The future of personalization: Propelled by AI, not replaced by it

Personalization has officially grown up.

Once a buzzy marketing trend, this proven practice has now fully settled into its personality. Personalization knows who it is and is no longer vying for attention by being a ‘shiny’ new word used in every meeting – it’s quietly doing the work.  

It’s the expectation, not the exception. And in today’s experience economy, that expectation is only growing. What started as an industry aspiration is now a default tactic that is continuing its evolution across industries and lines of business to optimize the default customer experience with a personalized one.  

Personalized experiences are proving their value by driving engagement, retention, and business results. 

And while the word ‘personalization’ is slowly fading from headlines, there is a new word that’s taking center stage. AI. 

That’s right, I said it.  

Personalization + AI: A powerful pairing 

AI and personalization are slowly morphing together.  

Today, personalization is one of the most predominant use cases for AI with 44% of organizations scaling it to tailor customer experiences. (MMA Global Report)

Why? These experiences help to anticipate the needs of your customer, bolster their loyalty, and retention to your brand. 

From your site to your app to your email and SMS campaigns, even into your social and 3rd party paid media – every interaction is based on who your customer is and what they need in that moment.   

Your marketing teams are already doing the hard work to get inside the brain of your customer to deliver them the right message. This is not changing. 

But AI is making it more achievable at scale as demand for relevance grows.   

Everything, including our brand interactions, is becoming increasingly personalized, and soon our brand websites will be as personalized as the social media pages we frequent. Algorithmically determined by where you are, time of day, referral pages, campaign engagement and your individual behavior – brand experiences are bound to surpass a default, generic one in the future and lead with a personalized one.  

The next chapter of personalization 

AI isn’t replacing personalization – it’s propelling it. All of these tactics you’ve come to rely on will still exist and are essential to driving value. AI is simply the next vehicle to deliver personalization, transforming its process and approach.  

Where personalization use cases of the past developed only a single experience, page, component, message at a time via prescriptive rules, AI is allowing these tactics to scale.  

It’s allowing us to move beyond manual segmentation and rule-based delivery. Now, AI can...  

• Analyze the data that is leading the initial use case developments to ensure it stems from key datasets and aligns with meaningful insights 
  
  
• Drive use case innovation through AI-powered recommendations that learn over time and enable continuous optimization 
  
  
• Can now inform or automate many of these steps across both external experiences and internal workflows - depending on the tools your brand has available 
  
  

When deployed thoughtfully, it becomes a strategic partner – elevating the quality and speed of outcomes across the board.  

Here are a few examples: 

Strategy:
Strategy teams develop personalization use cases based on data-led insights.  AI accelerates this process by analyzing first-party data to surface ideas aligned with key business objectives.  

Creative/UX:
Designers and writers create messaging and assets to bring the use case to life within the customer experience. AI prompts can generate creative concepts, brand voice, and size/format recommendations.  

Analytics:
​Data teams can use AI to uncover trends in key data sets that reveal opportunities for personalization, define target metrics, and measure performance impact. AI prompts can populate an analysis summarizing current state performance, trends, and use case opportunities.  

Technology:
​Architects and developers can use AI to assist in selecting the right development path across platforms to enable personalization use cases. Here AI prompts create key audience segments, generate assets, or recommend optimal deployment paths. 

Whether you are leveraging AI to craft personalized content, build an audience segment, or automate delivery the value is the same: greater efficiency, without sacrificing impact. AI protects against the operational burnout so your teams can focus on creating more strategic, connected experiences.  

But how do you get the results you’re hoping for? Or how do you even begin to select the right AI tools and develop a strategy to deliver on it?  

That’s where we come in 

At Horizontal Digital, we help organizations unlock the next level of personalization faster with AI.  

Our knowledgeable experts meet your teams where you are – whether you’re just exploring AI possibilities or scaling enterprise-level personalization. We partner with you to design connected experiences that serve your customers, empower your teams, and grow your business.  

We can help you navigate the evolving landscape to adopt AI and build for where its heading – ensuring that you are future ready. 

The future of personalization is here. Send us a message and let’s build the right solution for you, together.