What is Personalisation?

Chapter headingChapter subheadingFour senior marketing leaders from AXA Health International, Wren, ManpowerGroup and E.ON share their definitions of personalisation and explore what it means to create experiences that are relevant, useful, and genuinely valuable.Contents

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3-4 November 2026 | Hilton Kensington | London

What Is Personalisation, Really?

Four Marketing Leaders Redefine What It Means to Deliver Truly Personalised Customer Experiences

INTRODUCTION

Personalisation has become one of the most overused, and misunderstood, words in marketing.

A first name in an email. A product recommendation based on browsing history. A targeted advert following you around the internet. But does that really constitute personalisation?

As AI, data and real-time decisioning make it easier to tailor almost every customer interaction, the more important question for marketers is becoming: what should personalisation actually mean?

We asked four senior marketing leaders to define it in their own words. Their answers reveal a common shift: from personalisation as targeting, to personalisation as relevance, context, choice and customer value.

Personalisation isn't about inserting someone's first name or preferences into an email.

Real personalisation is about relevance at the right moment. It means understanding that a 35-year-old digital nomad newly based in Singapore has fundamentally different anxieties and healthcare questions than a family of four relocating to Riyadh for a corporate assignment. At AXA Health International, we serve customers in 176 countries across vastly different life stages, cultural contexts, and healthcare systems.

Personalisation, for us, means showing up with the right information, the right reassurance, and the right product option. It's anticipatory empathy, scaled.

But it goes further than that; I also think that true personalisation is “choice” and “curation”. It’s not about guessing what a customer may want to see or hear based on what we know about them…and often getting it wrong as people’s choices, tastes, and preferences change and are complex.

It’s about enabling choice and flexibility. For instance, in our world, designing more modular health products so that people can build personalised plans tailored to their needs and change them when their needs evolve.

Virginie Faucon

Chief Marketing Officer

AXA Health International

Personalisation isn’t using someone’s first name or chasing them with the last thing they browsed. It’s relevance: showing up with the right message, in the right moment, in a way that genuinely helps the customer decide.

When done well, it feels less like marketing and more like good service – the digital equivalent of a shop assistant who remembers what you’re looking for or a waiter who knows when to come and ask how your meal is, etc.

The test I apply is simple: would the customer thank us for it? If it makes their life easier and their choice clearer, we’ve earned it. If it only serves us, we haven’t.”

David Balko

Chief Marketing Officer

Wren

Personalisation is about delivering relevant, valuable experiences that reflect a customer's needs, behaviours, preferences and stage in their decision-making journey.

It goes beyond using someone's name in an email or serving targeted content. True personalisation means using data and insight to create interactions that feel timely, useful and meaningful to the individual while helping them achieve their goals more efficiently.

The best personalisation creates value for both the customer and the business. It strengthens engagement, builds trust and improves commercial outcomes because customers receive information and experiences that genuinely matter to them.

Haleema Ali

Head of B2B Marketing

ManpowerGroup

Personalisation is about knowing exactly what to offer, to whom, when, where and in what format. It goes far beyond marketing content.

True personalisation also includes product and proposition design, pricing, channel choice and the way the overall experience is delivered.

Andy Sage

Strategic Propositions & Partnerships

E.ON (nPower)

3-4 November 2026 | Hilton Kensington | London

These are exactly the conversations that will continue at the Marketing Personalisation Summit, 3-4 November 2026, Hilton Kensington, London. Bringing together senior marketing, CRM, digital, customer experience, and eCommerce leaders, the summit provides a unique opportunity to explore how leading organisations are balancing AI-powered innovation with privacy, trust, and measurable commercial outcomes.

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