The Personalization Flywheel: An Introduction

The growth flywheel is a go-to-market methodology introduced by Hubspot in 2018. It fundamentally changed the way marketing, sales, and customer success leaders grow their companies.

The Flywheel Effect

The Flywheel Effect is a concept developed in the book Good to Great by Jim Collins. The key idea is that companies don’t just suddenly become successful companies overnight. There isn’t a magical moment responsible for that success. It is, instead, a gradual process that takes time, hard and smart work.

The metaphor is that it’s just like turning a really heavy flywheel. At first, it barely moves. But when you keep pushing it, the effort eventually overcomes the inertia. Push by push, the wheel starts accelerating more, until a point where the momentum eventually takes over.

The Personalization Flywheel

We have seen this effect in our experience around optimization and personalization. Growth personalization is a gradual process that starts with small steps, but in the long term, it could impact any stage of the customer experience.

The Hubspot flywheel framework defines three stages around the customer experience:

• Attract: Attracting is about using your expertise to create content and conversations that start meaningful relationships with the right people.

• Engage: Engaging is about building lasting relationships with people by providing insights and solutions that align with their roadblocks and goals.

• Delight: Delighting is about providing an outstanding experience that adds real value, empowers people to reach their goals, and becomes promoters of your company.

Around this concept and stages, at Ninetailed, we are developing our own personalization growth framework. We will integrate this model into our personalization platform, so that our customers can identify the right audience, deliver the right personalization experience, and understand the impact of every personalization effort in their growth strategy.