personalisation was confined to just online, but increasingly retailers are developing ways to combine in store and online information to complete the multichannel personalisation effort.

This Drapers and Retail Week report, in association with Monetate, looks to review and

understand the personalisation landscape. Through conducting interviews with retail executives across the UK market, we have developed a comprehensive picture of the current and future status of personalisation and where the concept sits within executives’ wider list of priorities.

The overwhelming consensus among the retail executives surveyed is that future success depends on understanding the needs of each individual consumer. Personalisation is at the heart of this. There are nonetheless challenges to the personalisation effort, highlighted in this report, with cost cited by many as a barrier to adoption. Indeed, 63% of executives report the level of difficulty as being between one and four on a scale of one to 10 – with one being very difficult and 10 being very simple.

Personalisation resonates differently by brand, consumer segment and across various retail sectors; meaning retailers need a careful, well thought out approach to obtain optimal results. We hope you enjoy this report, and I would also like to thank our partner Monetate.

Today’s retailers must get personal to avoid being lost in the digital crowd

2 Each to Their Own Retailers’ future success depends on understanding consumers’ needs

3 Multiple Choice The demands of multichannel are changing how businesses work

4 The Power of Suggestion Product recommendations are trusted by consumers, but how can retailers gauge their value?

6 Need to Know An effective data-collecting strategy is vital for successful personalisation

7 A Long-lasting Relationship Our survey examines what the future holds for retailers who want to get closer to their consumers

CONTENTS

James Knowles Features & special reports editor, Drapers

Shoppers’ demands will shape the future of multichannel retailingAlex Hamilton Head of research, Retail Week

Currently 96% of retailers believe personalisation makes good business sense, yet only 6% have a plan in place.

Retailers are often delaying their personalisation efforts because of two misconceptions. The first is that implementing personalisation is too hard and will create more work for their already overworked teams.

The second misconception is that delivering personalisation is complex: shattering a single customer experience into multiple different customer experiences is going to be hugely difficult and time consuming.

Think of personalisation in an old-school data warehouse way and this may be true, but with agile technology platforms like Monetate delivering personalised content and recommendations, across web, mobile, app and email, it doesn’t have to be that way.

Customers now expect retailers to consider what they know about them and use this to provide them with a better experience.

The time to personalise is now.

Personalisation can work for you

SPONSORED BY

Mike Harris Vice-president EMEA, Monetate

Drapers & Retail Week Personalisation Report / APRIL 2015 2

It is clear that UK consumers are increasingly seeking an offering from retailers that is tailored to their individual needs and preferences, based on their Facebook likes and past purchases, for instance.

Consumers now expect retailers to fully understand who they are, how they shop, what they want to buy next and to use this information to engage with them in an interactive and personable manner. How retailers respond to this new-found expectation will ultimately impact upon the long-term success of their business.

“We want and expect our retail brands to know us and be able to interact with us at every level,” explains Andrew Busby, retail business head at IT solutions provider Zensar Technologies. “We expect them to have visibility of all our touch points, whether it be in store, online, mobile or social, and critically to not only be able to join these dots up but to then have a sensible, meaningful, relevant dialogue with us.”

Indeed, 79% of retail executives surveyed by Drapers and Retail Week cite that consumers are demanding a more person-alised approach from retailers. “Our customers are the reason why we are investing heavily in personalisation,” notes Jennifer Day, head of customer management and personalisation at Shop Direct. “They have so much choice now – the internet has given them so many options – that they need help finding the right product for them.”

The data also shows that 80% of retail executives surveyed see personalisa-tion as a concept encompassing all channels, rather than just online (19%) or in-store only (1%). As retailers’ multichannel offerings have developed in step with technological change, so the scope for personalisation across multiple channels has clearly widened.

When asked what the main benefits of personalisation are to his business, Phil Geary, marketing and ecommerce director at toy retailer The Enter-

tainer, says: “You can have many different customer personas purchasing the same toy products. Personalisation enables us to talk to each persona in the appropriate way. A mother buying Star Wars Lego for her son and a Star Wars Lego collector are very different shoppers, for instance.”

