At least that what the headline of this report from Gartner implies. Ignore the headline folks, only a few companies are even equipped to deal with the level of personalization that they are talking about, and that requires deep data and lots of smart systems running on the back-end. Only a couple of companies come to mind that even currently attempt to personalize content at this level (I’m looking at you Amazon).
What does this mean for most companies? there is still a lot that can be done from a content and experience perspective to provide more meaningful information for our users. Super-detailed one-to-one personalization is sometimes self defeating given the investment required. That doesn’t mean that you can’t segment you customers in very meaningful ways to crate smaller groups that have shared preferences, likes, dislikes, etc. Crafting experiences around such groupings can still yield meaningful, personalized experiences, even if it isn’t an experience crafted just for one.
