No matter your industry, brand, or business model, as a customer-obsessed company you’ve made personalization a top priority. Arguably nothing is more important to growth and other business outcomes than the ability to deliver compelling experiences matched to the context and expectations of each consumer in any given moment. Success with personalization starts with the mastery of customer data. To build and maintain that mastery, brands must navigate hyper-accelerated change to make constant and critical decisions about where and how to uplevel the data capabilities that empower personalization at scale.

Priority areas of focus

Strategy

Build a unified customer data strategy for the long term. Teams beyond marketing will find new ways to leverage customer data, not only for their role in CX, but for service, innovation, strategy, and more. Without an agile approach, supporting this work will only get tougher as your data grows.

Technology

Don’t let your CX platform outpace the data foundation that underpins it. Focusing on hot new tech integrations won’t pay off if your data is not unlocked, aligned, and optimized to empower its full capabilities.

Data

Evolve your data practices and platforms as you leverage more and more customer information to deliver personalized CX. Your CRMs and channel-specific martech isn’t built to process and empower data the way modern cloud-based platforms can.

Download Merkle's latest Customer Engagement Report for Q3 2022 to learn how to lean in on each of these focus areas as well as new insights from our survey of 600 marketers and technologists.