Following ever-growing adoption of artificial intelligence in ecommerce marketing, the distinction between personalisation and hyper-personalisation has become ever more important. Indeed, some might argue that the distinction is essential. Leading market research facilities around the world, including McKinsey, Forrester, Gartner, Bain, Statista, Forbes and many more, have all become advocates for early adoption of this technology due the enormous additional revenue it delivers, unequivocally.
Through this warts and all appraisal, as a provider of this service, reviewing ourselves and our peers on an equitable basis, brings to bear a specialist knowledge of the distinctions. It then becomes a candid overview in a specialist field, to enable CMOs to make a qualified and discerning decision of their preferred solution based on their own needs and preferences.
What is hyper-personalisation software?
First let’s define exactly what hyper-personalisation, sometimes called individualisation is. A customer-centric term, meaning “to be unique and absolute to the individual consumer“. Ron Shevlin at Forbes, proposes “It is a series of interactions that strengthens a customer’s emotional connection to a product or company,” in his recent article. Emphasis is on “a” customer, (an integer of one) not a segment – a section of people on a database, to which “a” customer belongs. i.e. All people who bought red wine in the last 30 days. If you read anywhere else it is something else, that someone is trying to gaslight you.
There is zero collusion of either the data or how it is used, to bias or sway application of it between individuals, despite some providers suggesting the edges can be a little bit more fuzzy, in order to bend the definition to suit their own purposes. One example being Amazon’s “remarketing” software first launched back in 2012, isn’t personalisation. It is what everyone else who bought that product also liked. Not a ringing endorsement of the uniqueness of the individual to whom it is addressing.
The absolute opposite, and perhaps nemesis of hyper-personalisation is segmentation, the definition of which is division into separate parts or sections. That stalwart of email marketing for the last 20 years still has a place in certain echelons of FMCG marketing, because it offers opportunity to group together what are hopefully a cross-sections of a database that have similar interests.
It also enables the use of greater design input by the retailer, or specifically, the email marketing designers, that can tailor it to the specific products on offer, in line with the brand’s image, to satisfy the demands of store owners and shareholders. But be in no doubt that segmentation is not personalisation, and the ratio of ROI between the two can easily be as much as 20:1 in favour of hyper-personalisation – as detailed by the research companies above.
So nothing to do with anything personal to a single person whatsoever then! So before you make any further investment in segmentation, all be it tried and tested technology, you need to appreciate how much advantage your peers can take from you by their early adoption of this technology, namely the diffusion of innovation theory specifically, if you don’t get on the gravy-train quickly enough.
Segmentation is extremely labour intensive, finding the exactly appropriate slice of everyone you have captured on your database, to suit your purposes (not theirs). Today’s consumer doesn’t suffer fools, and you mess with them just once, you lose.
If you involve human beings in your marketing you open up a whole can of worms, namely the traits that come with us all as sentient beings. Errors and omissions are just the start, then you have the cost, focus – confined to working hours, not evenings or weekends, holidays or sick-leave etc then your have two thirds of the day that an AI algorithm is operational.
See articles: How much do your staff really cost
We need to just offer a word about triggered solutions. These solutions enable a high-degree of hyper-personalisation because as shoppers trip over trigger points on a visit to your site, it enables the despatch of unique personalised emails with those specific items.
There are downsides, including such examples as if that trigger is set-off inappropriately, i.e. the shopper happened to the click on the wrong thing, or the time of despatch was passed or made irrelevant by other purchases, then it has no ability to be effective. You then have to suffer the ignominy that may, or indeed may not, be caused to that shopper. Nothing makes you look more lame than sending an email of a product the day after the same item had been bought.
Triggered solutions are also significantly labour intensive, requiring perpetual tuning, and change to prevent boredom of message – the wallpaper effect, and savvy consumers learns the triggers and avoids them in order to avoid the email. If it involves labour, it involves additional cost into the calculation of investment, and a significantly higher breakeven level.
Further considerations of hyper-personalisation software
A couple of further considerations before we delve into the significant providers. Firstly AI, all the necessary intense deep learning analysis is only possible with AI. You obliterate the potential involvement of human beings merely on cost, let alone errors and omissions etc (as detailed above). Further, machine learning isn’t restricted to who bought what and when, but also includes the subtleties of each individual shopper’s own unique idiosyncratic behaviour. How long that individual looks at an item, how often they come back to look at it. The correlation between the habits for this purchase against those made for previous purchases etc, what poker player know as a “tell”.
See article: Deep learning vs Machine Learning
Finally we must stress the distinction of hyper-personalised web content and hyper-personalised communications. The distinction between the two is illustrated most simply by considering how long people are online daily, compared to how long you don’t. The ratio is enormously in favour of you actually having a life, and the same applies for everyone else.
