Despite the hype around ‘personalisation’ as a marketing trend, most respondents (89%) report they can’t deliver personalised digital experiences, according to research from Acquia.

The research has revealed that attempts to deliver effective personalised experiences are being hampered because brands are struggling to get the basics right from both a technical and cultural point of view.

For example, brands are struggling with a lack of insight into the preferences or identities of visitors (48%), lack of budget for the necessary technology (45%), lack of board buy in (34%) and lack of content (33%).

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These are the findings from the digital experience company Acquia’s new report, which uncovers a huge divide between digital strategies and brands’ abilities to execute them.

The challenges brands are facing are influencing what type of personalised experience they can offer to customers. The majority (65%) still rely on implicit personalisation, which involves tracking visitor behaviour on the site and presenting content based on clicking patterns.

Just 37% of brands are using more advanced explicit personalisation techniques, such as building up a profile of each customer to then use to push relevant and appropriate content to.

However, brands are expecting to enhance their use of explicit personalisation by actively pushing content to users. On average today, brands push just 39% of content directly to users via notifications, but expect that figure to grow to 47% in the next five years.

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James Murray, EMEA general manager at Acquia, said: “Personalisation is one of those marketing trends that every brand wants to be seen as an expert and leader on, but in reality, most brands are still struggling.”

This “report very much highlights the huge divide that remains between what companies are able to offer, and what customers actually want. This current lack of ‘digital fitness’ among brands is what ultimately will leave them at a competitive disadvantage, so it’s important to address problems now before it’s too late.”

As well as personalisation, the report specifies several other areas where organisations are significantly struggling to deliver effectively on digital strategies. Most (61%) brands are struggling to achieve customer satisfaction across all digital touchpoints, while more than half (57%) are challenged when it comes to executing standard digital strategies to a high standard digital strategies to a high standard.