Personalization is becoming a standard — and a new source of complexity
Studies converge on the potential value of more relevant and personalized experiences: fidelity, conversion, revenue and marketing efficiency can progress when they are well executed. But moving from a single message to thousands of contextualized experiences simultaneously multiplies the data, decisions, content, rules and controls needed.
Personalization can create more value. Its main challenge becomes to produce this relevance on a large scale without exploding the complexity of execution.
Expectations exceeded mass marketing
Personalization is not a goal: it is a way to improve the experience, and it is the experience that produces loyalty. McKinsey estimates that an experiment-oriented strategy can increase cross-sell by 15 to 25% and portfolio share by 5 to 10%.
McKinsey · Experience-led growth: a new way to create value · 2023 · estimate, cases studied — View source
In the field of personalization itself, 71% of consumers interviewed expect personalized interactions and 76% say they are frustrated when they are not.
McKinsey · The value of getting personalization right — or wrong · 2024 · consumers questioned — View source
The wait is no longer limited to the message: 56 per cent of clients interviewed wait for all offers to be customized and 85 per cent of consistent interactions between departments.
Salesforce · State of the Connected Customer · 2024 · customers surveyed — View source
Two distinct signals show the difference with actual production. Bain notes that about 40% of consumers consider the advertisements they see as irrelevant.
Bath · Retail personalization: AI marketing magic · 2025 · consumers questioned — perception of advertising — View source
Havas, on the other hand, measured that 48% of the content produced by the brands was considered non-significant.
Havas · Meaningful Brands 2021 · 2021 · evaluated brand contents — separate from the previous one — View source
These two figures do not measure the same thing. Taken together, they indicate that brands continue to produce a large volume of experiments which are not perceived as sufficiently relevant or significant.
A Documented Potential Value
Studies converge on the existence of a gain, without making it an automatic result.
McKinsey reports cases up to -50% of acquisition cost, +5% to 15% of revenue and +10 to 30% of ROI marketing. These are high-end reported cases, not typical results.
McKinsey · What is personalization? · 2024 · reported cases — high values, not averages — View source
In the personalization experiments analysed by Bain in retail, ROAS increases from 10 to 25%.
Bath · Retail personalization: AI marketing magic · 2025 · detailed experiments — View source
BCG observed an association between rank in the Personalization Index and growth: leaders showed revenue growth of about 10 points higher than those of latents, an association observed between two groups, not an established causal relationship.
BCG · Personalization in action — Personalization Index · 2024 · observed association between leaders and retardants — View source
The potential value is accompanied by increasing complexity
It's the specific tension on this subject, and it's mechanical. Moving from a single message to thousands of contextualized experiences simultaneously multiplies the data to be mobilised, the decisions to be made, the content to be produced, the rules to be respected and the controls to be operated.
audiences × intentions × products × contexts × channels
→ explosion of the number of decisions and variants to produce, control and measure.
The four dimensions to operate together
McKinsey brings together the requirements of personalization in four dimensions. Their interest is not descriptive: it is that they must work together, and that each new segment, product, intention or context multiplies the combinations between them.
- 01DataWho is this person? In what context?
- 02Decision makingWhat action or offer is relevant to her?
- 03DesignWhat message and experience do you produce?
- 04DistributionWhere, when and on which channel to activate it?
Each new segment, product, intent and context multiplies the combinations between these four dimensions.
McKinsey · The value of getting personality right — or wrong · 2024 · McKinsey analytical framework — View source
What this means for marketing leaders
personalization can no longer function as a succession of briefs and manual declinations. It must become a system linking data, decision-making, creation, distribution and measurement.
And when this personalization has to remain consistent on a growing number of contact points, the problem becomes omnichannel.
- 01Hypercompetition and attention
- 02Personalization and customer experience
- 03Omnichannel customer journey
- 04Polarisation of performance
- 05AI at scale