However, there is rarely a moment when people aren’t far from access to any communication you send them. We all carry our mobile phone everywhere these days 24/7. Email popularity continues to rise despite troglodyte naysayers still living in the dark ages, bemoaning mass bombardment of emails to their inbox.
With the advent of GDPR (EU), the Data Protection Act (UK) and CCPA, CPRA, CDPA (US) only those that want to hear form their chosen, preferred brands, get the privilege of emailing them. Remember people “opt-in”. So you have a situation where your customers want to hear from you. But they demand relevancy, and therefore it is essential to ensure they receive the right products, in front of the right person at the right time. This can only be achieved via email marketing with hyper-personalisation functionality.
It is important to note the absence of all standard email software providers in this article. Many of who purport to offer “personalisation”, and preferring to avoid the distinction that new technology – hyper-personalisation provides. Their’s is stolid, tried and tested software, for the purpose it was designed for, all be it that it avoids to dwell on the distinction in ROI, that the new kids on the block provide.
AI autonomy maximises sales
AI enables the data to be used without involving human beings. As soon as your involve people into the marketing process in it everything goes horribly wrong, as you introduce all the inherent issues associated – see above. Not least because, instead of a nan-second process, product (SKU) ranking, selection, population of email content and sending to landing in their inbox. Instead someone has to look over the content selection and decide if they like it. Considering the functionality of the AI alternative why would you want to inhibit it?
You have to ask yourself, provided you have a rigorous stylesheet capable of carrying instantaneously product selections messages, unique and relevant to each specific recipient. How can doing that be justified, when the benefit to you is 20x greater than the existing revenue secured?
The cause is the same inhabitant human facility, in this case reticence to change. This is what retailers have been used to doing for so long now, and done OK from it, why change? They have been absorbed in ensuring content is in line with the company image, brand identity etc, and enjoyed portraying this, assuming that is why “their” customers shop with them.
But in so doing they cloud the goal, that this is a business for maximising returns, although we concede maintaining standards is paramount. It is important to see that a well designed stylesheet, able to continue to commute these standards is critic, but that AI can do it better. After all the actual photographs and salient copy description are able to be used, illustrating the prowess, which is all that is needed. The comical comparison is using Typex to amend spelling on a computer.
The hyper-personalisation software vendors
The following companies purport to offer “hyper-personalisation”, hence their consideration to appear here. We don’t presume to know your priorities nor scope of your particular considerations. Please feel free to recommend alternatives, which we will gladly add, should you feel they are worthy of consideration and inclusion below.
1. SwiftERM.
SwiftERM is an AI hyper-personalisation SaaS for email marketing. It uses all the data, captured from your site, to predict what each unique consumer is most likely to buy next. It runs totally autonomously – with zero human involvement whatsoever. It nurtures your relationship with each person that shops with you, as an appreciation of them as an individual, reflected in the ever changing products each are offered. It identifies their most pressing needs, wants and desires throughout their lifetime, a state of the art AI algorithm delivers one of the highest ROI’s in ecommerce marketing.
It ranks all your SKUs, in a unique and personal order for each individual. Then it perpetually prepares and creates their own unique emails which, unlike CRO, doesn’t have to wait for them to come to your site. Each email is sent at the time calculated as perfect for that individual. It does all this, with consumer permission, via first party data. Other retailers won’t know about this data until long after you own the hearts, minds and purchases of your customers.
Hyper-personalisation (above definition): Yes
AI: Yes
Integration: Shopify, Magento, WooCommerce, Opencart and bespoke.
30-day free trial: Yes
Lock-in / Notice requirement: None
100% Autonomous: Yes
2. Dynamic Yield
Create lasting impressions with customer experiences that are personalised, optimised, and synchronised. With Dynamic Yield’s Experience OS, you can algorithmically match content, products, and offers to each customer’s preferences and anticipate future behaviour using AI across any digital channel, fostering loyalty and driving revenue.
Target different promotions to different audiences in the same email. Targeting rules enable you to serve different promotions and content to different audiences all within the same email. If a customer doesn’t meet your conditions, you can easily define a fallback variation.
Hyper-personalisation (above definition): No
AI: No
Integration: https://www.dynamicyield.com/integrations/
30-day free trial: No (14 days)
Lock-in / Notice requirement: Yes 12 Months
100% Autonomous: No
3. Qualtrics
Make every interaction an experience that matters. Know what people need, when they need it, and deliver it every time with our powerful Experience Management (XM) software. Seamlessly combine experience and operational data from digital and offline channels in one place and get the insights needed to predict customer behavior and drive the actions with the biggest impact. Target your outreach to ensure you reach the right people at the right time. With over 20 behavioral and location-based criteria and seamless integration with digital platforms like Adobe and Google, you can easily deliver more personalised experiences.
