McKinsey Classics | December 2023

Perfecting your approach to personalized marketing

You’ve come a long way, irrelevant pop-up ad. Once a ubiquitous (and always vexatious) interruption flogging some unwanted item, now you are a lean and mean marketing machine—sort of. While companies have gotten better at knowing their customers and what their customers want, today’s digital-savvy omnichannel shoppers demand ever closer attention. Marketers also need to know when customers want something (including before customers know they want it), where they want to hear about it, and how they want to get it—all in a seamless experience that’s direct yet nuanced. It’s no wonder that many companies’ personalized marketing efforts fall short.

Leaders in personalization are continually tweaking and testing their communication efforts with shoppers to strengthen customer loyalty and spur growth. Among their constellation of personalized-marketing efforts, successful companies study individual consumer habits to learn the best time to send a marketing message, explore cross-channel communication efforts to reach customers both online and offline, and use data from loyalty programs to help personalize product offers more effectively.

To help ensure that your targeted communications are reaching your consumers in ways they want, read our 2017 classic “What shoppers really want from personalized marketing,” from McKinsey senior partners Julien Boudet and Brian Gregg and coauthors.

— Drew Holzfeind, editor, Chicago