The success of a business is dependent upon many factors. None are more important, however, than customer relationships. The more interactive a business or non-profit organizations is with its customers and members, the more likely the organization is to experience growth and success. There are many ways to interact with customers, such as through promotions, newsletters, social media, and of course direct mail. Yet a more “intimate” strategy for interacting with customers / members is 1-to-1 marketing.
1-to-1 Marketing Explained
For 1-to-1 marketing (or 1:1 Marketing), a customer relationship management (CRM) strategy often involves engaging in more personalized interactions with customers. This means a business would likely promote certain products to a customer or group of customers based on their preferences. Historically this process has been referred to as “market segmentation.” However by using market intelligence, analytics, and other big-data sources organizations can go one step further by personalizing communications based on a combination of user behavior, demographics, economic indicators, and other data trends.
For example, if a customer typically purchases floral scent perfume from an online perfume business, that business would then send offers and promotions on floral scent perfumes and related products to that customer, based on the information gathered about them and their purchases. Another example could include layering personalized geographic data into your organizations communications to appear hyper-local. This could be completed in a number of ways, such as through geo-mapping, variable imaging, variable messaging, or other personalization techniques.
It is important to note that 1:1 marketing is not simply adding “Dear John,” or “Hi Jane” to the start of your communication. Rather its about catering your entire message to the desires, interests, and Psyche of your constituent. Forbes magazine describes 1:1 marketing this way, “In a 1:1 future, personalization will become individualization”. In other terms, 1:1 marketing caters to individualized customers by marketing products, services, and organizational goals that would most intrigue and interest them based on their available data.
Types of 1-to-1 Marketing
Email Marketing
Email marketing is an affordable way to personally interact with customers. Through email marketing, you can send newsletters, offers, invitations and auto-responses to customers in an effort to increase customer and member retention. These emails can be personalized with certain offers going to one group of customers with similar preferences and another offer going to a different group of customers. Emails can appear even more personalized by including the individual’s name on the email they receive, highlighting geographicaly local resources that are available to them, or even by providing online resources that are specific to their identified interests. Email marketing is an effective digital tool for 1:1 marketing, having virtually unlimited personalization possibilities.
Content Marketing
Content marketing involves creating and publishing content that has been crafted for an intended audience. Content marketing can include: newsletters, blog posts, how-to guides, articles, videos, and more. Often times the content is produced based off specific interests expressed by the market segmentation. In content marketing, the main focus is the customer (or members) and their needs, which makes content marketing another effective strategy for 1:1 marketing.
Direct Mail 1-to-1 Marketing With Valtim
While the above two strategies primarily address one-to-one marketing within a digital marketing mindset, 1:1 marketing can also be effectively used in your print communications as well. With Valtim’s digital printing presses, 1:1 marketing is no longer limited to digital methods.
Working alongside our customers, we are able to construct consumer and member profiles that are suitable for the specific targeted marketing campaign. Furthermore we can use big-data sources to design individualized layouts that are unique to each mail recipient. This includes variable 4-color graphics, text, call to actions, and other individualized content.
Assuming just 8 data points with 8 different options for each data points the total number of variations is over 40,00 possibilities. Furthermore each piece would be further personalized through unique data such as name and address. This means that every mail piece sent is guaranteed to be uniquely individualized based of the recipients expressed profile.
Valtim also develops targeted direct mail marketing lists based off the consumer profiles that are guaranteed to improve interactions between our clients and their consumers and members. With Valtim, you also have access to: Geo-targeting, industry targeting, demographic targeting, political targeting, and economic targeting.
Contact Valtim to see how to utilize 1-to-1 marketing and how to effectively target consumers in your next direct mail campaign.