When we asked retail executives this same question, a near-majority 46% ranked ‘to better engage with the customer’ as the number one consideration, with 19% and 18% citing to ‘drive customer loyalty’ and ‘conversion rate improvement’ respectively. This compares with just 1% noting ‘impulse purchases’ as the main consideration.

“Personalisation is a customer engagement concept. We hope to drive loyalty and repeat purchases by targeting consumers in this way. Loyalty is key if we are to cement the brand as a market leader,” notes the ecommerce boss of a leading fashion retailer.

In essence, personalisation-based engagement is a tool used by retailers to get closer to their consumers in order to offer them an experience that will keep them coming back time and time again.

Personalised engagement will ultimately assist in driving top-line sales. “We’ve seen significant and measurable bene-fits from personalising the experience for our customers,”

notes Jennifer Day, head of customer management and personalisation at Shop Direct. “Our personalisation work will deliver £20m in sales this year alone.”

Generating loyalty with today’s brand-hopping shopper is an impor-tant step in building a strong brand identity. However, retailers must give customers control over personalisation, to help facilitate genuine loyalty. As Agnieszka Kij, head of ecommerce at Net-a-Porter Group, says: “It is impor-tant to give customers control of personalisation and a way of ‘undoing it.”

● Consumers are increasingly demanding a personalised approach from retailers, with 79% of retail executives noting this is the case● Personalisation is not perceived as an engagement strategy for online-only, by both retailers and consumers● ‘Customer engagement’ is cited by 46% of retail executives as the main benefit of personalisation to their business

KEY POINTS

RETAIL STRATEGY

Are customers demanding an

increasingly personalised

approach?

79% Yes 21% No

80% All channels 19% Just online 1% Just offline

Do you see personalisation as

a concept for…

What is the main benefit of personalisation to your business?

50%

0% Reduction in bounce rates

1% Impulse purchases

5% Potential increase in upselling and average order values

11% Revenue growth

18% Conversion rate improvement

19% Customer loyalty and repeat business

46% Customer engagement

Retailers’ future success depends on understanding the needs of each individual consumer – and then giving them what they want

Words by ALEX HAMILTON

EVERYONE’S A WINNER

R etailers, both in the UK and globally, are in the process of adapting their business structures to accommodate today’s multichannel world. The likes of Asda, John Lewis, Waitrose and B&Q have

already undergone restructures to position themselves for this shift, and many more retailers are likely to follow.

Mothercare is the latest business to announce a restruc-turing to its executive management team as it seeks to go digital. “Last autumn we laid out the future vision and strategy for our business and made clear the need to modernise in order to achieve our ambition,” says Mothercare chief execu-tive Mark Newton-Jones of the restructuring efforts.

What is clear is that retailers are still getting to grips with the multichannel offering. “Multichannel is our biggest chal-lenge. It has totally changed the way in which consumers shop and engage with brands. As retailers we need to evolve our business organisations if we are to keep up with the pace of change across our industry,” says the head of digital at a leading fashion retailer. “From back-end systems to in-store customer engagement, we have a lot to do to ensure we offer the consumer a seamless shopping experience across the board.”

This change has had an inevitable impact on which depart-ment within a retailer’s organisation is responsible for the function of personalisation, with a striking 29% of retail executives surveyed for this report noting that the primary responsibility for personalisation has changed over just the past three years. “Digitalisation has had a dramatic impact on the way in which consumers buy products and in turn how retailers sell products. Inevitably, this is going to impact who is responsible for personalisation both now and in the future,” notes Charlotte Hardie, commercial editor at Retail Week. “The survey results are therefore not surprising.”

The biggest change has occurred in retailers’ IT departments. Based on respondents to our survey, three years ago 22% of retail businesses placed the responsibility for personalisation with the IT team, with 32% seeing it as the job of the ecommerce team and 46% putting it with the marketing department.

