Using AI in Marketing 2025 – The Rise of Hyper-Personalization

by Manas Chowdhury
9 minutes read

Hyper-personalization is an effective strategy to use AI in marketing and advertising. Four years back, in 2020, about 51% of people expected brands to anticipate their requirements before contact. Now 2024 is almost over. The question is, 

Did the brands fulfill that requirement? 

The number of people expecting hyper-personalization has also increased over the years. More than 80% of people now expect personalization from brands, especially when they share their data. The use of AI in digital marketing to deliver relevant content to consumers is also growing fast.

More than 56% of businesses now use AI to offer customer services. By 2025, 95% of customer interactions will possibly be driven by AI to improve personalization and enhance the overall experience. To stay on par with evolving customer expectations, marketers are now working to deliver end-to-end tailored experiences, i.e. hyper-personalization. 

In this post, we will attempt to analyze the AI-powered hyper-personalization trend and its effect on both brands and customers. 

Understanding Hyper-Personalization

In the simplest terms, hyper-personalization somehow expands the idea of personalization with the help of AI in marketing. Depending on small but real-time details, like someone’s age, gender, and where they live, hyper-personalization helps tailor the services offered to them. It uses real-time data, analytics, and AI to improve end-to-end customization of targeted content, products, or individual experiences. 

Let’s take the example of an online casino. By leveraging AI, one can analyze consumer behavior, needs, and preferences to promote casino experiences tailored to the same. This, in turn, will enhance engagement. A higher engagement will mean increased conversion rates and more revenue at the end of the day. 

Hyper-personalization is the hottest trend among marketers these days. People want their problems to be addressed specifically. They no longer look for generic solutions to their issues. With AI-powered data analytics, one can help identify these issues and resolve them effectively. Even identifying customers by their names and addressing their specific pain points through any form of content, a product, or your services, is hyper-personalization, which AI can help achieve. 

Handling The Rising Demand For Personalization

A McKinsey survey found that 80% of people expect tailored engagements from organizations. Many current clients also demand tailored services. However, it’s important not to over-personalize, or it may seem like invasive advertising.

How would you feel if you don’t have the time to hit the supermarket to buy a roll of toilet paper, and get it online instead, only to get bombarded by advertising emails and messages soon after? Yes, you’ll feel the discomfort. Such events do help realize the need to personalize without making your customers uncomfortable. By using AI in marketing personalization, you can fulfill the need for privacy, while handling crucial data.

Every customer has the right to feel special with their unique demands being fulfilled without much hassle. However, this has to be dealt with with caution. Acceptable sublimity raises a question. How can one ensure acceptable risks from personalized, unique experiences? Moreover, how can brands avoid what may seem scary or stalker-ish? 

Experts opine that it’s vital to involve the customers in the customization processes. Organizations should ensure that personalization methods stick to customers’ preferences and comfort. The idea is to let the audience control the personalization, and not the other way around. 

So, involving consumers in creating their experiences could help businesses meet their evolving needs. It can also establish closer relationships with them, thus enhancing brand association and customer loyalty in the long run. Every customization strategy should suit the audience specifically and reduce their privacy concerns. Only then brands can make way for more meaningful and lasting relationships with their target audience. 

The Evolution of Personalization

Since the beginning of marketing, experts have used demographics for personalization. It helps segment various target markets based on age, gender, or geographical area. As people search for products, and services online, the brands use customer demographics to offer solutions. 

However, today’s market is evolving with the adoption of new technologies, especially AI. Customer expectations are changing, and so are their preferences. The tech-savvy consumers today want things that are tailored specifically for them. People expect brands to know their issues, pain points, requirements, and preferences. Hence, end-to-end customization is a need of the hour. 

The Use of AI in Marketing for Increased Personalization

Hyper-personalization is an AI-powered marketing module that helps enhance the customization of content, products, or services. By analyzing vast data quickly with the help of advanced AI tools, marketers can now offer tailored experiences to individual customers. 

Here’s how AI influences personalization in marketing approaches:

1. Data Collection and Analysis

Real-time data from diverse sources can help in social network analytics, web content aggregation, and influence buying behavior. Using AI in marketing, you can also utilize the ‘word of mouth’ data that impacts engagement and buying decisions. Further, trends that are identified by data analysis algorithms can help advertise different products without much hassle.

For instance, if the customer enters the site’s section on environmental products, an AI-powered customer service system can suggest or recommend products that best match their requirements. 

2. Predictive Analytics

AI-powered predictive analytics seek to understand consumers’ needs before they do. When a business tries to understand the past behavior of their consumers, they’ll be able to predict future behaviors based on patterns. An online business can thus leverage predictive analytics to recommend products, expecting customers to buy those based on their past purchases and browsing history.

