Personalized marketing (or one-to-one marketing) is the implementation of a strategy where companies deliver individualized content to recipients through data collection, analysis, and the use of automation technology.

The goal of personalized marketing is to truly engage customers or prospective customers by communicating with each as an individual.

Personalized marketing is one of the biggest trends in digital marketing, especially with the interest in artificial intelligence.

Here are 30 fascinating facts about personalized marketing.

1. 90% of consumers find personalized marketing content very or somewhat appealing, with just 4% saying that they find it not very or not at all appealing.
2. 78% of consumers are more likely to be a repeat customer if a brand provides targeted, personalized offers.
3. 78% of consumers say that personally relevant content increases their purchase intent for a brand’s products and services.
4. 75% of consumers prefer personalized content.
5. 74% of online consumers get frustrated with Web sites when content (e.g., offers, ads, promotions) appears that has nothing to do with their interests.
6. 71% of organizations use web analytics software for personalization purposes, with 56% saying that their most used personalization technology is a content management system.
7. 71% of consumers believe that grocery and drug companies’ websites and mobile apps are doing very or somewhat well at delivering personalized experiences.
8. 68% of companies prioritize personalized content experiences. The most common solutions invested in are: Web Content Management (60%), Email Marketing (53%) and Tag Management (51%).
9. 66% of marketers personalize their e-mail content by age, compared to 38% who use consumer age data to personalize social media content.

   For 66% of marketers, one of the big struggles with personalization is securing internal resources to execute personalized marketing programs.
10. 65% of marketers say they use personalization in e-mail marketing, compared to 18% who are using personalization in mobile apps.
11. 65% of consumers aged between 18 and 34 cite personalized support as their preferred form of retail personalization, compared to 10% who cite personalized advertising.
12. 63% of respondents say increased conversion rates as the main benefit of website and in-app personalization, whereas 32 percent cite increased e-commerce revenues as the main benefit of this tactic.
13. 60% of respondents say that location is one of the key criteria they use when targeting for personalization, with 48% saying that they look at previous visits behavior.
14. 60% of marketers struggle to personalize content in real time, yet 77% believe real-time personalization is crucial.
15. 56% of marketers less than 10 percent of their marketing budget for personalized digital communications, whereas 6% of marketers report using 31% to 40% of their budget on personalization.
16.  55% of consumers feel that Amazon is the best at delivering personalized experiences online, whereas 38% of feel Facebook is best at online personalization.
17. 48% of consumers say companies using their purchase history for shopping recommendations sent to mobile phones behavior is acceptable to them as long as they could opt out at any time.
18. 45% of consumers won’t spend time with branded content if it’s not relevant to their interests.
19. 39% of marketers have seen increases of at least 20% on their most important metric using website personalization technology.
20. Only 39% of retailers send personalized product recommendations via email.
21. 32% of consumers expect to get a relevant discount within an hour of interacting with a brand in a way that allows that brand to identify them, with 25% of expect to receive a personalized newsletter within one hour.
22. 23% of marketers find that data quality was the largest obstacle to personalization.
23. 19% average uplift in sales for brands using personalized content.
24. 18.8% email open rate for emails with a personalized message as compared to 13.1% without any personalization.
25. Only 11% of marketers are extremely satisfied with their levels of personalization in web applications.
26. 10% improvement in click through rates and conversions for email with personalized message.
27. Digital content is expected to grow 50 times between 2010 and 2020.
28.  Personalized emails deliver six times higher transaction rates, but 70% of brands fail to use them.
29. The biggest challenges with personalization are gaining insight quickly enough (40%), having enough data (39%), and inaccurate data (38%).

Do these personalized marketing fact have an influence on you? Does your company need help executing personalized marketing?

Facebook knows us well from its user data. The alleged illegal data mining of as many as 87 million users acquired by Cambridge Analytica means others might know us well too. Better than we want them to.

The NY Times reported that in 2014 contractors and employees of Cambridge Analytica, eager to sell psychological profiles of American voters to political campaigns, acquired the private Facebook data of tens of millions of users.

Some of the user data in question was accessed by authorizing the app “thisisyourdigitallife,” by Global Science Research, a personality app that told users the information was anonymous and for physiological research.

Around 270,000 people actually accessed the app. It gathered data on those users’ friends, until it had access to information from millions of users.

What type of information is gathered? What can people do with it? Here are 13 fascinating and frightening facts Facebook knows from our Likes.

