In an age when personalization is on the lips of nearly every solution provider and every retail conference attendee, RSR’s experience has thus far been that genuine personalization is still a long ways off.

The best-performing retailers understand this fact, and in our latest benchmark report on Mobillity in Retail, tell us they recognize that deeper customer engagement’s greatest promise is to drive sales.

In theory, this is simple: if a brand knows its customers better, it can understand what problems they are attempting to solve, determine which products and services it offers that could best solve those problems (even if the customer may not have originally recognized how those offerings could best help), and make an offer that isn’t just a random discount on an unwanted item, but make an offer that is truly personalized. This is the brass ring of retail. And consumers are more than willing to provide virtually every detail of how they shop — how they attempt to solve their problems — every single time they pick up their mobile devices.

However, to convert these droves of data into actionable offers that are of real value from one consumer to another is, today at least, beyond daunting. Winners know this. That’s why they’ve focused on making these relevant offers, and the tools required to get there: namely, deeper insights into mobile behaviors.

By comparison, lagging retailers have inordinate interest in building loyalty gained by mobile shopping insights: something that can only happen as a byproduct of executing the insight-driven offers Winners are focused on. It is a classic example of non-winning retailers focusing on the end result, while the best performers tackle the difficult tasks required to realize that success.

Looking through further data, non-winners prioritize multiple opportunities at a disproportionate rate: save the sale opportunities, concierge opportunities, competitor price checking opportunities. Winners don’t take the bait. For them, everything beyond insights and the promotional offers those insights affords pales in comparison.

It’s a smart move.

In fact, RSR advises retailers of all sizes, stripes, and current performance levels to start the conversation about what their brand could do in the realm of personalization in the near future — and which of those options would have the most meaningful impact to their specific customers.