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One:One Marketing - It’s Personal
Sophisticated direct marketers have long understood the importance of connecting with clients and prospects on a 1 to 1 basis. This form of personalized marketing ensures increased responses and higher customer loyalty. Anyone who has an account with Amazon.com appreciates the individualized, “since you purchased this book, you may also be interested in this book” personalization of your account.
As Don Peppers and Martha Rogers put it in their book, The One to One Future: One to one marketing is a customer relationship management strategy emphasizing personalized interactions with customers. Personalization fosters greater customer loyalty and better return on marketing investment.
Only the term is new; the approach is almost as old as commerce itself. In the past, for example, proprietors of a general store would naturally take a one-to-one approach, remembering details about each customer’s preferences and characteristics and using that knowledge to provide better service. One to -one marketing seeks to reinvest marketing with the personal touch absent from many modern business interactions.
The Benefits of One:One Marketing - Higher Profits
One to One Marketing delivers economies of scope. Not economies of scale.
It initially concentrates on those 20% or even 10% of customers who are your most profitable.
By providing tailored products to meet particular needs, you make comparative shopping difficult and you shift the focus from price to benefits.
It aims for lifetime share of customer, not a share in an often static and crowded market.
Lower Costs
The cost of keeping profitable customers far outweighs the acquisition cost of new customers. With an intimate knowledge of individual customers, products and services can be more accurately targeted (right specification at the right time in the right way).
Market Utilization
It differentiates your company from the competition. Through collaborative working, customers tell you about their unmet needs and aspirations as well as their most pressing problems. You feed those needs directly. And by using customization technology, you can actually feed those needs directly into your production line.
Customers with whom you have a depth of relation, provide a rich source of new ideas that can also be exploited with other customers or with new prospects. As a result, there is a lower risk of failure and a higher chance of beating the competition.
Satisfied and loyal customers provide excellent references and referrals.
1 to 1 communication grabs your attention.
The days of laser or ink jet printing names and addresses on static mailing pieces are fading. Customers are far more sophisticated today and it takes true 1 to 1 personalization to get their attention. Good results come from addressing each customer individually–not just by name and address, but with variable content that is matched to known database profiles.
The database then becomes a major element of your marketing strategy. The more information you have about each individual customer or donor the more you can personalize your message.
However, before you begin an aggressive data-driven sales campaign do the basics: make sure the data you use is worth using. Nuts and bolts processes such as data de-duplication and address verification and validation are hardly exciting but they are still necessary first steps in any data-driven marketing project. Data collection should be viewed like any other business investment. Having a clear understanding of your business goals will help you hone the data elements that are the most relevant, leading to a database that can be the linch pin of an effective, personalized direct marketing campaign.
A successful, results oriented one to one direct mail effort requires the integration of content, design, and customer data. Planning up front is the key to success. Incorporating names, familiar images, relevant messages, buying behavior, and other available content improves ROI. With full-color, relevant text and images you can be sure that key decision makers will open, read your material, and take action.
Do You Really Know What Your Customers Want?
According to a survey conducted in 2005*, consumer’s marketing tactics dislikes and preferences were pretty clear.
Consumers dislike:
Sale of e-mail lists without permission | 80%
Sale of mailing lists without permission | 79%
Unsolicited marketing phone calls | 74%
Consumers prefer marketing that:
- Is short and to the point.
- They can choose to see when it is most convenient for them.
- Is personally communicated to them by friends and experts they trust.
- Provides information about price discounts or special deals.
- Is customized to fit their specific needs and interests.
- Compensates them for their time and attention.
- Provides information about competitive brands.
- Has asked for and received their permission ahead of time.
- They can personalize to fit their own interests and needs.
- Is associated with a magazine, TV program, or organization about which they are enthusiastic.
*Source J. Walter Smith Company in Deliver magazine, published by USPS. November 2006
Michael Vitch is president of Compu-Mail, a full service direct response marketing company.
Email: mvitch@compu-mail.com
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Compu-Mail
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