1. After you “Like” just 10 Facebook pages, advertisers (or political campaigns) can know you as well as a colleague, according to research from Cambridge University in the U.K.
2. After 70 “Likes” as much can be deduced about you as a close friend knows
3. After 150 “Likes,” you’ve given up as much about yourself to Facebook as your parents know
4. 78% of people who “Like” brands on Facebook like fewer than 10 brands
5. 76% of people have never “un-Liked” a brand
6. 56% of fans say they’re more likely to recommend a brand to a friend after becoming a fan
7. 58% of users “Like” a brand because they are a customer
8. 51% of fans say they’re more likely to buy a product since becoming a fan
9. More than five billion instances of people listening to songs online have been catalogued by Facebook withing 5 months
10. 4 intermediary Facebook friends are usually enough to introduce anyone to a random stranger according to a study analyzing 69 billion friend connections among 721 million people
11. 98 personal data points are used by Facebook to target ads. Targeting options available to advertisers today include: Location, Age, Generation, Gender, Language, Education level, Field of study, School, Ethnic affinity, Income and net worth, Home ownership and type, Home value, Property size, Square footage of home, Year home was built and Household composition
12. 93% of Facebook friends have met in person the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project found
13. Every 60 seconds, 136,000 photos are uploaded, 510,000 comments are posted, and 293,000 status updates are posted.

Do these facts about what Facebook knows surprise you? Does your brand need help navigating social media?

Website rankings on search engines matter. Various studies show a website in the first position on a search page gets 33% of clicks for a specific keyword query. And at least 75% of search traffic goes to websites on the first page of search results.

No single marketing avenue has drawn as much enthusiasm (or has been more misunderstood) as website rankings and Search Engine Optimization (SEO). For a marketer or content producer, the first thing to consider is finding the right keywords. The next step is ensuring the website is easy to navigate and be found by the search engine for those keywords.

There are simple step anyone can take to boost website rankings. The people at Websites That Sell in Australia have put together an infographic to show you.

Here are 7 easy ways to boost website rankings and traffic and here’s why.

1. MOBILE FIRST: 51.1% of web traffic originates from mobile devices in 2017, up from 48.3% in the previous year. 88% of consumers who search for a type of local business on a mobile device call or go to that business within 24 hours.
2. VIDEOS: 88% of visitors stay longer on a site with prominent videos displayed. Landing pages with videos lead to 80% more conversion .
3. CRISP CONTENT: 53% of marketers rank content creation as the single most effective SEO tactic. 81% of businesses consider their blogs as an important asset to their business.
4. REAL TESTIMONIALS: 90% of consumer say they are significantly influenced by online reviews. When a site has customer reviews, 63% of visitors are more likely to make a purchase, and reviews produce an average of 18% uplift in sales.
5. GRAPHICS: Having visuals on your landing page increases your likelihood of showing up on Google’s first page by 53%. Searches provide 3x more traffic to your website than social media.
6. DATA: Many brands are still failing to make user search intent a key part of their SEO strategy. Use data from keywords and website ranks to deliver immediate answers, bring searcher to pre-determined destination and assist in completing a task or purchase
7. BUSINESS OBJECTIVE: Every business should be based on a goal, vision and mission. All of the ways to boost website ranking and traffic should be aligned with business objective. That way these are not just easy but highly effective ways to boost website rankings and traffic.

Now, here’s the infographic from Websites That Sell.

Do these ways make sense to you? How many are you doing? Does your business meed help with your website ranking and traffic?

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is the theory and development of computer systems able to perform tasks normally requiring human intelligence, such as visual perception, speech recognition, decision-making, and translation between languages.

The bulk of the AI development happening today by industry leaders falls uses human reasoning as a guide to provide better services or create better products rather trying to achieve a perfect replica of the human mind. Artificial Intelligence holds great promise for industry.

Where are we today with artificial interaction and where do experts say we will be in the next few years.

To bring clarity, here are 30 artificial intelligence facts that separate hype vs reality.