Today, however, personalisation responsibilities sit with the IT team at only 8% of retail businesses – a 14 percentage point fall in only three years.

“The people within our organisation responsible for person-alisation are no longer based in the IT team. This remit has now been given to employee responsible for marketing activ-ities,” reports the ecommerce director of a leading toy retailer.

PERSONALISATION PUSH CREATES NEW JOB ROLESThe need for retailers to personalise the shopping experience is prompting the creation of new job functions across the retail landscape. Last September, Littlewoods and Very owner Shop Direct hired its first ever customer director, Dene Jones, in a role Shop Direct retail and strategy director Gareth Jones described at the time as “pivotal” for the business.

“Dene will help us deliver a great customer experience that is a cornerstone of our strategy and within that will help us do personalisation. He’ll be helping turn the unique data we have from our customers built up through our 80-year history and will turn them into customer insights,” Gareth said at the time.

Gareth explained that Shop Direct had looked to the gambling sector – Dene previously worked for gambling busi-ness Full Tilt Poker as chief marketing officer – as it was “further ahead in personalisation” than retail.

As technology and the multichannel offer evolve further, retail structures and subsequently the responsibility for personalisation will develop in tandem. With retailers gaining more insight on the customer, the scope to use this data to tailor a retail offering to each individual shopper will mean

that responsibility for personalisation will likely move to the frontline of retail – hence the shift from IT to marketing highlighted by this survey.

The role of store staff in this dynamic will grow in importance over the coming years. With consumers demanding a store experience as person-alised as that experienced online, ensuring store staff have the necessary information to understand a customer’s needs and wants when they enter a shop will be crucial in building loyalty and driving sales.

“Store staff will become increasingly important in completing the person-alisation offer in-store in the future,” notes Hardie. “It can only be a good thing for retailers if a store employee can gain a handle on a customer’s shopping habits and product tastes as soon as they’ve stepped in a store.”

Drapers & Retail Week Personalisation Report / APRIL 2015 3

CHANGING STRATEGIES

● 29% of retail executives note that the primary responsibility for personalisation has changed over the past three years● 22% of retail businesses placed the responsibility for personalisation with the IT team, while 32% positioned it with ecommerce and 46% placed it with the marketing department ● Today, however, personalisation responsibilities sit with the IT team at only 8% of retail businesses – a 14 percentage point fall in only three years

KEY POINTS

Has the ownership of personalisation within your business changed over the past three years?

29% Yes 71% No

Retailers are having to adjust their strategies to ensure they offer a personal touchWords by ALEX HAMILTON

MULTIPLE CHOICE

Which department has primary responsibility for personalisation in your business?

0

10

20

30

40

50

IT Ecommerce Marketing Other

% 2015 2012

New technologies mean there are many ways for retailers to personalise customer journeys. The number of personalisation approaches will only increase in the years ahead as these technolo-

gies mature and changing consumer habits open up new touch points for retailers to engage with shoppers.

Of those surveyed by Drapers and Retail Week, 73% noted that they currently personalise via ‘email marketing’ campaigns – the most popular method used by the survey panel as a whole – while 68% are using ‘product recom-mendations’ as a means of connecting with the consumer.

Fashion etailer Asos.com, for instance, has begun testing a feature called Asos Recommendations that will suggest products from brands and categories consumers already shop from. After completing a survey, users are shown recom-mendations based on results. The service also aims to make recommendations on products that consumers have saved, added to basket and purchased.

Asos rival Shop Direct has also pinpointed personalised recommendations based on better use of data as a major focus for the company during 2015. Jennifer Day, head of customer management and personalisation, notes its success to date has been driven by the business’s willingness to test, develop and learn fast. “At Shop Direct, we have invested in experimentation capability – we will conduct more than 1,000 experiments this year. A good proportion of these are personalisation tests. Some succeed and some don’t – the advantage of testing is that we are letting our customers decide,” says Day.

