• by Jess Nelson , December 17, 2015

Less than 10% of marketers say they have the correct tools to deliver personalized one-to-one marketing, according to a white paper commissioned and released Thursday by Kahuna Mobile.

Personalization has been proven to radically increase the ROI of email marketing and segmented campaigns increase open rates by as much as 760%, according to the Direct Marketing Association.

Consumers are looking for relevant experiences from the brands they shop at. Consumers are more than four times more likely to respond to a personalized email than a generic one.

Moreover, 72% of consumers are frustrated when they receive irrelevant emails per a recent Autopilot study that surveyed 1200 consumers. 

Yet the higher-quality data tools required for authentic and individualized personalization still remains troublesome for many marketers, according to the Kahuna Mobile report.

Marketers need to rethink their efforts to deliver one-to-one marketing, not just to keep up but to stay ahead of the trends, per Julie Ginches, CMO of Kahuna.

The study surveyed top marketing professionals at Ascendant, an invite-only professional networking group, to pinpoint any issues marketers are facing when incorporating personalization into their marketing campaigns. Some 59% of respondents state they hold the title of vice president of marketing or above, and 88% market directly to consumers.

Every marketer surveyed expressed that omnichannel marketing was important, but only 6% believe they have a mature omnichannel marketing program.

Some 78% of companies surveyed responded that they were restricted in investing in omnichannel personalization by resources and inadequate time, while 91% of marketers expressed that they either did not have or did not fully utilize the tools they need for individualized marketing.

A further 72% of marketers responded that inconsistent data across technologies were a major challenge in implementing better marketing tools.