According to the Harvard Business Review, the idea of one-to-one marketing is simple; it means being willing and able to change your behavior toward an individual customer, based on what the customer tells you and what else you know about the customer.
One-to-one marketing is a lot more than including a person’s name in an email because one-to-one marketing it’s based on an action. A consumer’s action would trigger a specific email to be sent based on what they did or did not do on the website. It’s a strategy that rules on relationship building and tailored messaging.
One-to-one marketing or personalization, involves a marketing strategy, centered around digital technologies, which allows for data collection and analysis. Without these three things, you can’t achieve one-to-one marketing, also known as personalized marketing. Jumping the gun before you have everything in place could be detrimental to your marketing and sales team.
Are you ready to implement a one-to-one marketing program?
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Where To Start?
Data.
Nowadays, it all starts and ends with data and thankfully there is a lot available. You have to start using data that takes you through the sales funnel and shines the light on all of your consumer’s actions. While social provides a lot of the information at the top of the funnel, it’s not going to show you everything, that’s why you also need to collect all quantitative data from sources up and down the funnel-email, web, transactional, call-tracking, CRM and anything else available!
Data lets you learn more about the customer, and through this learning, you can start recording and categorizing customers and developing profiles that will lead to a relationship with your customers.
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Developing Personalization
The data you gathering helps you identify a group of potential customers and learn as much information as you can about them. This allows you to understand their demographics and study their habits and preferences, especially when it comes to their digital channel usage. This is important so you can start identifying them at every part of the funnel.
From this point, you can start to segment the market. You will realize consumers fall into a few different categories, and as you become more comfortable with one-to-one marketing, they will break down even further.
Each segment will have a buyers persona that can help you identify the individual you are marketing to and continue to build a relationship. Within each segment, you should have tailored content and delivery styles that match the actions these consumers are most likely to take next. This is where the mass-customization comes into play and where it never truly ends.
Faster Cycle Times
Through one-to-one marketing, you are making the consumers experience as customized as possible. This means the consumer can get through the sales cycle faster because they only see the information they need to make their buying decision. This process results in a more efficient marketing team because they’re only producing content that is relevant and a faster sales cycle because the consumers buying experience is more convenient. You understand what content and channel delivery result in sales for each segment and ensure the consumer only sees (and hears) those things.
Wrap It Up
You will know you have run a successful one-to-one marketing campaign when you can keep your customers as they travel down the sales funnel. It’s more than an open email; it’s a click linked in that opened email. And the reason that click happened is because you created a personalized message, based on past actions that the consumer took which helps you predict their future actions which will hopefully be a purchase.
One-to-one marketing is using data to help you remember details about a customer’s preferences and then using that knowledge to provide better services. It’s like walking into your favorite coffee shop and having your order waiting for you- they remembered what you like, they know when you want to drink it, and that makes you ready and willing to buy it!
We have more content about Personalization! Check out this post, Why Do Your Competitors Matter When It Comes To Personalization?.