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Some marketers are beginning to worry, because people are ignoring them. People have been bombarded with so much irrelevant marketing for so long that they’re switching off the moment they hear the hint of a sales message.
So how are marketers going to persuade people to listen to them again? They have to be able to offer messages that are relevant and valuable to barter for people’s attention. The one size fits all style of mass marketing is dying and has to evolve.
Many claim that personalised, one-to-one marketing is the answer, in which your offer is moulded to match the preferences of each customer. Some believe that one-to-one could be marketing’s holy grail: the ability to pitch messages that resonate with the hopes and desires of each individual.
Or is one-to-one merely hype being peddled by digital marketers hoping it can save their budget from the guillotine?
Making smarter use of your database
Using a database to segment your customers is nothing new. However, with the dark clouds of recession gathering, pressure to make more effective use of customer data, and provide a better return on shrinking budgets, is building.
More marketers are realising that carpet bombing the same message to your whole database is dated, clumsy and costly. The smarter ones already know that you need to be able to deliver the right message to the right person in the right format.
Using your database to target messages at specific segments can improve your response rate, reduce the risk of losing customers and reward you with a much healthier ROI. Your database is your goldmine, and knowing how to drill and exploit it can determine what riches you’ll find.
We now have the technology to build it
The rise of digital means we now have the technology to partner the philosophy of one-to-one marketing, which marketers have been preaching for some time.
One-to-one’s philosophy is that of engaging consumers in a two way dialogue on their passions, interests and desires, rather than pelting them with one way messages. Consumers are now in more control of what content they want to receive and when. They’re no longer a captive audience happy to consume whatever information you choose to feed them.
If you’re not providing them with content that interests them then they can easily find it on websites and forums elsewhere. So marketing has to be relevant and offer valuable insight if you want it to be heard.
Digital provides the tools to be relevant
Digital provides the technology for dialogue: online surveys, interactive websites and email can all be used to learn more about your customers and fill your database with valuable nuggets of information. What’s their budget? How many settings should your widget have? When will they next be shopping for an upgrade? Knowing about your customers’ interests, preferences and behaviours can then enable you gauge which offers to pitch and to whom.
Whether its email, a personalised web page (PURL) or good old direct mail, marketing activity can then be personalised and targeted at those who fit the profile of your ideal customer.
Amazon is the current poster child of one-to-one marketing. Users are given recommendations on books, CDs and anything else matching their buying behaviour. To the casual user Amazon is simply being helpful, but to the marketing mind Amazon’s website is database driven customer engagement at its best.
One-to-one marketing is simply smarter
On the web you’ll hear plenty of hype on the potential of one-to-one marketing to create lifelong loyalty and ‘turn customers into evangelists for your brand’. However, making smarter use of your database and harnessing digital to deliver personalised, relevant messages is just common sense.
The days of pouring money into hit and hope marketing are drawing to a close. The future is about being smart with your budget and delivering marketing that’s relevant, offers value and a personalised one-to-one dialogue with your customers.
Holy grail’s are allusive. But improving how you engage your customers with marketing that they’re happy to receive is a prize worthy of exploration.
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BDA (Buckingham Design Associates) - real people giving real opinions, and a complete lack of agency waffle. BDA deliver an exciting blend of design and creative marketing for the Oxford, Milton Keynes, Northampton and London region.
September 4th, 2008 at 9:50 am
[...] and to whom. You can then segment and profile your customers so that you’re able to deliver true one-to-one marketing that’s more relevant and precisely targeted to trigger a [...]
September 4th, 2008 at 10:00 am
I found your site on technorati and read a few of your other posts. Keep up the good work. I just added your RSS feed to my Google News Reader. Looking forward to reading more from you down the road!
September 4th, 2008 at 10:54 am
[...] Read the rest of this great post here [...]
September 16th, 2008 at 9:03 am
[...] is a clumsy and expensive approach, because we now have the technology to engage prospects in a one-to-one marketing dialogue that’s more relevant and personalised for each [...]
September 18th, 2008 at 9:00 am
[...] the rise of one-to-one marketing means the ability to mould your language and style to match your target market could soon be in [...]
September 22nd, 2008 at 10:50 am
[...] them happy should always be on your mind. And with digital media, it’s easier than ever to run one-to-one retention campaigns targeted to appeal to the preferences, hopes and desires of every [...]
October 1st, 2008 at 5:39 pm
[...] One-to-one digital marketing – people like to be treated as individuals, rather than drones with credit cards. Delivering campaigns personalised to appeal to an individual’s interests enables your marketing to be more relevant and remarkable, compared to the lazy one-size-fits-all approach of your competition. [...]
November 10th, 2008 at 10:52 am
[...] The ability to track and record an endless supply of data on customers means you can deliver one-to-one marketing personalised to match the interests and preferences of each [...]