The Challenges Brands Face in Getting Personalization Right
- Date:
- Sep 28, 2025
- Length:
- 12 min read
Overview
Everyone talks about personalization like it is the magic solution. Say the word in a boardroom and heads start nodding. But when it comes to actually delivering it, things get messy. And as the paradox of choice grows, the challenge multiplies. Customers are faced with too many options. Think of scrolling through Netflix, where half the evening is spent choosing what to watch instead of watching. Unlike the old days. If we wanted to watch a movie, we would get into a car and drive to the drive-in. Yes, I am that old and remember that. Only movies we had as options, until the next week. That was it. No scrolling. No endless options. Just sit back, eat your popcorn and watch. Maybe get out of the car while it is still raining to go and buy some more Smarties to add to your popcorn. At the same time brands are under pressure to constantly innovate and find new ways of doing things. With so many moving parts, it becomes harder and harder to keep everything working together seamlessly.
Some of the biggest pitfalls we face with personalization
1. Data silos and disconnected systems
The data is there. Most companies are swimming in it. The problem is that it is scattered across platforms, departments, and yes, even spreadsheets. We have seen it. Someone turning an Excel sheet into the single source of truth and calling it rich data. Sales has one version of reality. Marketing has another. Customer service has something completely different. And when those systems do not talk to each other, the customer feels it first. The experience ends up fragmented, messy, and inconsistent.
This is where the idea of small data, as Martin Lindstrom calls it, becomes important. Big data might show you the patterns, but small data reveals the human truth. The everyday details. The little signals that tell you who the customer really is. Without connecting both, the big and the small, brands risk drawing in the information while missing the insights that matter most.
65% of respondents worry that inaccurate or disconnected data undermines their AI-driven personalization efforts.
Source: Twillio Segment
2. Over-reliance on automation
Automation is brilliant, but it is not a substitute for human thinking. Too many campaigns get pushed out because “the system says so” without anyone stopping to ask if it makes sense. That is how you end up with tone deaf messages or irrelevant offers. Machines can scale output, but humans give it meaning.
Take a fashion brand as an example. They might have ten different marketing activities running at the same time. A seasonal sale. A new collection launch. A loyalty programme push. All competing for attention for the same audience bucket. Without a connected taxonomy across platforms or a single source of truth, automation does not know which message should take precedence or which one matters more to a specific customer. The result is confusion. One customer sees a promotion for last season while another is hit with a loyalty ad before they have even made a first purchase. Instead of clarity, automation can create noise.
Every personalised interaction should feed back into the system to improve future experiences — automation without feedback loops becomes stale
3. Generic segmentation is no longer enough
For years, segmentation was treated like the holy grail. But “women aged 25–34 in urban areas” is not personalization. It is just a broad brushstroke. And even those broad strokes often miss the mark. Not everyone fits neatly into the boxes of age, gender, or location. The world is more fluid than that, and people expect brands to recognise it.
Customers today want experiences that feel like they are built for them, not for a demographic bucket.
Think about it. You don’t really see yourself as “like everyone else” in your age group. Neither do I. I have my own quirks, my own family, my own habits. I may not always be as unique as I like to think, but one thing I do know. I am the only person in the world with my name.
So why should a brand treat me as if I am the same as everyone else.
4. Privacy, consent, and regulation
GDPR. POPIA. CCPA. The list of acronyms keeps growing. Customers are more aware of their rights and regulators are more active than ever. The problem is that regulations move slower than the speed of innovation. They are always catching up.
The real challenge is balancing compliance with creativity and innovation. Get it wrong and you lose trust fast. Or worse, you get hit with a heavy fine. Under GDPR, that can be up to 4 percent of a company’s global annual revenue or 20 million euros, whichever is higher. No brand wants that headline.
5. Scaling without becoming creepy
There is a fine line between helpful and intrusive. Showing me a product I browsed yesterday can be useful. Showing me the same product ten times a day across every platform starts to feel like stalking. Getting an email the moment I abandon a cart is irritating. Maybe I just needed time to think.
I remember an event not too long ago. I was looking at a product on an e-commerce site. Yes, I was logged into my account, so technically I gave consent to be tracked. But I was only doing research. We all do it. A week later I received a call from a sales rep asking about my interest in that product. No, I did not want a call. And I never shopped with them again and will likely never again.
The trick is finding the balance between relevance and overkill.
71% of customers get frustrated when a shopping experience feels impersonal
Source: Sender.net
6. Defining the digital experience
One of the toughest challenges is agreeing on what personalization should actually look like inside the business. Every organisation is unique. Different ways of working. Different technologies are already in place. Different levels of maturity in their architecture. There are very few copy and paste options.
Trust me on this. I’ve seen and heard it before. You already did it for them, why not just use the same for us? The reality is you cannot. You have a completely different ERP. A completely different CRM. What works in one organisation will not simply slot into another. Not always. Even so-called off the shelf tools eventually get customised to fit new customer needs. At that point, they are no longer truly off the shelf.
And then there is the question of money. How much are companies really willing to invest? Personalization is not a switch you flip once. It is a long term commitment. Once you feed the lion, you have to keep feeding it. Stop, and it turns on you.
7. Content without Context
Personalization falls apart when the message does not match the moment. You might know who the customer is, but if the creative misses the mark the experience feels flat. Two shoppers can look at the same product and expect completely different things. One might respond to imagery and storytelling that reflects their cultural background, while another connects more with values of sustainability or community. When the wrong version shows up, it feels irrelevant or even tone-deaf. We see this often in retail, where brands push generic global campaigns without adapting visuals or messaging to local cultures and communities.
8. Struggling to Adapt
Personalization is never a set-and-forget exercise. It only works if it can adapt quickly to customer signals. If someone ignores an offer multiple times, the system should know when to stop. If a shopper suddenly engages deeply with a new category, the journey should shift to reflect that. Think about Netflix: skip the same show three times and it disappears from your feed. Yet many e-commerce platforms still push the same product long after the customer has lost interest. And it is not only about the data streams. Content itself has to keep pace. If producing new variants is too heavy or slow, the customer experience lags behind. The easier it is to update copy, swap images, or adapt content to different audiences, the faster you can respond to what customers are actually telling you.
9. The risk of getting it wrong
Bad recommendations. Misjudged tone. Offers that miss the context. When personalization fails, it does not just fall flat. It damages trust. Customers remember the mistakes far more than they remember the wins. And every failed interaction is not only a lost opportunity, it is wasted investment.
Conclusion
So yes, personalization matters. But it is not easy. It takes the right fusion of connected data, the right technology stack, the right skills and the human touch to make it work.
And that is where we are headed next. The future of personalization is not just about systems or automation. It is about the blend of data, AI, and human insight coming together.