Our index assesses personalization maturity at individual company and industry levels, identifying ways to improve growth and gain share.
What is personalization?
To become a leader in personalization, you first must understand what personalization is. Personalization is creating experiences at scale that get fine-tuned with each successive interaction, empowering customers to get what they want—better, faster, cheaper, or more easily. Bringing personalization to life requires delivering the right experience, on the right channel, to the right people, at the right time.
Our Approach to Personalization
BCG’s personalization consulting team works side-by-side with your team and as a strategic partner on your personalization journey. We bring a combination of artificial intelligence and organizational intelligence across data, technology, strategy, and ways of working to scale your data and insights by 10 times, show your customers 10 times more relevant content, and drive 10 points faster growth from customers who engage with personalization.
To do this, the team has created what they call the five promises of personalization, or promises a company makes to its customers and needs to live up to. These promises—defined as empower me, know me, reach me, show me, and delight me—are essential are essential to realizing the full potential of personalization.
Empower me
Which steps and use cases in the customer journey do you want to personalize?
Empowering the customer requires a commitment to approach every customer as unique. Our approach allows you to deliver personalized offers and experiences that support and inspire customers, and ultimately foster lasting relationships.
Empowering the customer requires a commitment to approach every customer as unique. Our approach allows you to deliver personalized offers and experiences that support and inspire customers, and ultimately foster lasting relationships.
Know me
How integrated is your customer data? Which collection methods are in place?
Effective personalized marketing requires an in-depth understanding of your customers. Our approach to personalization helps you to deepen and broaden customer relationships to enable more relevant personalized interactions through a real-time, 360-degree view of the customer—including who they are, what they want, and how they have engaged so far—with data sets informed by direct customer relationships.
Effective personalized marketing requires an in-depth understanding of your customers. Our approach to personalization helps you to deepen and broaden customer relationships to enable more relevant personalized interactions through a real-time, 360-degree view of the customer—including who they are, what they want, and how they have engaged so far—with data sets informed by direct customer relationships.
Reach me
What is the current state of your intelligence capabilities? How do they map to your personalization efforts?
A successful approach to customer personalization hinges on connecting with the right customer, in the right channel, at the right moment. Our personalization consulting experts leverage always-on intelligence to design and activate personalization experiments at scale, as well as orchestrate next-best actions across channels.
A successful approach to customer personalization hinges on connecting with the right customer, in the right channel, at the right moment. Our personalization consulting experts leverage always-on intelligence to design and activate personalization experiments at scale, as well as orchestrate next-best actions across channels.
Show me
Is your current state of your content development scalable?
A crucial element of customer personalization is delivering the right content to each individual customer. We help clients to create and tailor dynamic content in real-time—by leveraging generative AI— to speak individually to each customer.
A crucial element of customer personalization is delivering the right content to each individual customer. We help clients to create and tailor dynamic content in real-time—by leveraging generative AI— to speak individually to each customer.
Delight me
How frequently are you measuring and updating touchpoints based on new interactions?
Successful personalization requires you to continuously learn about your customers. Our approach to personalized marketing is focused on enabling you to learn from each customer interaction and to make rapid improvements to the customer experience based on insights from real-time touchpoints.
Successful personalization requires you to continuously learn about your customers. Our approach to personalized marketing is focused on enabling you to learn from each customer interaction and to make rapid improvements to the customer experience based on insights from real-time touchpoints.
Delivering on these five pillars helps organizations to engage customers and market to prospects in a fundamentally different way; one that creates a self-funded cycle through audience-based insights and technology, while avoiding the common roadblocks company’s face in their personalization efforts.
Common Roadblocks in Personalization
Our approach addresses the common roadblocks that prevent clients from capturing the full potential value of their personalization efforts. BCG’s Personalization Index™ has identified the percentage of brands that have cited each as a pain point.
- Data Governance. 33% of brands cited an underinvestment in data quality as a pain point while 41% of brands cited a lack of centralized customer data. In addition, companies face lack of visibility on data and limited data ownership.
- Technology. 59% of brands cited a limited tech stack or lack of integration as a pain point. Companies also face multiplication of tech pilots, high reliance on vendors, complex legacy systems, as well as limited deployment of agile project management.
- People. 71% of brands cited a siloed operations model requiring numerous handoffs as a pain point while 34% of brands cited a lack of employees or agency resources. They also face skills fragmentation and an inability to attract and retain critical talent.