When asked which personalisation elements they were looking to prioritise in 2015, almost 32% of retail executives cite product recommendations. This compares to 23% for personalised email marketing and 18% for personalised content on websites and sites

optimised for mobile. “Product recommendations, as seen on Amazon, are where we’re placing our personalisation focus given the rates of return we’re seeing on this form of investment,” notes the ecommerce director of a leading multichannel fashion retailer.

The reason behind the prioritisation of product recom-mendations over other elements links to the effectiveness retailers are seeing from this form of personalised engage-ment. Indeed, 45% note that product recommendations are presently the most effective element of personalisation in term of driving engagement.

But effectiveness as a measure of performance is ultimately determined by analysing return on investment. Antony Comyns, ecommerce director at men’s formalwear retailer Hawes & Curtis, comments that his reporting tools employed to measure the company’s returns on personalisation efforts are “very clear and allow us to get accurate results”.

However, a striking 74% of retail executives note they have been unable to measure the return on investment of personalisation efforts to date, highlighting measurement as a key problem for retail brands with regards to person-alisation. Retail brands therefore require partners to assist in the creation of platforms that develop and deploy tech-niques to personalise the shopping experience.

“We use behavioural marketing software to help with our personalisation efforts. Adverts are shown after consumers visit our site and an algorithm tracks attributes like location, conversion rate of ads shown on the publication, number of views, number of times the ad is shown and viewed plus other demographic and geographical statistics. This is very

effective and targets the customer at the right time with the product they have an interest in,” adds Comyns.

● 73% noted that they currently personalise via ‘email marketing’ campaigns, while 68% are using ‘product recommendations’ as a means of connecting with the consumer in a personalised manner● When asked which personalisation elements they were looking to prioritise in 2015, almost 32% of retail executives cite product recommendations● A striking 74% of retail executives note they have been unable to measure the return on investment of personalisation efforts to date, highlighting measurement as a key problem for retail brands to overcome

KEY POINTS

Drapers & Retail Week Personalisation Report / APRIL 2015 4

BEST PRACTICE

Product recommendations are seen by many retailers as the best way of personalising the shopping experience, but measuring their value is tricky

Words by ALEX HAMILTON

THE POWER OF SUGGESTION

7% Other

100%

16% Personalised in-store offers, eg using beacons/QR codes

27% Personalised social content

35% Personalised offers by direct mail

38% Personalised content on website and mobile/tablet sites

46% Personalised content on website

68% Product recommendations

73% Personalised offers by emails

What elements of personalisation are you using?

BEST PRACTICE

Drapers & Retail Week Personalisation Report / APRIL 2015 5

Rank 1 Rank 2 Rank 3

Product recommendations 62 27 13

Personalised content on website 13 26 21

Personalised content on website and mobile/tablet sites 14 24 15

Personalised social content 8 7 18

Personalised offers by emails 25 44 27

Personalised offers by direct mail 9 8 15

Personalised in-store offers eg using beacons/QR codes 3 1 23

Other 3 0 5

Which personalisation elements you have used have been most effective? (Choose top three and rank in order, with 1 being the most important)

Have you been able to measure the return on Investment from your personalisation efforts?

26% Yes 74% No

Do you personalise by...

Rank 1 Rank 2 Rank 3 Rank 4 Rank 5 Rank 6 Rank 7

Product recommendations 35 15 16 7 9 7 6

Personalised content on website 12 23 16 13 11 7 2

Personalised content on website and mobile/tablet sites 20 23 20 15 17 5 7

Personalised social content 7 13 11 24 18 17 9

Personalised offers by emails 25 21 19 27 15 7 2

Personalised offers by direct mail 5 8 14 10 12 32 20

Personalised in-store offers eg using beacons/QR codes 6 11 12 9 12 17 46

Which of the following are you prioritising to implement in 2015? (Rank all that apply by priority, from 1 as a high priority to 7 as a low priority)

Group segmentation45%

39%Personalise to an individual level

16%Not personalise at all

The opportunities presented by personalisation for retailers are considerable, but challenges exist. Personalisation requires a lot of moving parts to work in sync for both consumers and retailers to

fully benefit. In fact, offering consumers a personalised offer that they see as not tailored to their requirements is often more detrimental than not offering personalisation at all.