Hyper-personalisation (above definition): No
AI: No
Integration: https://www.qualtrics.com/marketplace/integrations/
30-day free trial: Yes
Lock-in / Notice requirement: Yes 12 months
100% Autonomous: No
4. Salesforce
Cross-Channel Personalisation. Personalise every customer experience with AI and real-time data to optimise conversions and reduce costs.
Create personalised experiences with machine learning and AI. Customise everything, from webpages to in-app experiences, product recommendations, content, and more. Tailor each customer experience for driving a specific KPI, from acquisition to customer retention, using a mixture of real-time user behaviour and historical customer data. Improve page personalisation with machine learning, informing CTAs like banners or pop-ups. You can even target and test at the speed your customers are browsing, with personalisation decisions happening in milliseconds.
Hyper-personalisation (above definition): No
AI: Yes
Integration: https://www.salesforce.com/eu/products/integration/overview/
30-day free trial: Yes
Lock-in / Notice requirement: Yes 12 months
100% Autonomous: No
5. Bloomreach
Ecommerce personalisation, powered by AI. We power marketing automation, product discovery, content management, and conversational shopping. At every touchpoint in the shopping journey — for any kind of shopping journey — customers see what they want to buy. With marketing automation from Bloomreach Engagement, marketers have the freedom to create powerful omnichannel campaigns with lasting impact — all from a single place.
Easily create, test, and preview email newsletters with our visual builder. Drag and drop in product recommendations, add personalisation elements, and set conditional blocks to selectively display content to custom audiences. Drive value quickly with prebuilt templates and automation based on high-converting campaigns.
Hyper-personalisation (above definition): No
AI: Yes
Integration: https://documentation.bloomreach.com/engagement/docs/email-providers
30-day free trial: Yes
Lock-in / Notice requirement: Yes 12 months
100% Autonomous: No
6. Mailmodo
Quickly send interactive emails and set up automations powered by AI that will grow your numbers in your sleep. Create custom email designs and copy for every need at the click of a button. Set effective prebuilt campaigns and flows designed to turn your subscribers into loyal customers. Utilises micro-segmentation for individual treatment of customer
Hyper-personalisation (above definition): No
AI: Yes
Integration: https://www.mailmodo.com/integrations/
30-day free trial: No
Lock-in / Notice requirement: Yes 12 months
100% Autonomous: No
7. Sales Rocks
Create automated email drip campaigns and scale your overall outreach based on a set of conditions triggered by the recipient’s actions. Reach the right inbox by verifying your emails with a multi-step verification process for guaranteed high delivery and low bounce rate. Craft the most targeted nurturing campaigns. Create your Lead Lists with the help of the Contact Search and create nurturing sequences with personalised images and messages.
Hyper-personalisation (above definition): No
AI: Yes
Integrations: https://sales.rocks/integrations/
30-day free trial: No (7 days only)
Lock-in / Notice requirement: Yes 12 months
100% Autonomous: No
8. Hyperise
Double your outreach personalisation with personalised images. Create your perfect personalised image from 100s of templates and stock images. Record your own GIF direct from your webcam, or start with a blank canvas and add your own images. Works with all website builders and CMS, using our Chrome Extension, simply add personalisation to your website in the browser.
Hyper-personalisation (above definition): No
AI: Yes
Integrations: https://hyperise.com/integrations.
30-day free trial: No (14 days only)
Lock-in / Notice requirement: Yes 12 months
100% Autonomous: No
9. Benchmark Email
Our tools let you test, measure and optimise campaigns. So easy, anyone can see a lift in their email marketing results. We’ve simplified email automation. With Benchmark, you don’t need to be an automation expert to send tailored outreach that feels personal. Getting great content delivered to the inbox has never been easier with our suite of AI-powered email marketing tools.
Hyper-personalisation (above definition): No
AI: Yes
Integration: https://www.benchmarkemail.com/features/integrations/
30-day free trial: No
Lock-in / Notice requirement: Yes 12 months
100% Autonomous: No
10. Progress Software
DeveloProgress Digital Experience (DX) empowers organizations to rapidly build and deliver more expansive digital experiences—from apps to websites—that drive customer acquisition, retention and competitive success. Progress DX offers the best solution designed for developers and marketers alike. Included are .NET Telerik UI controls and JavaScript Kendo UI components for web, desktop and mobile applications, reporting and report management solutions and automated testing. Integrated powerful design system capabilities accelerate UI/ UX customisation.
