Why personalization matters

Whether searching through an endless catalogue of products or getting a 25% offer for a product purchased the day before, we’ve all had unfortunate brand experiences. We’ve also all had those great experiences where a brand knew exactly what we needed and helped us find it with as little friction as possible.

Personalization is how brands avoid the former experiences and deliver the later — at scale and across channels.

How personalization engines support this

According to Gartner, personalization engines empower “marketing professionals to identify, set up, conduct and measure the optimum experience for an individual based on knowledge about them, their intent and context.”

By gathering real-time signals from user interactions, personalization engines make behavioral inferences, segment users, and use this information to target, test, and optimize visitor experiences.

They are increasingly essential for supporting the entire customer journey. In the 2023 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Personalization Engines, Gartner outlines why personalization engines are especially useful for:

  • Marketing
  • Digital commerce
  • Service and support

Of course, not every personalization engine is the right fit for every business. This is why analyst insight, such as that offered in the 2023 Gartner MQ for Personalization Engines, is so important for business’s looking to invest.

A “Visionary” in personalization

If you’ve been paying attention to our analyst recognition, you’ve likely noticed that we don’t always say much about analyst reports unless we’re a clear leader. Since we’re usually in the lead in the most important categories for our business, this leaves lots of room for us to offer reprints of reports and highlight our recognitions.

But in our opinion there are moments where we see our position as a win, even if we aren’t technically one of the “winners.” The Gartner MQ for Personalization Engines is such a moment.

The main reason we’re happy with this report is that we see it as an affirmation of our roadmap and strategy.

Why composable is increasingly essential — for personalization and beyond

While we’ve been working on our personalization capabilities for years because we’ve known how essential it is, the truth is personalization is only one facet of a brand’s marketing, commerce, and customer success strategies. And all the facets must work together smoothly to be executed well.

In our ever-changing, always-on, whiplash-paced world, strategies can change almost overnight. Your commerce strategy might suddenly need to embrace marketplaces, your website to enter a new market, or your data strategy to shift on cue with new regulations. Many are opting out of legacy, one-size-fits-all MarTech solutions because they can’t keep pace with today’s rate of change.

Enter the composable approach. A composable approach allows brands to not only create but consistently optimize their MarTech stack — making it much, much simpler to plug in the solutions they need when they need them and pull them out when they no longer do.

Unfortunately, many MarTech solution providers appear to have missed the memo. Whether legacy solutions that don’t play well with others or acquisitions that have never been integrated smoothly, any solution not architected well can make a composable approach all but impossible.

This is even more critical for specific solutions — such as your CMS, CDP, commerce platform, or personalization engine. Having these central solutions developed in a way that enables a composable approach will only become more critical in the years ahead.

While we’ll be working this next year to fill in any gaps in our composable strategy and solutions, we see both our “Vendor Strengths and Cautions” and our recognition in the Magic Quadrant as clear indications that we’re on the right track.

If you’re interested in learning more by reading the full report yourself, you can access the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Personalization Engines, 2023, here.

Gartner Disclaimer:

Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner's research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.

Gartner, Magic Quadrant for Personalization Engines, Jason McNellis, Joseph Enever, Ant Duffin, 18 July. 2022.

Gartner and Magic Quadrant are registered trademarks of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and internationally and are used herein with permission. All rights reserved.