Retailers note a number of challenges to providing consumers with a personalised offering. Cost is cited by 24% of survey respondents as the main challenge, followed by technology/platform integration issues with 14%. The cost of implementing fundamental change of a retailer’s back-office system is often cited as the most considerable barrier to change.

“We’ve been providing a service for our customers for over 80 years, which means we have legacy systems still featuring in our everyday operations. Investing in new capability will be important in helping create the right culture and processes to support our journey,” notes Jennifer Day, head of customer management and personalisation at etailer Shop Direct.

Personalisation online is simpler for retailers to achieve than in-store, as tools such as web cookies allow the online shopper’s journey to be tracked relatively simply. Mapping a shopper in-store is far more complex and often based on consumers being proactive and engaging with the brand via, for example, beacons, QR codes and in-store Wi-Fi.

Data capture in-store to aid the personalisation efforts of retailers is largely driven by staff engagement at the point of purchase, with 44% of survey respondents noting this as a data capture route. Around 33% reported using

loyalty cards to collect shopper data, with 15% citing iPad-equipped members of staff and 14% in-store Wi-Fi.

With regards to the future of personalisation, data capture in-store and how this data is combined with online data to offer a truly complete personalisation offer is perhaps the most uncertain consideration. QR codes, which are popular in Asia, have not taken off with US and European shoppers, while the jury is still out on whether in-store tracking devices will work in the long run. Ultimately, the success of these technologies depends on whether consumers embrace them.

Retail executives surveyed for this study noted how difficult it is to personalise a retail offering that is consistent across multiple channels, with 63% reporting the level of difficulty as between one and four on a scale of one to 10 – ‘1’ being very difficult and ‘10’ being very simple. This skew towards ‘difficult’ underscores the challenges retailers face in turning individual business units into one truly multichannel operation.

When it comes to personalisation, many commentators cite the data privacy concerns of consumers as a challenge, or barrier, to implementation. Generally speaking, however, 67% of retail executives report consumer willingness to share data.

“It’s true that consumers are cautious about their data, but give them a discount offer and they’ll agree to share on a single platform with a business – witness the popularity of loyalty cards,” says Richard Cope, senior trends consultant at market research firm Mintel. “What’s interesting is that even more consumers are interested in personalised offers based on their shop-ping habits and location (eg 20% off at a local retailer).”

● Cost is cited by 24% of respondents as the main challenge to personalisation, followed by technology /platforms integration issues with 14%● Data capture in-store is largely driven by staff engagement at the point of purchase, with 44% of respondents noting this as a data capture route● 67% of respondents says consumers are willing to share data

KEY POINTS

Drapers & Retail Week Personalisation Report / APRIL 2015 6

IMPLEMENTATION CHALLENGES

8% Insufficient data

4% Lack of creative resource to build out experiences

8% Lack of internal resource to manage a project

8% No executive support

9% Highly complex business rules

12% Lack of know-how (don’t know where to start)

13% Siloed data in different systems

14% Technology/platform integration issues

24% Cost

What are the barriers to personalising in your organisation?50%

Do you find consumer

unwillingness to share data an issue

with regards to offering a complete

personalised retail offer?

33% Yes 67% No

On a scale of one to 10 – with ‘1’ being very difficult and ’10’ being very simple – how difficult is it to personalise a retail offering that is consistent across all channels?

1

5

0

10

15

20

25

30

Scale2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

%

How are you collecting data in store to better personalise the shopper journey there?

