The past few years have shown us just how critical personalization is for a brand's digital strategy. According to the latest State of the Connected Customer Report, 73% of customers expect companies to understand their unique needs and expectations.

That demand is crystal clear, but marketers face three main challenges in addressing it:

1. Personalizing at scale across channels

2. Effectively using owned data to power personalization

3. Aligning organizations for consistent personalization

The stakes are much higher and the competition more intense, but there is good news. There's more data and better technology available to marketers now, which means more opportunities to create better customer experiences.

On that note, here's a look at six new features in the latest Marketing Cloud release that will help you use data and artificial intelligence (AI) to personalize your marketing.