If you spend any time moving in marketing circles, you’ll know that personalisation at scale (PaS) is the hot, hyped topic right now.

The dream? Tailored messaging that lands with dazzling precision, making every customer feel ‘seen’ and understood. The reality? A lot of brands are getting it wrong – horribly wrong. From creepy targeting to irrelevant offers, poor execution is turning what should be wins into expensive misses.

Boston Consulting Group’s Mark Abraham, co-author of ‘Personalised Customer Strategy in the Age of AI’ (alongside Harvard Business School’s David C. Edelman) has spent years helping brands navigate this challenge. His take? Done right, PaS is a massive opportunity. Done badly, it’s a waste of time and money.

So before you commit your business to going all-in on PaS, ask yourself these ten questions.

1. “Are we solving a real customer problem, or are we just doing personalisation for the sake of it?”

It’s easy to get swept up in the excitement of new tech. But before you start throwing AI at your marketing, step back. Will personalisation actually improve your customer’s experience, or are you just adding complexity? If personalisation doesn’t make buying easier, faster or more relevant for them, it’s just noise.

2. “Do we have a clear roadmap with measurable milestones?”

Personalisation isn’t a quick win – it’s a long-term strategic play. So you need clear objectives, defined KPIs and a realistic plan for scaling. You’ve sent out highly personalised emails to your audience – what next? And what next after that? 

3. “Do we actually know our customers well enough to personalise effectively, or is our data full of gaps?”

Your personalisation is only as good as your data. If you don’t have a clear, accurate view of your customers, you’ll end up sending the wrong messages at the wrong time. Worse, you could alienate them completely. Take a hard look at your data quality before you start automating anything.

4. “Are we set up to personalise at scale – or will we just end up creating a big mess for ourselves?”

Introducing personalisation to your marketing requires more than simply creating large amounts of content that can be swapped in and out (although it definitely involves that too). It’s also about having the infrastructure to ensure consistency across every touchpoint. If your website, CRM and ad platform aren’t working together, you’re not scaling personalisation – you’re scaling chaos.

5. “How will we balance automation with the human touch to avoid ‘creepy’ or irrelevant personalisation?”

Personalisation is great – until it’s not. Bombarding someone with ads for a product they already bought? Annoying. Using customer data in a way that feels intrusive? Creepy. AI can predict a lot of things, but it can’t judge context. You need human oversight to keep things on the right side of useful.

6. “Are our internal teams – marketing, IT, product, sales – aligned on what personalisation should achieve?”

Marketing might be driving personalisation, but it touches every part of the business. If IT isn’t on board, your systems won’t support it. If sales doesn’t understand it, they won’t use it. If leadership isn’t aligned, you won’t get the investment you need. Personalisation needs cross-functional buy-in to work.

7. “Do we have the right infrastructure, or are we relying on outdated systems?”

Personalisation at scale relies on AI – and AI relies on clean, structured data. If your data is sitting in silos, or your tech stack is held together with sticky tape and workarounds, you’re setting yourself up for failure. Before you start, make sure your systems are actually capable of delivering personalisation properly.

8. “How will we measure success? What KPIs will tell us if personalisation is actually driving revenue?” 

Engagement metrics are nice, but clicks and open rates won’t pay the bills. Personalisation should move the needle on actual business outcomes: sales, retention, customer lifetime value, all that good stuff. If you can’t track whether it’s working, you won’t know whether to double down or cut your losses.

9. “Are we set up to continuously optimise personalisation, or will it be a one-and-done thing?”

Personalisation isn’t ‘set and forget’ (unfortunately). It demands constant testing, refining and improving. If your team isn’t ready to analyse performance and iterate, your personalisation efforts will quickly become outdated. For the best results, treat PaS as an ongoing process. 

10. “Are we thinking beyond marketing? How can personalisation enhance the entire customer experience?”

Personalisation isn’t just about ads and emails. It should extend across the entire customer journey: sales interactions, customer service, even product recommendations. The brands getting personalisation right are the ones embedding it into everything they do, not just their marketing comms.

To sum it all up… 

Hopefully, these questions haven’t taken the wind out of your PaS sails too much. Done well, PaS can be hugely advantageous. But rushing in without a plan will cost you – not just money, but time and customer trust, too. 

So ask yourself the above questions before you commit, and you’ll make sure you’re building a strategy that’s actually worth the investment.