Guest Opinion
How to Deliver Truly
Personalized Marketing
Organizations have been talking about one-to-one marketing for years. With the looming
threat of tightening budgets due to the economic downturn, the benefits that personalized marketing yields — increased response and higher
conversion rates, greater profits, enhanced customer loyalty and the ability to measure individual campaigns more
effectively — are even more essential.
The good news is that marketing technology has advanced, making it easier to make this vision of one-to-one
marketing a reality. There are four key areas that have
been impacted by these technology advances, and to
which marketers should turn their attention:
1. Targeting. Targeting is a critical component in
one-to-one marketing. You must be able to identify, distinguish and reach customers efficiently and
effectively. Technology is now able to compile a
complete view of a customer by drawing on data
in various formats and from various locations and
channels throughout the organization. Integration
with popular data mining tools enables organizations to perform even deeper customer analysis,
segmentation and profiling.
New segment functionality allows organizations
to define strategic groups of customers and store
that information centrally in one location so that
all marketers can use and re-use the same segment
definitions. This helps ensure consistency of marketing communications and reduce time-to-market
for campaigns. Market segments can also be tracked
and measured over time, providing an organization
with a clear understanding of the business impact,
value and return-on-investment (ROI) attributable
to targeting within each segment.
2. Messaging. Messaging is the hook that captivates
a customer’s attention. With the right technology,
you can now customize a message’s text, graphics,
products and incentives at an
individual level.
Personalization is taken to
new heights when thousands of
different offers can be based on
customer attributes and business
rules. Additionally, messages within a particular
communication vehicle may be tailored.
For example, E-mail or newspaper circulars may
contain numerous sections of content that are personalized for an individual. These may be based on
his or her preferences, product purchases, or recent
life events, such as a new property purchase. Marketing technology not only enables this, but makes
it possible to track responses to each content area
as well as to the offer in its entirety. This analysis
allows marketers to measure the performance and
effectiveness of every marketing message.
3. Executing. Executing timely communications based
on customer behavior and events is now possible.
A critical component of one-to-one marketing is
detecting and knowing when customers will be
most receptive to a contact regarding a new offer,
or when to reach out because attrition seems likely.
Based on business and customer-defined rules,
marketing technology identifies when a significant
change in customer behavior has occurred.
It identifies valid reasons to contact customers
and provides marketing staff with consultative opportunities and opportune loss interventions. By
signaling when a customer is most likely to respond
to a message, event detection can increase cross-sell
opportunities and improve customer satisfaction.
4. Delivering. Delivering personalized messages
whenever a customer connects with a company is
powerful. Today’s enterprise marketing technology
allows marketers to quickly develop and run all
forms of marketing communications — scheduled
campaigns, event-driven programs and real-time
conversations — with customers across multiple
channels, including electronic and print.
A coordinated approach makes it easy for marketers to
drive effective interaction strategies that reach individual
customers at the right time with the best offer on their
preferred channel. Such integrated delivery creates customer dialogues that build loyalty and increase ROI.
With technology advances in targeting, messaging, execution and delivery, organizations are now empowered to
make the dream of one-to-one marketing a reality.