3. Real-Time Personalization

The biggest benefit of hyper-personalization is, it can enable real-time experiences using AI-powered systems. These advanced tools can adjust the website or app content to match user preferences. For example, the AI-based system can recommend products the user has recently viewed. Or, it might provide a special offer to the user based on the products that he/she has shown interest in before. 

4. Chatbots and Virtual Assistants

Automated customer service systems in mobile devices are crucial. These provide people with accurate, real-time results. These tools can reach out to customers and also hold real-time interactions with them regarding some product/service, or any other piece of content. The tools also answer their relevant queries and recommend content based on their preferences and past experiences.

For instance, if the customer types “vegan recipes” into the last chat of a restaurant website’s chatbot, the AI-powered chatbot will recommend vegan meals when they visit the site again. 

A Few Examples of Hyper-Personalization in Real Life 

  • Netflix: By using AI to analyze users’ viewing habits, Netflix offers personalized suggestions to their viewers. It both improves the viewing experience and takes the hassle out of content search, thus improving user retention rate. 
  • Amazon:  AI-powered systems recommend products based on users’ browsing and buying history. It helps save customers’ time and energy in looking for specific products, thus increasing customer satisfaction and boosting sales. 
  • Honda: The world-class leading automobile manufacturer uses AI to create hyper-personalized videos while onboarding customers. A personalized video is sent to them with all the details of the payment plan, schedule, and monthly costs to reduce the hassles of going through heavy paperwork. This automated, personalized approach helps retain customers, who feel relieved by the experience. 
  • Starbucks: The coffee brand currently excels in hyper-personalization approaches. Simply by sending tailored messages to their customers based on their preferences and past behavior, Starbucks makes its customers feel special and also saves their time, looking for lucrative offers. And of course, the brand uses an AI-powered system to make this marketing strategy a success. 
  • Walmart: If you are to send push notifications to your customers regarding weekly offers and discounts, you better make it hyper-personalized. Walmart uses AI tools to collect customer geographical data and sends such messages strategically so that they can actually USE promotional offers. 

What are The Benefits of Using AI in Marketing?

Building customer loyalty in the competitive landscape today isn’t a cakewalk. You have to implement several effective strategies and experiment with many more to find out what works. Hyper-personalization has turned out to be such an amazing marketing strategy that uses AI to offer bespoke experiences to customers. If we are to discuss it in detail, the following explanations can help. 

1. Enhanced Customer Experience

Hyper-personalization improves customer experience by providing them with relevant materials and offers, catering to their preferences and requirements. Customer satisfaction and loyalty stem from these perceived values that hyper-personalization offers. With the help of real-time data, brands understand their customers better, thus increasing the chances of an enhanced experience. 

2. Increased Conversion Rates

If a customer likes the recommendations offered through hyper-personalized marketing, they will likely buy the product. Research reveals that AI-powered techniques beat mass marketing, which may also be perceived as invasive marketing by certain customer groups. Through hyper-personalization, brands increase their conversion rates, as the customers feel relieved, satisfied, and most importantly, “Heard”. 

3. Improved Customer Retention

Brands can build close connections with consumers by using AI in marketing and promotion. When customers feel valued, they buy more. And this is universal. Through real-time data, you can make your customers feel valued by catering to their respective choices and demands. The more valued your customers feel, the greater the chances to ensure their loyalty. 

4. Competitive Advantage

So many businesses can exist in a niche market, all competing for the same attention and engagement. As a business owner, you should think of ways to stand out from the crowd, and hyper-personalization can give you that. With real-time data, you can improve your marketing efforts and take a break from invasive marketing. Your customers should feel free to interact with your brand, as and when they please. It will give you the competitive edge that you seek. 

What Are The Challenges of AI-Based Hyper-Personalization?

AI-powered systems can bring you lots and lots of data. But it’s on you to handle such massive chunks of data, without any risk. The key risks of hyper-personalization stem from data privacy, data thefts, and related issues. Further, there are other challenges to integrating the right systems to analyze customer data and predict patterns. 

Let’s talk about such challenges of hyper-personalization in detail: 

1. Data Privacy Concerns

Every company must have access to lots of data to offer end-to-end customization to their target audience. However, this also puts the customers’ privacy at stake sometimes. What about protecting that data? Does every company have advanced data protection systems in place to prevent data theft? More and more consumers are now voicing concerns about using and sharing their information. Companies should familiarize themselves with what is a cyberattack to secure network connections and to make sure all data will be safe.

Brands should be wary of this issue before implementing hyper-personalization as an effective marketing strategy. They must ensure that consumers understand how their data is being used (or shared). Consumers should also have the option to decide how their data SHOULD BE used. 

2. Integration of Systems

Hyper-personalization requires different types of data that should be connected across business applications. It can be quite tricky, not to mention cost-intensive. You may need to invest in advanced technologies and outsource skills. Companies should also check if their marketing tools are adept enough to send the right message. They need a coordinated, strategic, and effective system in place.