Hyper-personalisation (above definition): No
AI: Yes
Integration: Not revealed.
30-day free trial: Yes (60 days)
Lock-in / Notice requirement: Yes 12 months
100% Autonomous: No
11. Sendlane
Unified email, SMS, reviews, and forms. Better features. Better support. Better customer experience. Collect, manage and dynamically display unlimited reviews all within one snazzy dashboard (and at no additional cost). Welcome new shoppers, recover abandoned carts, notify back-in-stocks, and more with pre-built email & SMS automation funnels. From click rates and exact products purchased to revenue attribution and beyond, bring your email and SMS data together to drive your store performance. Identify high-intent visitors by tracking website activity and engagement to send tailored messages that convert every time.
Never leave another dollar on the table. Easily create and send perfectly personalised smart “dynamic” emails that automatically adapt content to each individual recipient. Get your messages to the inbox when your contacts are most likely to open them. Sendlane’s behaviour tracking analyses contact data to send campaigns at an optimised time unique to each individual contact.
Hyper-personalisation (above definition): No (segmentation)
AI: Yes
Integration: https://www.sendlane.com/features/deep-data-integrations
30-day free trial: Yes (60 days)
Lock-in / Notice requirement: Yes 30 days
100% Autonomous: Yes
12. Bluecore
Turn your untapped retail data into one-to-one campaigns that make an immediate impact on revenue. Unlike other email and mobile platforms built for mass communications, Bluecore matches shoppers with their next great buy so marketers can drive lifetime value — without limitations. Automated workflows so you can stand up 1:1 campaigns in minutes — and drive the revenue you need now. Quickly and dynamically send the right content, offers, and recommendations to each shopper, in every email and mobile message.
A supercharged set of triggers within your full control that go way beyond abandonment. Set up behaviour and product triggers — like back-in-stock, new arrival, and price-drop — to show shoppers the products they want to see, when and where they want to see them, recommend other products — and optimise without limitations.
Hyper-personalisation (above definition): No (triggered)
AI: No
Integration: https://help.bluecore.com/en/articles/3567271-integrations-overview
30-day free trial: No
Lock-in / Notice requirement: Yes 12 months
100% Autonomous: No
13. Yieldify
Yieldify is an onsite personalisation platform for global brands. Engage customers with tailored onsite content from browsing to checkout – and drive better performance. Whether you’re an emerging brand or established business, take the guesswork out of personalisation. With local sector expertise from our client services managers, on-brand experiences from our designers and optimisation insights from our data scientists, the Yieldify team has always got your back.
Reliably hit your ecommerce goals with an AI-backed platform, end-to-end support and in-depth performance metrics – all tailored to your business, not someone else’s. Browse abandonment doesn’t have to mean lost customers. Easily drive more shoppers back to your site with personalised on-brand remarketing emails.
Hyper-personalisation (above definition): No (Remarketing)
AI: Yes
Integration: https://www.yieldify.com/partners-integrations/
30-day free trial: No
Lock-in / Notice requirement: Yes 12 months
100% Autonomous: No
14. Listrak
Listrak’s single, integrated platform gives retailers and brands unmatched channel orchestration. From data unification and identity resolution to personalization and owned channel automation – Listrak ensures you deliver exceptional customer experiences and increased revenue. Turn influence into revenue with GXP. Capture more zero- and first-party data, increase first-time conversions, and personalise shopping experiences on and off-site… all with guaranteed results.
Retailers trust Listrak’s robust, highly scalable, highly-available enterprise-class send engine to send billions of targeted emails every month generating over 50X ROI. Sophisticated email marketing tools like predictive analytics, advanced retail segmentation, dynamic content and predictive product recommendations allow marketers to translate customer data directly to personalised messages resulting in increased engagement and revenue.
Hyper-personalisation (above definition): No (Segmentation)
AI: Yes
Integration: https://gxp.listrak.com/integrations
30-day free trial: No
Lock-in / Notice requirement: Yes 12 months
100% Autonomous: No
15. Humanic
Hyper-personalisation (above definition): No (Segmentation)
AI: Yes
Integration: https://www.humanic.ai/integrations
30-day free trial: No
Lock-in / Notice requirement: Yes 12 months
100% Autonomous: No
16. Allyy
Each individual visitor is delighted to experience really relevant content on your content-rich website. Also when your content is information and experiences – not products. Allyy.io identifies which content items are most relevant to every single individual, resulting in improved engagement, loyalty and sales..
