— Protect customer privacy. Data privacy is a big deal to customers: according to a 2022 survey, 85 percent of customers say that knowing a company’s data privacy policies is important before making a purchase. Companies working on personalization are likely to trigger privacy concerns, so proactively managing these will be important. That means showing customers that they take data privacy seriously. OK, but I’m starting from scratch. Can you be more specific? As with most things, the hardest part of personalization marketing is getting started. Here are four steps companies can take to establish and scale digital personalization, without investing millions in IT: 1. Use behavioral data to analyze customer journeys. Organize behavioral data by grouping customers, like mothers who shop for their children, or fashion conscious young women who buy new private label styles. Then understand the customer journey—that’s the series of interactions a customer makes with a brand, from initial consideration to repeat purchases. Combining segments and customer journeys creates microsegments, and that’s a step toward personalization. 2. Listen to customer signals—and respond quickly. When customers provide signals about their intentions, marketers should be prepared to respond right away with a relevant message known as a “trigger.” Trigger messages can be any combination of images, copy, titles, or offers to match the situation. Developing the right trigger involves combining creative problem solving with analytics. For example, when a mother clicks on a product but hasn’t bought it, a next product to buy algorithm based on machine learning could send a message suggesting a set of related products. 3. Build a small, dedicated team. Empower a small group of the right people to transition the marketing department to a focus on personalized triggers. The team should be staffed with a fully dedicated campaign manager and creative, digital media, analytics, operations, and IT staff—and should have executive sponsorship to remove roadblocks. The team’s goal should go beyond page views and clicks to actual business results. 4. Focus on processes and technology that help teams work faster. Agile processes are key here—they enable teams to quickly mix and match copy, creative content, and templates to find out what works and what doesn’t. Mistakes will happen, and that’s OK. Learn lessons and move on. The right automation technology is also needed to work at this pace. Too often, automation software spits out messages that customers perceive as spam. It’s the tech team’s respon sibility to guide the tech stack to find signals and efficiently deliver triggers that work. How about an example of personalization marketing in action? Here’s how a personalization journey might work. Mary is a mother with two children in primary school. Early last August, she visited a store to buy items for her kids, including several she’d previously viewed online. That’s signal one . The items she purchased were logged and attached to Mary’s profile in the store’s database. This summer, almost a year later, Mary browses children’s clothes on the same retailer’s website but doesn’t buy anything. This interest combined with her purchases last summer together comprise signal two : Mary might be open to making her first back to school online purchase for her children this year. Within 24 hours of browsing the clothes, Mary receives a trigger message : a personalized email offering a 10 percent discount on some of the items she’s been reviewing if she purchases them online. The message explains how to make the 4 What is personalization?