Over the last few years, the rapid shift to digital channels has amplified issues around effectively and consistently scaling personalized digital experiences. According to data from Adobe's 2025 AI and Digital Trends Report, a significant gap exists between consumer expectations and brand delivery regarding customer personalization.
While 71% of consumers desire personalized offers and proactive assistance, only 34% of brands provide it. With this in mind, let’s look at strategies you can adopt to help you enhance customer personalization for your business.
In this guide:
Accelerate personalization at scale.
Personalization at scale is a vital focus for businesses of all sizes, simply because customers expect it. People are now interacting with your brand through more channels, which means more data is coming in from more (potentially disjointed) sources. This means that tailored content must be delivered to a wider variety of places. At the same time, new and increasingly stricter security and privacy regulations will soon require you to shift to a first-party data strategy.
Our 2025 digital report also revealed that consumers are increasingly concerned about data privacy, with 88% expecting responsible handling of their personal information. However, only 49% of organizations meet this expectation, creating a trust gap that hinders personalization efforts. It’s no surprise that only 14% of organizations were able to deliver compelling experiences that delighted customers, a 25% decline from 2023.
Change is happening fast, and it’s not just a matter of keeping up. Your customers have increasingly sophisticated expectations, and they inherently compare the experience you provide with that of your competitors. Because this rings true for everyone in such a saturated market, many organizations are now primed to respond.
Personalization at scale strategies.
Your ability to scale personalization efforts hinges on four strategies:
1. Optimize data and insights.
Begin with a comprehensive foundation for data and insights as the cornerstone of your personalization scaling strategy. This involves unifying data silos, governing siloed data, and integrating analytics to achieve operational efficiencies and facilitate real-time interactions.
2. Streamline content and collaboration.
Build a scalable, dynamic content production machine. Begin by connecting all phases of the content production process, from creation to delivery. You can find out more about this in our guide on creating and delivering content at scale.
3. Deliver better journeys.
Create an intelligent decision-making engine that orchestrates every experience. Use real-time customer data to personalize experiences across all channels and incorporate AI-automated decision-making to better react to insights and engage customers across touchpoints.
4. Transform your organization and operations.
Start by creating a culture that champions data-driven decision-making and agile marketing operations through team building and executive buy-in. Then, ensure you have a technology foundation that supports your efforts with tools like Adobe Real-Time CDP.
“Our expanded partnership with Adobe will enable us to enhance the customer experience even further, driving personalization at scale and further optimizing The Home Depot experience across online and in-store.”
Melanie Babcock
Vice President of Integrated Media at The Home Depot
Personalization at scale return on investment (ROI).
While accelerating growth through personalized customer engagement can feel daunting, the benefits you can achieve are worth the effort.
Adobe’s own research on customer engagement and personalization reveals that experience-driven businesses are more likely to:
- Drive greater customer retention and lifetime value
- Have happier employees
- Cultivate competitive advantage at every stage of the customer life cycle.
Likewise, ROI stats on Adobe’s Real-Time Customer Data Platform reinforce these trends and help companies act on data more easily, leading to a potential:
- 3 times the increase in customer engagement
- 7-day speed in time to market
- 50% improvement in workflow efficiency.
Implementing a scaled personalization strategy that aligns with your organization’s objectives and specific customer expectations is key. This not only fosters greater customer and employee contentment but is ultimately good for your bottom line.
AI adoption is a priority.
According to our 2025 Digital Trends report, businesses that are using emerging technologies and are already seeing returns on investment expect two major benefits over the next 12 to 24 months:
- Improved quality of customer interactions (58%)
- More consistent communication (50%).
These improvements will help meet consumers’ key expectations of how brands should engage with them.
According to the latest research from McKinsey, as AI technologies—particularly generative AI—move from experimentation to wide-scale deployment, organizations are reporting significant gains in both efficiency and revenue. With adoption reaching record levels and executive leadership increasingly involved in AI governance, businesses are integrating AI not just as a technical tool, but as a strategic driver of growth and innovation:
- AI Adoption Growth: In 2024, 72% of organizations reported using AI in at least one business function, a significant increase from about 50% in previous years.
- Generative AI Usage: 65% of respondents indicated their organizations regularly use generative AI (gen AI) in at least one business function, nearly doubling from the previous year.
- Multi-Functional Deployment: Half of the organizations have adopted AI in two or more business functions, up from less than a third in 2023.
- Business Impact: Organizations deploying gen AI reported both cost reductions and revenue increases in the business units utilizing the technology.
- Functional Adoption: The most common areas for gen AI adoption are marketing and sales, product and service development, and IT.
- Leadership and Governance: 28% of organizations using AI have their CEO overseeing AI governance, highlighting the importance of executive involvement in AI initiatives.
The Danish telecom provider Telmore offers a good example of the value of effective consumer personalization. Their AI-powered personalization efforts led to an 11% boost in sales compared to non-personalized interactions.
72% of organizations reported using AI in at least one business function.
McKinsey & Company
Take the next step to personalize experiences at scale.
Customer expectations are higher than ever in today’s digital world. Meanwhile, organizations have never had so many technologies and data sources available to help them deliver effective personalized experiences.
At Adobe, we understand what personalization means in today’s digital economy and why it’s so critical. For more on implementing a strategy within your organization, check out our guide, Getting Started with Personalization at Scale.
Ready to turn data into dynamic experiences? Click below to start personalizing at scale with AI-powered insights in Adobe Real-Time CDP — and deliver the right message to the right customer, every time.
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