Personalization isn’t just marketing — it’s the key to making every shopper feel seen, and retailers can finally scale it.
In A scalable framework for digital transformation in retail, I outlined three pillars for growth: mobile, personalization and experiential commerce. Of these, personalization is often the most difficult to execute at scale, yet it’s also the most powerful driver of long-term customer loyalty and brand differentiation.
Too often, personalization is defined narrowly as serving targeted messages to pre-defined customer groups. While segmented personalization improves on one-size-fits-all marketing, it still treats customers as part of a crowd. Another common misconception is equating personalization with product customization, such as allowing customers to choose colors, engravings, or product configurations. While customization can enhance engagement, it requires the customer to take the initiative. Personalization, on the other hand, adapts the experience automatically based on who the customer is and what they need in the moment.
True 1:1 personalization goes further: dynamically adapting every touchpoint to a customer’s unique real-time signals, from browsing behavior to micro-interactions, creating a journey that is theirs alone. For me, personalization is the ultimate act of customer obsession, a way to make every interaction feel personal, intentional and aligned with the brand’s values.
Why now? The shift from segments to signals
For brands with a large anonymous customer base, segmentation can be especially limiting — many valuable interactions happen before a customer is identified. This makes it critical to design personalization strategies that leverage behavioral traits, such as browsing patterns or engagement signals, rather than relying solely on demographic or purchase history.
Retailers face a paradox: The technology for 1:1 personalization has existed for years, yet most still operate on static segmentation models. The deeper issue is that most have a fragmented tech stack, with data and decisioning scattered across multiple platforms. This was the same challenge I encountered in my current role, and we are well into the journey of simplifying our stack and creating a unified orchestration layer to deliver a truly connected personalization program. Without a singular “brain” to unify these systems and orchestrate customer journeys, personalization remains siloed, inconsistent and often fails to reflect the customer’s real-time intent.
Signals-based personalization solves these challenges by interpreting every interaction as part of a living, evolving profile. As research from McKinsey shows, brands that excel at personalization can achieve significant revenue growth and stronger customer relationships by acting on these signals in real time. AI and machine learning models process these signals in milliseconds to determine the next best action, much like having a personal shopper for every customer, at enterprise scale.
The 3-phase personalization blueprint
Drawing from my leadership experience and lessons learned across multiple personalization programs, I developed this three-phase blueprint as a strategic model for scaling personalization. This framework is designed to be both strategic and actionable, providing a clear path from initial setup to enterprise-wide personalization at scale.
Phase 1 — Foundations
- Data readiness. Create a unified customer view by integrating e-commerce, store, CRM and marketing data.
- Experience mapping. Identify high-impact moments where personalization can influence purchase decisions.
- Tech alignment. Ensure systems can capture and act on real-time customer signals.
Phase 2 — Activation
- Signal capture. Shift from static attributes to behavioral, contextual and intent-based signals.
- Pod-based execution. Deploy cross-functional pods (analytics, UX, merchandising, engineering) with clear personalization OKRs.
- Iterative testing. Build continuous A/B and multivariate testing into team workflows.
Phase 3 – Scale and optimization
- Dynamic orchestration. Personalize every stage of the journey from discovery to post-purchase.
- Continuous learning. Feed results back into models for ongoing refinement.
- Brand integration. Ensure every personalization decision reinforces brand authenticity.
Execution in action: Scaling through the POD model
To operationalize this blueprint, we designed a POD-based operating model spanning people, process, customer analytics, data expansion and modeling, technology, web experiences, email/SMS engagement and in-store integration. Each POD is accountable for specific KPIs and collaborates cross-functionally to deliver measurable outcomes.
Key initiatives have included hyper-personalized search, sorting and product recommendations; promotion optimization through UX testing and gamification; personalized 1:1 nudges across the funnel; and customer- and product-centric targeting. This model, supported by a dedicated personalization steering committee, ensures strategic alignment across e-commerce, marketing, technology and retail functions.
The result has been a sustained 7–9% sales lift, higher customer lifetime value and faster testing cycles that accelerate innovation. More importantly, it has embedded personalization into the organization’s operating fabric, transforming it from a marketing tactic into a core enterprise growth driver.
From crawl to run: Scaling personalization maturity
Our personalization journey has been guided by a crawl–walk–run maturity model:
- Crawl. Established core data pipelines, unified customer profiles and identified high-impact pilot use cases.
- Walk (current). Expanded to cross-channel personalization, integrated AI-driven recommendations and embedded a test-and-learn culture.
- Run (next). Aim to orchestrate personalization across all touchpoints in real time, powered by advanced AI and predictive models. This next phase will build on our current momentum and further accelerate impact.
Lessons for the industry
Our journey offers five takeaways for organizations looking to advance from early personalization pilots to scaled impact:
- Lead with the customer. Design experiences that solve real needs before chasing KPIs.
- Break silos. Cross-functional pods accelerate execution and ensure consistency across channels.
- Invest in data and AI. Unified profiles and real-time decisioning are the foundation for scale.
- Build in phases. Move deliberately from Crawl to Walk to Run, validating each step before expanding.
- Protect brand integrity. Ensure personalization feels authentic, human and true to your brand voice. As Gartner’s research shows, poorly executed personalization can increase the likelihood of customer regret, underscoring the need for thoughtful design and brand alignment.
The Future: Personalization + generative AI + agentic commerce
Looking ahead, the next evolution of personalization will be shaped by predictive gifting capabilities, AI-orchestrated multi-channel journeys and agent-powered experiences that anticipate needs before customers express them.
Generative AI will amplify this shift by creating on-demand, hyper-relevant content and interactions at scale. Agentic AI will act on behalf of customers in real time, dynamically navigating options, personalizing decisions and orchestrating journeys across channels, a concept I explored in depth in Agentic commerce: How AI is reinventing the way customers discover and buy.
But the real differentiator will remain the same: brands that blend these technologies with empathy, authenticity and a deep understanding of their customers will lead the next chapter of retail. Personalization is no longer an optional marketing tactic; done right, it becomes a strategic moat that makes customers feel genuinely known.
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