Increase engagement with your email subscribers by automatically picking the most relevant content for each newsletter recipient. Allyy.io uses AI instead of human-biased rules. This way, you can skyrocket your email CTR. We create an individual cognitive profile of your users based on their profile and response behaviour. We use it to find and rank the most relevant content for each individual.
Flip the approach 180 degrees, and let our Machine Learning predict the right audience and performance for a specific email you have already crafted. Be inbox considerate by becoming an Allyy, and avoid spamming subscribers with content that is irrelevant to the individual.
Hyper-personalisation (above definition): No (Segmentation)
AI: Yes
Integration: Integrates to email tools.
30-day free trial: No
Lock-in / Notice requirement: Yes 12 months
100% Autonomous: No
17. Selzy
Launch your first email campaign in 15 minutes and boost your sales with Selzy email marketing platform. Enjoy the most flexible email builder on the market and create beautiful emails for free. No designer or HTML experience needed. Play with the pre-built blocks to create the perfect-high converting emails your users want to receive.
Hyper-personalisation (above definition): No (Segmentation/Triggered)
AI: No
Integration: https://selzy.com/en/support/category/integration/
30-day free trial: Yes 14 days
Lock-in / Notice requirement: Monthly and Annual options
100% Autonomous: No
18. Segment
No cookies? No problem. Segment helps you collect valuable first-party data, reducing your customer acquisition cost and increasing return on ad spend by enabling better targeting and multichannel engagement. Understand your customer journey and unify every customer touchpoint across all platforms and channels. Get trusted AI at your fingertips to effortlessly anticipate upcoming customer actions and create tailored campaigns without relying on data science teams.
Deliver a message that’s timed and tailored to each audience, suitable for their preferred platform, and designed to influence behaviour.
Hyper-personalisation (above definition): No (Segmentation/Triggered)
AI: No
Integration: https://segment.com/catalog/
30-day free trial: No
Lock-in / Notice requirement: 12 months
100% Autonomous: No
19. Nosto
Enrich, understand, and activate all your customer, product, and content data in our Commerce Experience Platform (CXP) to personalise every shopping experience and increase your online revenue. Bring together your commerce data in a real-time engine with open APIs and 100s of robust integrations and view all your data in clear dashboards with deep analytics to guide decision-making. Use rich commerce data across enterprise-grade personalisation, merchandising, search and discovery, and UGC modules to create high-performing personalised shopping experiences.
Take full control, trust experience.AI™ to algorithmically recommend relevant personalisation campaigns, or opt for a blend of both, increasing performance and operational efficiencies. Reduce time to value, accelerate campaign execution, maximise revenue, and replace multiple tools with a single platform built for ease of use with no IT dependency. Entice shoppers back to your online store with timely emails triggered by behaviour, such as post-purchase thank you emails with discount offers, abandoned-cart reminder emails, and more.
Hyper-personalisation (above definition): No (Segmentation/Triggered)
AI: Yes
Integration: https://www.nosto.com/integrations/ecommerce-technologies/
30-day free trial: No 14 days
Lock-in / Notice requirement: 12 months
100% Autonomous: No
20. Klaviyo
Data-driven power meets captivating design, ensuring that your message not only reaches its mark but makes an impact. Send standout emails that generate revenue. In the age of AI, intelligence drives success. Klaviyo has integrated powerful AI, predictive analytics, and reporting to ensure that your email marketing is not just effective, but exceptional. Goodbye, generic blasts. Hello, hyper-targeted campaigns. With Klaviyo’s advanced segmentation capabilities, your emails can reach the exact audience segment they’re designed for.
Build a completely unique flow from scratch, or start with tons of built-in essentials: welcomes, browse/cart reminders, in-stock and price-drop alerts, shipping updates, post-purchase followups… and many, many more. Ultra-relevant messages are the real moneymakers—and Klaviyo makes sending them a snap. Break your email contact list down into super-focused audiences (also known as segments) so you can target exactly the right people with more influential, tailored email content.
Hyper-personalisation (above definition): No (Segmentation/Triggered)
AI: Yes
Integration: https://help.klaviyo.com/hc/en-us/categories/115000032731
30-day free trial: No.
Lock-in / Notice requirement: 12 months
100% Autonomous: No
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Conclusion
There are many reputable and creditable companies listed above, that show significant ingenuity and dedication to customer success. Because many are not pure hyper-personalisation solutions doesn’t mean they’re not appropriate for someone else’s needs. We merely intend to highlight the distinction between hyper-personalisation and other alternatives, while also remembering that if you stick to your principals, and wish to achieve the highest returns possible using 100% autonomous AI technology, there are solutions available.
