[schaunwheeler]

This article is a combination of a straw-man argument and a bad analogy. The authors say [personalization] = [3rd-party data categories] * [appeals to non-universal emotional associations]. They show that 3rd-party data categories are crap. Anyone who has worked with those sources knows about the bad quality, so the criticism is an easy sell. Then they use an analogy of Disney/Pixar movies to argue that messages should have universal appeal. Most everyone feels all the feels when they watch a Disney/Pixar movie, so this is also an easy sell.

Pull the straw-man apart a little bit: 3rd-party data isn't the only data out there. There's at least one solutions (full-disclosure: I'm building it) that uses high-frequency communication channels like push notifications as a factory to originate 1st-party data that's tailored to your business needs and exists at the individual level. In other words, saying personalization based on 3rd-party data doesn't work is like saying a car that with water in the gas tank doesn't work. Of course it doesn't. Stop putting water in the gas tank.

Now look closer at the analogy: like a good movie, a good marketing strategy will expose customers to a wide variety of reasons to engage, so they can take what is personally meaningful to them and leave the rest. You can't fit the whole strategy into a single message. Of course you can't, just as Disney/Pixar can't fit every emotional association into a single scene scene. The authors point out the obvious fact that personalization can't fully happen at any single point in time, and miss the point that personalization necessarily happens progressively over multiple points in time.

I don't mean to come down hard on the authors of this post. They're reacting to what most marketing platforms call personalization. The problem isn't that personalization is impossible and doesn't work. The problem is that so many platforms have implemented something that doesn't work and have called it personalization.

For anyone interested, my co-founders and I have written several blog posts covering both what real personalization should look like, and many of the technical aspects of how it can be both possible and effective: www.aampe.com/blog

[taeric]

I think the point is more along the lines of there not being a personalization story for most product companies that really makes sense.

That is, the dream that a bike company can use personalization to get better market penetration with their emails is dubious. Even a category store can only tailor their message so much. Is why most bookstores all have the same books.

This goes as far as medicine. People want to think that a personalized prescription would be far more unique for individuals than the truth of it just being slightly tweaked.

[schaunwheeler]

Let's take the bike company example. There are three main ways you could vary our outreach to potential customers: time, topic, and text.

Just think about timing: when is the best time for someone to get a message from you? There are aggregate stats about certain days or time being better for open rates, but customers aren't a monolithic entity. Some times work for some customers, and other times work for others. We've found that timing decisions have huge impact on ROI in industries ranging from gaming to retail to food delivery.

Now look at topic: what kind of bike do you try to interest them in? Do you try to interest them in a bike at all, or do you pitch a helmet, or shorts, or repair services. Personalizing topic is the essence of a recommender system, which has been discussed elsewhere in this thread, and it's possible to get something like that, even for a bike shop.

Then you have text: let's just look at value proposition. Do you appeal to their love of the open road? Their desire to exercise and get more fit? Spend time with their families? Replace an old bike that's causing them maintenance headaches? By learning what aspect of biking individual people care about, you can tailor subsequent communication to emphasize those things.

A bike company has virtually endless ways to tailor their message.

[taeric]

I'd push back pretty heavily on that. Bike companies have plenty of ways to tweak messaging. But at the end of the day, bike shops have set and small hours. And Walmart is probably the largest seller of bikes in a given region.

And, as is usual in product companies, getting price under control will almost certainly have more of an impact on sales. That and just getting in front of more people, period.