Design Marketers should break content into small pieces that can be mixed and matched for maximum flexibility. — Cross-functional team. Assemble a cross functional, co located team to manage weekly deployment in a test and learn culture for faster results. — Talents, capabilities, and culture. Secure the right capabilities and talent, often starting out by setting the right ambition in leadership. Distribution Integrate channels to coordinate communications and react to customer actions. — Technology enablement. An optimized technology platform can be complex; start with existing technology and make the most of its potential. — Test and learn. Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good; get started and iterate over time. How will personalization shift in the near future? Advances in AI, analytics, and data over the past few years have created new frontiers for marketers. But to capture the opportunities, marketers need to understand the three main shifts in personalization and build the skills to respond to them. — Physical spaces will be “digitized.” Deploying personalization beyond digital channels is a huge zone of opportunity, especially as physical stores continue to build back business in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Offline interactions such as store visits could be the new horizon for personalization. Store employees can use insights from advanced analytics to provide customers with personalized offerings, and personal shoppers can use AI enabled tools to improve service. Finally, facial recognition, location recognition, and biometric sensors will likely become more widely used. — Empathy will scale. Empathy is the basis of all strong relationships. Understanding social cues and adapting to them builds trust. And it’s not easy to do digitally or at scale. Machine learning is changing that. Sophisticated algorithms are allowing programs to extrapolate emotions from data more easily. Ultimately, these advances can help marketers respond to customers’ specific moods. — Brands will use ecosystems to personalize journeys. At present, various players contribute to a customer’s in person experience—for instance, a shopping mall, a retail store, and a brand. Creating connections among these points is a big opportunity for organizations in the retail space to provide customers with more seamless decision journeys. Learn more about McKinsey’s Retail and Growth, Marketing & Sales Practices and McKinsey Digital. Also check out personalization-related job opportunities if you’re interested in working at McKinsey. Articles referenced: — “The state of AI in 2022—and a half decade in review,” December 6, 2022, Michael Chui, Bryce Hall, Helen Mayhew, Alex Singla, and Alex Sukharevsky — “The value of getting personalization right— or wrong—is multiplying,” November 12, 2021, Nidhi Arora, Daniel Ensslen, Lars Fiedler, Wei Wei Liu, Kelsey Robinson, Eli Stein, and Gustavo Schüler — “Personalizing the customer experience: Driving differentiation in retail,” April 28, 2020, Erik Lindecrantz, Madeleine Tjon Pian Gi, and Stefano Zerbi 6 What is personalization?