3. Balancing Automation with a Human Touch

It can be a real challenge, especially considering where things are moving today. Although 74% of people seek personalization from brands, about 40% of customers still seek the human touch while interacting with brands. Moreover, 86% of people strongly prefer to talk to a human agent before making buying decisions. 

So you see why balancing AI automation with the human touch is necessary? You need to reach that careful balance in your marketing approaches to get the best outcome. 

Despite these challenges, there’s no denying that hyper-personalization is now growing at a rapid pace and rightly so. As a business owner, you must keep a note of the associated risks in any new trend, so that you can minimize those and offer an improved experience. 

Upcoming Trends in Hyper-Personalization

Hyper-personalization is already ‘hot’ in marketing, taking the digital marketing world by storm. However, the upcoming trends in this field will blow your mind. The entire way in which brands connect and interact with their customers is going to change and for the better. Are you curious? Let’s do it then! 

1. Increased Use of Augmented Reality (AR)

Augmented reality has great potential to deliver personalized experiences in the future. For example, brands can use AR to let customers see how a product would look in their environment before buying it. Well, suppose you’re shopping for furniture. A retailer can use AR tools to help you visualize a piece of furniture in YOUR home before you set your mind to buying it. 

2. Increased Focus on the Ethics of Artificial Intelligence

As companies seek to personalize targeting, pressure for ethical AI will rise. Users are worried sick about data privacy today. They don’t trust cookies and other stalkerish measures to gain information. Hence, before brands start using AI in marketing, they must learn how to earn the audience’s trust first. They should be transparent and ethical in their approaches to gathering data through AI tools in the future. 

3. Omnichannel Personalization

In 2025, businesses will probably seek a seamless personal connection with customers both online and offline. Whether a customer reaches out to a brand on social media, through email, or in person, the experience must be consistent and hassle-free. Hence, omni-channel personalization will top the list of hyper-personalization approaches. 

4. AI with a Higher Degree of Emotional Intelligence

Ah no! This isn’t science fiction we’re talking about. To prove it, well, we thought of generative AI as science fiction too some decades back. Right? 

Coming to the point, AI will likely be able to understand the emotions and feelings of humans in the future without prompts. Astonishing, right? Well, in marketing the advanced emotional intelligence of AI-powered systems will take personalization several levels up. As a result, brands will be able to build stronger and longer relationships with their customers. 

The Bottom Line

Hyper-personalization is more advanced and beneficial than previous customer interaction models. With an increased use of AI-powered systems in 2025 and beyond, marketing will change how customers interact with businesses, which, in turn, will focus on giving customers relevant, tailored content.

Brands that are willing to follow this trend can get significant rewards in customer retention, increased conversion rate, and more ROI (Return on Investment) benefits. These companies will also get an edge in the competitive landscape. However, you should tread on this path carefully, considering all the challenges that can affect your business as obstacles. Data privacy is a serious concern today and a significant by-product of AI-powered data analytics. Proper systems must be in place to minimize the chances of data theft and other related issues. 

Using AI in marketing and advertising is not just about technology. It’s about knowing and understanding the individual needs of customers and providing reliable solutions. Brand loyalty is crucial for companies to succeed. Brands must engage customers using personalization as a key and an experience. Leveraging the power of AI should no longer be an option, but a necessity. 

Got questions?

How can I implement hyper-personalization in my social media marketing campaign?

Your foremost duty will be to collect the right kind of data. If your data is good, your personalization will be effective. Use the data to give out a customized offer that your target audience will not be able to ignore. Keep the message as personalized as possible and use multiple channels to spread it out. Also, pick the right time and maintain consistency in your marketing efforts.

What is the difference between hyper-personalization and personalization?

Personalization refers to the marketing approaches based on customers’ information, like context, location, demographics, and timing. Hyper-personalization involves using real-time data to personalize branding and marketing efforts. In personalization, marketers use historical data, like previous behaviors, purchasing tendencies, browsing behaviors, etc, to build tailored marketing messages. In hyper-personalization, real-time data through AI-powered systems is used to offer end-to-end tailored experiences. 

Can you give us an example of hyper-personalization?

Okay, let’s consider you’re a vegan, who is looking for vegan restaurants in Ohio. In hyper-personalized marketing, you’ll find not only the right diner, but also get identified and segmented based on your diet preferences, choices of food, and probably even a suitable table.

How do hyper-personalized marketing methods use AI?

AI-powered systems collect data to extend segmentation and give customers an experience that is both unique and special. For example, if you’re visiting your favorite cafe, you’ll see that the system is not only aware of your name but also your individual coffee preferences, like type of milt, amount of cinnamon, sugar, etc.