How to (actually) achieve 1:1 marketing personalization in 2025

Despite massive investments in martech, data, and every tool under the sun, most brands still struggle to deliver true 1:1 marketing personalization.

After ten years of martech growth, it’s a little wild. 

I hear the same frustrations repeatedly in my conversations with marketing leaders:

• "I don't know who my best customer is."
• "It takes us weeks to launch a single campaign."
• "We have tons of data but don't know what to do with it."

We can do better — and in 2025, brands will have to deliver a personalized customer experience to thrive survive.

Why personalized customer marketing matters more than ever

The data tells a clear story. We've seen that companies that master 1:1  personalization drive 40% more revenue than their peers. And the stakes keep getting higher — 75% of American consumers now say they're more likely to be loyal to brands that understand them on a personal level.

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But here's the reality check: 66% of consumers feel brands treat them like numbers rather than individuals. Nobody wants to be reduced to "Customer ID: 5827327dj" or "Discount Seeker." I certainly don't, and neither do your customers.

The customer marketing roadmap that works

So, how do we actually achieve marketing personalization? At Simon, I’ve had countless conversations with successful marketing and data leaders, like Leslie Lorenz, Head of Retail at Snowflake. We've developed a practical roadmap for achieving true 1:1 personalization in 2025. Here's how it works.

Start with strategy, not technology

I can't stress this enough: start with your business goals, not your tech stack or data wish list. Most organizations have three goals. Ask yourself:

- Do you need to drive attention?

- Convert that attention to revenue?

- Or retain customers and sell them more?

Your answer shapes everything that follows. Too many teams jump straight to tactics and fail because they skipped this crucial step.

And I get it. Building campaigns is the “fun” part of marketing, but this is one place where taking the extra cycles to align your business and marketing strategy will serve as your “North Star” for growth. 

Once you understand your marketing strategy, you must align your data foundation with it. Let’s discuss.

Build your data foundation the right way

When it comes to your data foundation, this is where my collaboration with Leslie at Snowflake has been particularly illuminating. We've found that successful personalization requires three critical elements in your data foundation:

1. Data readiness

We always tell our customers to catalog their needs before building their martech stack. Map your data sources, centralize them on a cloud data platform like Snowflake, and — this is crucial — make sure it's actually marketing-ready. 

Start with the most important question: What data is needed for our customer marketing strategy? If you are just starting this journey, focus on:

• Customer purchasing data
• Web interaction data
• Email and SMS data

If you’re further along in building out your customer marketing program, use your Snowflake data to tackle both customer and non-customer data, such as: 

• Identity data (email, phone number, device IDs)
• Demographic data (Age, gender, location, job title)
• Environmental data (weather conditions, seasonal patterns, local events)
• Behavioral data (website interactions, email engagement, purchase history)
• Preference data (communication, product, & content preferences)
• Campaign interaction data (campaign response, A/B testing, cross-channel)
• Technical data (device types, browser information, operating systems, platforms)

2. Customer360 implementation

With your data in Snowflake, you can replace static spreadsheets with real-time customer insights. Marketing personalization requires more than just access to customer data. It requires activating Customer360s — complete, unique customer profiles for every customer using entity and identity resolution. 

By truly understanding your customers, you can deliver personalized messaging that resonates.

We’ve been talking about the importance of Customer360s for a long time, but in reality, most companies have what I call “Customer40s” or, if they’re lucky, “Customer90s” — not 360s. This means marketers fail to deliver a fully connected and personalized customer experience.

In 2025, that’s not good enough. Marketers need to incorporate contextual data and insights into their marketing strategies.

Let me share a real-world example that I love. Look at how Zillow does this: They don't just track basic user data, they integrate everything from web behavior and financing details to property specifics and geographic context — and it all lives in Snowflake.

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This comprehensive data helps them personalize every customer's experience when they build their marketing segmentation and campaigns.

Get smart about customer marketing execution with audience segmentation

Here's a segmentation secret that's saved our customers countless times: start small. I recommend beginning with recently lapsed high-value customers — this single segment can often pay for your entire personalization initiative.

When it comes to marketing campaigns, the biggest challenge isn't knowing what to say; it's figuring out how to say it at scale. 

Focus on:

- Meeting audiences where they are

- Creating truly personalized offers (not just mail-merge level personalization) and compelling content

- Orchestrating across all touchpoints

- Weaving in personal recommendations throughout the entire customer journey

My hot take? Combine these campaign tactics with “always on” marketing using triggered communications.

Measure what matters

You can’t improve what you don’t measure. Successful measurement requires looking at these areas:

1. Core metrics

 Track ROI and engagement by segment, CAC, and CLV. But don't stop there. Consider which segments overperformed — or underperformed.

2. Behavioral insights

 Look for trends in how different segments respond to your campaigns. You might be surprised by what you learn when you dig into this data.

3. AI-driven analysis

 This is where marketing is heading. Use AI to analyze campaign performance, predict behaviors, suggestion segmentation improvements, and identify customer fatigue before it impacts your results.

4. Optimization opportunities

Once you've established your baseline metrics and gathered insights, it's time to test and improve your efforts. Analyze your segments, perform A/B testing, and consider optimization opportunities like messaging, timing, and channel effectiveness. 

Start with one area of optimization at a time, measure results, and then expand based on what you learn. Don’t try to test everything at once. 

My best advice for getting started

After helping numerous brands transform their personalization efforts, here's what I know works:

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1. Start with a clear strategy — not tactics

2. Build your data foundation methodically

3. Begin with one high-value segment

4. Test, measure, and iterate constantly

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Perfect personalization isn't the goal – better relationships with your customers is. 

Want to discuss this with me? Feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn or reach out to our team at Simon Data. We're always happy to share what we've learned from working with leading brands on their personalization journeys.