Personalization is a powerful marketing technique that can help you get more customers, close more deals, and build a positive image of your brand or company. However, if you want to achieve all of that, you need to avoid typical mistakes that hinder your efforts and can even ruin your reputation or your campaign’s performance. We’ve listed five such mistakes. If you personalize your communication with customers (or consider doing so), you definitely should read this post!
Personalization, when done right, can significantly enhance customer engagement and the effectiveness of your campaign. That’s why we make sure to personalize as many features within our marketing automation platform as possible. However, a badly executed personalization can result in:
- Dissatisfied or even irritated customer
- Low campaign effectiveness
- And even some legal problems!
That’s why it’s so important to pay attention to how personalization is designed and implemented at your company. In the following sections, we’ll walk you through the five most common personalization mistakes, explain why they happen, and provide some tips to help you avoid them.
Let’s get right to it!
Mistake 1: You limit personalization to emails
In the past, personalization was mainly possible in email marketing. But in 2025, you have many more options! In the iPresso alone, you can personalize:
This clearly shows that personalization is so much more than just emails, right? If you don’t personalize these channels, you leave a lot of potential deals (as well as increased customer experience) on the table.
If you want to improve your personalization efforts and introduce this “multi-channel personalization” to your business, start by analyzing your customer data to identify preferred optimal communication channels and tailor your messaging accordingly.
Here, it’s a good idea to test different formats. For instance, you can send personalized offers in push notifications and personalized reminders and notifications in WhatsApp messages to see what resonates with your audience. Regardless of what you do, though, it’s important to ensure consistency across all platforms to create a seamless customer experience. And that’s exactly what iPresso is for!
Mistake 2: You over-personalize
Secondly, you want to be cautious of how far your personalization goes. Customers, in general, know that companies know a lot about them. But that doesn’t mean they feel comfortable with this knowledge.
That said, personalization should be limited to what the customer explicitly told you or did on your website, even if your analytics tools can tell you more.
Imagine a customer browsing your website and looking at running shoes but not placing an order. A few days later, they received an email with personalized recommendations for running shoes based on their visit, but the email also mentioned that they purchased their last pair of running shoes two years ago and that it was high time to get new ones. Even if you have access to such information, this could feel intrusive rather than helpful.
To avoid such issues, base your personalization only on actions customers have taken openly, like browsing a category, adding items to the cart, or signing up for newsletters. Ideally, focus on actions that happened in the very recent past, not two years ago.
Mistake 3: You use outdated customer information
Personalization is almost impossible without data. If your store or business operates on outdated customer information, your personalization will be ineffective. Imagine sending personalized emails or push notifications to a customer who opted out of the communication with your brand. In such a situation, you will certainly irritate such a person and even face legal problems.
Such a situation could happen relatively easily, e.g., if the list of people who unsubscribed from marketing communication is not regularly updated or shared with everyone in the marketing department.
If you want to avoid this mistake, ensure that:
- Everyone involved in the personalization activities has access to the latest customer data
- Customer information is stored in one place (this way, you can avoid another common problem that’s known as data chaos) and is automatically updated (e.g., when someone unsubscribes from your marketing list)
- All the marketing tools are integrated with the same database
Mistake 4: You overdo personalization
That’s another very common problem. Flooding customers with too many emails, push notifications, or personalized messages can feel intrusive and pushy rather than positive and helpful. And yes, you want to stay in touch with your audience. But you cannot send too many messages. Excessive communication often leads to annoyance, higher unsubscribe rates, and even negative brand perception.
Customers value relevance, but they also have boundaries that companies should never push. What can you do to avoid this mistake? First of all, focus on quality over quantity. Segment your audience carefully and send messages only when they add value to your audience, whether it’s a helpful reminder, a special offer, or an update that aligns with their interests and previous actions on your website.
Additionally, it’s a good idea to monitor engagement data to track patterns in customer engagement and adjust the intensity and frequency of your communication accordingly.
Mistake 5: You forget about GDPR
If you operate in the European Union, everything you do marketing-wise has to be GDPR-compliant. Put shortly, you need your customers’ consent to communicate with them. Everyone on your marketing list should be verified for all the necessary consents. For instance, you can face a situation where someone agreed to receive your newsletter but did not agree to other marketing communication forms. You need to keep this in mind and respect your customers’ choices.
Here, our GDPR manager comes in handy. With it, you can easily manage and verify your customers’ consents, but this tool will also allow you to check sign-up and unsubscribe statistics for a given person. You also get access to statistics of contacts who have given consent or have unsubscribed from it. To make everything legible and easy to understand, we offer a comprehensive dashboard of consents with an overview of basic statistical data in the form of charts. As a result, you have all the necessary information right there at your fingertips!
Wrapping up
Personalization can be of tremendous help in your business, but you need to do it right. Keep the mistakes we outlined in this post in mind and implement corrective actions as quickly as possible, especially when customer privacy is involved.
When working with iPresso, you get access to many features that can be personalized to your customers’ needs. And our platform is 100% GDPR-compliant, so you don’t need to worry about processing your customers’ data in an unlawful way.
If you’re not yet our client, we invite you to give marketing automation a shot! Combined with personalization, MA can be a huge game-changer in your business, enabling you to save a lot of money and time. And you can start for free by signing up for a 30-day trial period!
We look forward to working with you!
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