We hear about personalization everywhere these days and for good reason. According to an industry report, 64 percent of consumers desire more personalized offers from retail brands and 52 percent of shoppers say that they would likely switch brands if a company doesn’t personalize their interactions with the customer.

That’s over half of your shoppers. Consumers not only want personalization, they expect it everywhere, from when they browse between products, to what offers they receive, and how they choose to pay for their purchases.

The future of retail is about delivering custom experiences that enable the customer to craft his or her own shopping journey and discover, purchase, and pay for items on his or her own terms. In today’s e-commerce environment, online retailers must constantly adapt to retail trends in order to remain competitive and having a robust personalization strategy is a must for every retail marketer.

What does this mean for retailers and what do shoppers want?

Luckily, retailers already have a wealth of data available to them—including valuable payment information that they can enable to strengthen relationships, craft personalized promotions, and re-engage with the customer. Each transaction is a valuable piece of data that aids a richer understanding of how to market specific products to specific customers based on their spending habits.

According to a study by the independent research group Baymard Institute, enhanced checkout design and a personalized shopping experience enabled major e-commerce retailers to increase conversion rates by 35.26 percent. And findings from the State of Personalization report by Segment indicate that while three-quarters of online shoppers expect personalization, only 23 percent of stores actually deliver. This is a huge lost opportunity for retailers to not only capitalize on shopper expectations, but to definitively enact changes that can boost conversions and ultimately sales.

Retailers can address consumers’ desire for tailored experiences by joining shopping and payment data to fully understand how consumers interact and shop across each of their channels. Understanding this data will give retailers a better understanding of who their core customers are, how to better cater to them, and how to build relevant end-to-end personalized customer experiences that enhance relationships and drive sales.

What steps should I take to improve personalization?                       

So where, exactly, do you start? Retailers often focus on tactics that impact the top of the funnel, but don’t necessarily turn shoppers into loyal repeat customers. The key to a successful personalization strategy is creating moments of impact across the entire customer journey that surprise and delight.

Here are four ways retailers can get started:

• Break down the silos and start filling in the data gaps. Your personalization strategy will only be as successful as your data set. Some of the most valuable data sets occur at the transaction level, and unlocking this information is vital. This data can tell you everything from how often a customer shops, what they purchased, where they are from, how much they spend across different channels, and whether they are new or repeat buyers.  

• Remember and anticipate the shopper’s needs. Start with the basics. 24 percent of shoppers want product recommendations based on past purchases. Leverage your customers’ purchase history to anticipate needs, and greet shoppers with a personalized selection of products when they visit your online store.

• Send timely and relevant offers—across all channels. Context is paramount when it comes to personalization. It’s all about sending the right offer, at the right time. Whether it’s through email marketing, on-site promotions, or external ads through social and search channels, understanding how and when to engage a customer creates stickier brand relationships. The personalization of e-commerce across all channels allows retailers to engage shoppers deeper in the sales funnel across multiple touchpoints.

• Use payment data to personalize offers to abandoned shoppers. The shopping journey doesn’t stop, even if the shopper leaves the page. Continue to leverage payment data to personalize cart-abandonment emails and win shoppers back. In a simple A/B email campaign to test the impact of offering personalized financing offers in cart-abandonment emails, a Bread retailer saw a threefold improvement in email conversion rates and a 155 percent increase in revenue. In addition, emails that included the personalized financing checkout links saw a 38 percent lift in click-through rates and 86 percent higher average-order-value.

In today’s ever-changing retail landscape, capitalizing on data-driven insights to build dynamic relationships with customers is more important than ever. Poor personalization can, in turn, lead to lower engagement and bad brand experiences. Want to learn more about how to optimize payments to personalize the shopping journey and drive e-commerce sales? Download our full report and access more interesting stats, trends, and insights