- Change Management. 56% of brands cited the speed and flexibility of creative design as a pain point; 46% of brands cited a limited understanding across the organization; and 40% of brands cited lengthy required reviews for each unique content combination. Brands also face unanticipated impacts on processes, as well as limited trainings and adoptions.
- Value and Prioritization. Brands face numerous roadblocks when it comes to value and prioritization, including a limited view on the business case, insufficient support from executives, numerous isolated initiatives, and unclear ownership.
Book
Order BCG’s Personalization Strategy Book
Done right, personalization is a force multiplier—delighting customers and delivering as much as 10 points faster brand growth.
Our Personalization Tools and Solutions
BCG’s personalization consulting toolkit draws upon a unique combination of industry, technology, and functional expertise. We leverage agency-like capabilities, cutting-edge analytics, and an array of proprietary tools to help companies build scalable personalization businesses. Some of our key personalization consulting resources include:
Tool
Tool
BCG Personalization Index™ Assessment
BCG Personalization Index™ Assessment
BCG X
BCG X's technologists, scientists, programmers, engineers, and designers provide clients with leading tech, AI, and digital capabilities.
BCG X
Fabriq Personalization AI by BCG X
Unleash the power of data-driven marketing and fast-track customized marketing with our personalization platform.
Fabriq Personalization AI by BCG X
Our Awards and Recognition for Personalization Consulting
2024 SIIA CODiE Award: Best Marketing Solution
BCG and BCG X won the 2024 CODiE Award for Best Marketing Solution for Fabriq Personalization AI by BCG X. The award recognizes the best solution that enables companies to plan, target, market, and measure the effectiveness of campaigns promoting products and services to consumers and/or businesses online, off-line and via mobile devices. The CODiE Awards judges noted, "Fabriq empowers marketers with a powerful suite of tools for real-time personalization, media spend optimization, and seamless campaign management with existing tech stack. Its ability to bridge the tech gap, cater to diverse campaign goals, and deliver measurable results makes it a super competitive solution for brands looking to personalize customer experiences and maximize marketing ROI."
Our Clients’ Success in Personalized Marketing
Our personalization consulting team has worked with leaders in personalization—and empowered others to join their ranks. Some of the best examples of personalization success include:
$300m
revenue increase
Personalized Marketing for the Retail Industry. We helped our client realize an increase in annual revenue of $300 million by implementing one-to-one marketing—experiences based on preferences, usage, location, and context relevant to individual customers.
30%
conversion rate increase
Cross-Selling for Retail Banking. Through customer-specific offers and recommendations based on life events, we helped our client increase its offer conversion rates by 30%.
$100m
incremental revenue realized
Capability Build and Agile Teaming for the Airline Industry. We helped our client realize $50 million to $100 million in incremental revenue through a six-month pilot while scaling up an internal marketing team of 90 to work in agile, cross-functional squads.
10%
increase in acceptance
Recommendation Engine Build for US Biopharmaceuticals. We built a “next best action” engine driven by machine learning to recommend the right offer in the right channel, leading to a 3% increase in volume and a 10% increase in acceptance.
The global distributor and solution provider of ingredients and specialty chemicals partnered with BCG and BCG X to launch a data-driven digital transformation, providing personalized recommendations by customer and generating pipeline growth.
Explore Our Insights on Personalization
Article
June 11, 2025
BCG’s survey of 200 brands across sectors shows how the leaders in personalization are boosting their returns by empowering their customers.
Video
September 18, 2024
L’Oréal teamed up with BCG to create Beauty Genius—an AI-powered virtual beauty assistant, available 24/7, that offers customized advice and recommendations.
Video
October 14, 2024
The Power of Personalization in the Age of AI
Sharing insights from his research, BCG's Mark Abraham highlights a key mindset that can help companies boost their growth—and delight their customers—in today's era of AI.
Article
January 23, 2025
The sales and marketing approach that worked well for CPG companies in the past is proving ineffective today. Four principles can help companies adopt a new integrated model.
Article
December 13, 2024
Here’s how to cut through the noise to create a marketer-AI flywheel—a self-reinforcing loop that will revolutionize your marketing and supercharge ROI.
Article
December 12, 2024
A global BCG survey of 23,000 consumers reveals the benefits and hazards of uniquely customized interactions between brands and individual customers.
Meet Our Personalization Consulting Team
Our personalization consulting experts have created large-scale personalization programs across industries and geographies, honing one-to-one marketing personalization strategies, and building the enablers for sustainable, long-term success.
