How brands fail to meet online personalization goals
While most brands recognize the value of online personalization, a new survey reveals many of them are not achieving it.
The sixth annual "State of Personalization Maturity in E-commerce" study from Dynamic Yield by Mastercard surveyed global brands engaging in digital retailing and found that while 67% of respondents prioritize personalization to meet evolving AI-driven customer expectations, 50% lack dedicated teams for personalization.
In addition, 67% of respondents report siloed personalization efforts, meaning they lack a singular audience strategy for approaching ideation, execution and analysis; and 43% struggle to link personalization metrics to broader business goals.
Four-in-10 respondents lack clear key performance indicators (KPIs) to assess their personalization efforts.
[READ MORE: Survey: Retailers to continue investing in personalization, AI tools]
However, not all of the survey’s results indicate that online brands are failing to pursue personalization. Nearly two-thirds (65%) of respondents report deriving insights and learnings from past tests and circulating impactful results to the right teams and executives.
In addition, 56% of respondents leverage their personalization autonomy to conduct experiments across their organization’s entire website.
The study also analyzed how advanced respondents are in their online personalization efforts by the global regions of the Americas, Asia-Pacific (APAC), and Europe and Middle East (EMEA). Respondents’ personalization efforts were ranked as absent, basic, advanced, and pioneer.
Generally, results show EMEA respondents are much more likely to be at the basic level of personalization deployment and less likely to be pioneers than respondents from the Americas and APAC:
Americas
- Absent: 11%
- Basic: 32%
- Advanced: 30%
- Pioneer: 27%
APAC
- Absent: 11%
- Basic: 32%
- Advanced: 39%
- Pioneer: 12%
EMEA
- Absent: 16%
- Basic: 46%
- Advanced: 32%
- Pioneer: 6%
"Looking around corners and adapting to online customers’ expectations on-the-fly calls for a well-crafted personalization roadmap," said Donovan Yong, principal, advisors business development, Dynamic Yield by Mastercard. "By crafting a single source of truth for customer data and fostering strategic alignment, brands can clinch a multi-trillion-dollar opportunity in personalization."
The 2025 "State of Personalization Maturity in E-commerce" study marks the sixth consecutive year Dynamic Yield by Mastercard has publishing its personalization research. The study includes 92 responses from C-suite executives and individuals in marketing, merchandising, user experience/customer experience, product management, and analytics and development from organizations in the Americas, Asia-Pacific, and Europe and Middle East regions.
