Personalization & Prosperity

getting started

getting started

I was surprised the other day by an article our Director of Marketing sent me. The author was plugging the power of personalized communication (I am a believer) but what interested me was how the definition of personalization has expanded as business people amass more and more customer data, and try to analyze it.

Personalization used to be simple. You used the prospect’s name in the salutation – “Dear Tim,” and dropped Tim’s name again into a couple of paragraphs (I’ll never forget the day my copy of TIME magazine arrived with a personal greeting, using my name, splashed across the cover. How did they do that? Amazing!).

Now, about thirty years after TIME figured out how to make a unique copy of their magazine, personalization means much, much more. The personal ID is still part of the solution. But now personalization means delivering a message that is not only unique to every customer but also features specific products/services that meet the needs or wants of the person getting the message. This new personalization could not have come at a better time.

“With so much information fighting for consumer mindshare it’s easy to see how messages could get lost in the shuffle” says the article.  What to do? “The key to breaking through the clutter is by delivering personalized and relevant communications.”

Survey says that 90% of marketers agree. They believe that “individualization is the future of marketing – moving beyond segmentation to true one-to-one personalization in a real-time context.”  That’s easy to say but not necessarily easy to do, unless you have a big analytics budget to throw at the problem. That said, marketers, bloggers, and pundits still continue to try, because they all agree that making relevant offers improves business.

But how does a company that lives by direct marketing create unique messages with tailored offers for 10,000 or one million customers they’ve never met?

If you know how to do that, congratulations! If you don’t know how, call 701.936.1080 and ask for Kris to schedule a demo of what Loyalty Builders can do for you.

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