1. 85% of all customer interactions won’t require human customer service reps by the end of this decade (Gartner).
2. 80% of executives surveyed are “eyeing the peaks” and view AI as a strategic opportunity. (MIT Sloan Management Review)
3. 80% of executives believe AI boosts productivity. (The Motley Fool)
4. 72% of business leaders believe artificial intelligence is a “business advantage.” (PwC)
5. 61% of those who have an innovation strategy said they are using AI to identify opportunities in data that would otherwise be missed. Only 22% without a strategy said the same. (Narrative Science)
6.  61%, regardless of company size, pointed to machine learning and AI as their company’s most significant data initiative for next year. (MeMSQL)
7. By 2020, 57% of business buyers will depend on companies to know what they need before they ask for anything. This means having solid prediction capabilities with your AI will be the key to keeping your customers. (Salesforce)
8. By 2020, 57% of business buyers will depend on companies to know what they need before they ask for anything. This means having solid prediction capabilities with your AI will be the key to keeping your customers. (Salesforce)
9.  When asked about expectations for marketing technology providers to have native AI capabilities, more than 50% of respondents said it was important or a must-have. (BrightEdge)
10. 44% of executives believe artificial intelligence’s most important benefit is “automated communications that provide data that can be used to make decisions.” (Narrative Science)
11. 41% of consumers believe AI will make their lives better. (Strategy Analytics)
12. The impact of AI technologies on business is projected to increase labor productivity by up to 40% and enable people to make more efficient use of their time. (Accenture)
13. By 2020, smart agents will manage 40% of mobile interactions. (Gartner)
14. Could you lose your job to AI? According to PwC, maybe. By the 2030s, they predict that around 38% of all U.S. jobs could be replaced by AI and automation. (PwC)
15.  While only 33% think they use AI-enabled technology, 77% actually use an AI-powered service or device. (Pega)
16. 32% of executives say voice recognition is the most-widely used AI technology in their business. (Narrative Science)
17.  When asked about the next big marketing trend, survey respondents identified consumer personalization (29%), AI (26%), and voice search (21.23%). These top three responses, which total 75% of all AI applications, demonstrate that AI is more pervasive and prominent than respondents realize. (BrightEdge)
18. 20% of business content will be authored by machines by 2018 (Gartner).
19. Artificial intelligence will replace 16% of American jobs by the end of the decade. (Forrester)
20. 15% of Apple phone owners users use Siri’s voice recognition capabilities. (BGR)
21. Only 15% of enterprises are using AI. But 31% said it is on the agenda for the next 12 months. (Adobe)
22. The largest companies—those with at least 100,000 employees—are the most likely to have an AI strategy, but only half have one. (MIT Sloan Management Review)
23. In the U.S., only 4.5% of self-reported data scientists or data researchers specifically work as machine learning engineers. (Kaggle)
24. One AI specialist on staff, with salary and company stock, can fetch compensation of $300,000 to $500,000. (The New York Times)
25. “Netflix saved $1 billion this year as a result of its machine learning algorithm which recommends personalized TV shows and movies to subscribers.” (StatWolf)
26. Harvard University has received $28 million to build artificial intelligence as fast as the human brain. (Wired)
27. Over 16.1 million Amazon Echos and 5.9 million Google Home devices have been sold, according to data collected in June 2017. That means 7% of the population aged 12+ owns an AI-based speaker device. (Edison Research, Voicebot.ai)
28. By 2018, more than 3 million workers globally will be supervised by a so-called “robo-boss” (Gartner).
29. By 2018, an estimated 2 million employees will be required to wear health and fitness tracking devices on the job (Gartner).
30. Heliograf, The Washington Post’s AI writer, created approximately 850 stories in 2016 during the Rio Olympics and the 2016 presidential election. Humanity’s saving grace? Editing and analysis polishing came from human editors. (The Washington Post)

Do these artificial intelligence facts separate the hype vs reality to you? Did you learn something new? Does your organization need help understanding AI?

Peter Drucker quotes prove he is the most enduring marketing guru of them all. His quotes and their wisdom are as relevant and applicable today as they were decades earlier when he first said them.

Peter Drucker (1909-2005) was the author of more than three dozen books, translated into almost as many languages. McKinsey Quarterly said: “In the world of management gurus, there is no debate. Peter Drucker is the one guru to whom other gurus kowtow.”

Drucker thought of himself as a loner, as someone well outside the mainstream of management education. “I have always been a loner,” he said once. “I work best outside. That’s where I’m most effective.” While he may thought himself as being on the outside, his succinct truths strike right at the heart of the matter and provide essential direction for today’s marketers and entrepreneurs.

Here are 12 Peter Drucker quotes on marketing and entrepreneurship to inspire and provide direction for you.

MARKETING

Drucker saw marketing as a core responsibility of management. He said that “marketing is so basic that it is not just
enough to have a strong sales department and to entrust marketing to it. Marketing is not only much
broader than selling; it is not a specialized activity at all. It encompasses the entire business. Concern and
responsibility for marketing must therefore permeate all areas of the enterprise.”

ENTREPRENEURSHIP

Drucker identified entrepreneurs as people who see “change” as the standard. “The only constant in life is change.”
He treated both innovation and entrepreneurship in the “new entrepreneurial economy” as practices, decisive duties that could be controlled best in a systematic work environment. Unfortunately for corporate America, the bureaucratic organization structure was not able to sustain an entrepreneurial spirit, and many of the proponents left to start their own ventures.

Do these Peter Drucker quotes on marketing and entrepreneurship inspire and provide direction for you? Are you ready to put them into practice?