Categories %

Staff at till / point of purchase 42

Loyalty card 35

Other 27

iPad-enabled shop staff 15

Via free Wi-Fi, requiring customers to log-in 14

Beacon technology in conjunction with an app 8

Near-field communication 6

Via QR codes 5

Personalisation can only be achieved through successful data collectionWords by ALEX HAMILTON

NEED TO KNOW

D igital innovation means that personalisation is evolving all of the time. As retail brands gather more data on consumers, the scope for person-alisation to be better tailored and better targeted

to the customer will widen. In turn, this will open up a new world of opportunity in the personalisation space

Retail executives surveyed by Retail Week and Drapers note that they see ‘entry level personalisation’ as the main personalisation priority for their business to drive growth throughout the remainder of this year (26%). “Personalised product pages would be something we will be aiming for this year. I would like to see our pages customised based on where and how someone came onto the website, what you browse and your past history if it is available. This will then be backed by personalised emails and behavioural marketing to match,” explains Antony Comyns, ecommerce director at Hawes & Curtis.

‘Data management and segmentation’ is ranked second, with 18% of retail executives citing this as their main priority. Within data management is the issue of data security, a consideration that came to the fore in late 2013 when US retailer Target was the subject of a data hack at its bricks-and-mortar stores in the US that affected around 40 million customers. Given the large swathe of data retailers will increasingly hold on shoppers, combined with the more connected world we live in – primed for further data leaks – retailers will have to look at ways of better securing their data banks in order to avoid kind of backlash suffered by Target.

Personalisation in the future will mean much more than pointing consumers in the direction of products that suit their preferences, or char-acteristics. “Ultimately, the future of personalisation will focus on knowing everything about the habits and lifestyle choices that affect customers and being able to act accordingly; linking different acts and activities to deliver value,” notes Andrew Busby retail business head at IT solutions provider

Zensar Technologies. “When we move house there are usually certain new items we might need, for instance, so being able to link events with needs to create value will be enormously powerful.”

Within his response, Busby touches upon the emergence of the Internet of Things (IoT) as a trend both inside and outside of the retail space. The emergence of this much-hyped concept will widen the scope for personalisation through connecting information on all aspects of consumers’ lives, from how many cartons of milk are in their fridge to a party that they need a dress for in two months’ time. “The Internet of Things is creating an emergence of new devices and sensors in our everyday lives which gather huge amounts of data, from age and gender to shopping history and social media profiling,” says Steve Dunbar, Microsoft UK IoT commercial lead at Microsoft. “This gives retailers access to huge amounts of data with a vast scope to personalise their interaction with customers, from content and messaging in store, to employee engagement creating a one-to-one shop-ping experience,” he adds.

Phil Geary, ecommerce director at toy retailer The Enter-tainer, meanwhile sees the future of personalisation as a question of speed. “Instant customer recognition, instant access to previous purchase and browsing history and instant personalised offers,” he says.

Recognising consumers instantly, as Geary notes, will be key in the future to facilitating fast and efficient personalisation within retail. To help retailers achieve this goal, technology is emerging to assist in instant recognition. Facial recognition technology, for instance, is and will enable retailers to deliver local, personalised deals to customers. As a case in point, Facedeals, a technology developed by invention lab Redpepper, uses a camera to scan a customer’s face when they enter the shop, checks it in on Facebook and sends the person a text message offering a tailored discount or deal based on their Facebook ‘like’ history.

● Retail executives see ‘entry level personalisation’ as the main personalisation priority for their business to drive growth● ’Data management and segmentation’ is ranked second, with 18% of retail executives citing this as their main priority● Technology is evolving and emerging to assist retailers with personalisation efforts

KEY POINTS

Drapers & Retail Week Personalisation Report / APRIL 2015 7

THE FUTURE OF PERSONALISATION

2% Marketing automation

50%

6% Display advertising

8% Social media advertising

10% Email marketing

15% SEO / SEM

15% Cross-channel personalisation down to the individual shopper level

18% Data management and segmentation

26% Entry level web personalisation

What is the most important priority for your business to drive growth in 2015?

Shopping behaviours continue to evolve, and personalisation strategies will have to adapt with them. Our survey asked what this future could look like

Words by ALEX HAMILTON

A LONG-LASTING RELATIONSHIP?