Marketing has become increasingly personalized, with recent research from marketing technology provider Evergage and Researchscape International finding that 85 percent of marketers surveyed have adopted the tactic. However, respondents are critical of how personalization is used, with most giving their own (55 percent)—and their competitors’ (63 percent)—campaigns a grade of “C” or lower.

“Each year, we turn to marketers to gauge their priorities and challenges,” says Karl Wirth, co-founder and CEO of Evergage. “Over the last 12 months, personalization has seen rapid and widespread adoption. Now, companies must dig deeper into their initiatives, fine-tune what is working and embrace newer, more sophisticated methods of personalization.”

Despite the widespread interest and adoption of personalization programs, Evergage found that 42 percent of marketers describe themselves as “very” or “extremely” confident that they have the right tools. Only 18 percent are “very” or “extremely” satisfied with the level of personalization in their current marketing efforts.

When employing personalization, marketers most frequently use it in email (67 percent), on websites (56 percent), mobile websites (27 percent), mobile apps (20 percent) and web applications (19 percent). Of those not already using personalization in some capacity or using only email personalization, more than half (55 percent) plan to implement website or in-app personalization in the next year.

For 39 percent of respondents, the most common reasons given in the survey for organizations to have not yet adopted website or in-app personalization were the lack of effective solution/technology, budget constraints and a lack of knowledge/skills/people. Other barriers include insufficient integration and consistency across all marketing channels, not enough time, bad quality/dirty data and scalability across sites.

“For years, one-to-one personalized experiences have been the dream for digital marketers,” adds Wirth. “While companies are getting closer with implementations of personalization, to be effective and truly deliver a one-to-one experience, marketers must ensure they have a platform that collects and maintains a unified profile for each individual visitor, and enables a response to the data—across any channel—in real time. This is no longer a pipe dream, it’s an imperative.”

For more information and to download the full report, click here.