Retailers have prioritised personalisation for years, yet many still struggle to deliver the relevant, real-time experiences customers expect. Matthew Biboud-Lubeck, General Manager EMEA at Amperity, explores why fragmented data and identity challenges continue to hold retailers back and how unified customer data can unlock meaningful engagement and drive revenue growth.
Retailers have been attempting to personalise customer experiences for the last decade. A 2017 study by McKinsey, conducted at the World Retail Congress, found that personalisation had become a strategic priority for 95% of retail CEOs.
Yet, in 2026, shoppers are still saying that their interactions with retail brands are not as targeted as they would like, nor are they receiving real-time offers they want. New research on personalisation in retail shows that most consumers (83%) do prefer personalised engagements, but the majority (57%) find their experiences feel too generic.
This inability to personalise effectively is stopping retailers from optimising customer interactions, but it is not just a customer experience issue. Three quarters (74%) of consumers say if they were to receive personalised offers or recommendations, they would be more likely to buy, which demonstrates the potential to drive incremental sales and have a direct impact on revenue and efficiency.
Why personalisation fails
So why, after almost ten years, are retailers still struggling to optimise the interactions they have with customers? Knowing when and where to contact customers is a core requirement. But the two most pressing challenges are relevancy and accuracy: two thirds of consumers say these are vital elements that they expect to see in personalised communications.
The reason why retailers often fail to get this right remains the same now as when McKinsey conducted its study back in 2017. It found that for two thirds of companies, the greatest challenge with personalisation was gathering and integrating customer data. This is still often the case, with companies frequently lacking a unified customer data foundation. This can lead to wasted marketing spend and missed conversion opportunities: according to Gartner, poor data quality costs organisations an average of US$12.9 million per year.
What’s required for personalisation
Unified customer data is essential for personalisation. Current and historical data and a clear picture of previous purchases and preferences will provide an accurate and complete, real-time view of each customer. Retailers can use these to anticipate future behaviour and create relevant communications.
If retailers want to be able to respond to customers’ actions in a timely manner, they need to be capable of updating these customer profiles in real-time. This will ensure every marketing message is shaped by customer-specific context and their interactions have maximum relevance and accuracy.
Of course, the ultimate goal for retailers is to deliver these experiences wherever they are interacting with a brand. So, to provide consistency across multiple channels, companies also need to collate real-time data from every customer touchpoint.
Identity resolution is key
The next step for retailers is to clean all this information and ensure there are no duplicate profiles. The creation of partial profiles split across different channels is a common issue for retailers as consumers frequently use different identifiers – name spellings, email addresses, etc. – when interacting through various touchpoints. If these profiles are left unresolved, it can result in retailers sending inconsistent, sometimes conflicting, communications.
The traditional approach to resolving duplicate profiles involves data engineers spending weeks unifying and cleaning data pulled from various sources. This takes so long, however, the opportunity to influence purchasing decisions is often missed.
But, in the years since the McKinsey report, technology has come a long way – and it has dramatically sped up this process. Teams can now access data in minutes rather than weeks. We now have customer data clouds built on lakehouse architectures that can view and use data dynamically, wherever it resides. AI-empowered identity resolution can also clean profiles and remove duplications almost instantly, providing marketers with the speed and accuracy they need to act in the moment.
Driving sales
With a strong identity foundation, it is then possible to capitalise on customer data signals, such as an abandoned cart or browsing behaviour that suggests the customer is shopping for an occasion. When those signals are paired with comprehensive customer profiles, retailers can deploy context-specific messages or offers that will move a customer towards a purchase.
This also empowers real-time personalisation a modern element that is more than just a nice-to-have. The research shows it can directly lead to conversions. More than two thirds (69%) say they would be more inclined to buy if a retailer adjusted its recommendations or offers while they browsed.
Personalisation is welcomed by consumers, especially when they receive offers on products they are looking to buy. The advantages for the retailer are also clear. It leads to happier customers, who are willing to spend more. The long-term gains in terms of customer loyalty and increased revenues are substantial.
Retailers that can’t do it well, will lose opportunities to engage with customers, convert sales and build revenue. Moreover, they risk alienating customers and losing out to the competition. Modern personalisation means sharing the right messages on the right channels, at the right time. Success depends on having a solid data foundation that ensures customer profiles are always unified and up to date.
