One-to-One marketing, also referred to as personalized marketing, is a customer relationship management (CRM) strategy that requires companies to make their communication with clients and their consumer offerings more personalized.
The concept of one-to-one marketing was developed in 1994 by Don Peppers and Martha Rogers. At that time they determined 5 major steps a company has to make in order to become more successful and competitive through engaging with its customers via personalized marketing.
The major steps in one-to-one marketing are:
- Establishing short-term measures that will help to evaluate marketing efforts.
- Defining current customers.
- Differentiating among the customers.
- Interacting with customers for defining the best ones to work with.
- Customizing offerings so that they meet the needs of the best customers.
Establishing Short-Term Measures for One-to-One Marketing
Establishing short-term measures that will help to evaluate marketing efforts involved is, actually, a process that should be conducted for any marketing strategy. No matter what approach a company chooses for promoting its products, there should exist some measures for evaluating the success of the strategy.
It can a number of products sold in a period of time, increase in revenue or customer satisfaction. Everything depends on the goal the company set for that strategy. If there are no short-terms measures and control over them, the company will not be getting information on how well it’s doing and, consequently, will have no basis for potentially needed changes or improvements.
Defining Current Customers for Personalized Marketing
Defining current customers involves gathering about them as many information as possible. Such information can be gathered in a form of a profile, which will describe each client’s preferences, buying behavior and habits, as well as names and phones number in order to be always able to reach that customer. The purpose of this step is to get to know the customer in order to be able to satisfy one’s needs and demands.
One-to-One Marketing: Differentiating Customers
Differentiating among the customers involves breaking clients into smaller groups. The criteria for such a break down is usually each customer’s current and potential future spending. In addition, customers are distinguished by the level of complicity of serving each. Customers are also differentiated by their needs and by level of satisfaction. This is done with the purpose of defining the best customers and, possibly, getting rid of the worst ones, whose value is negative for the company.
Interacting and Defining the Best Clients
The purpose of interacting stage is to define and work with the best ones. This step involves finding ways to communicate with the customers more effectively in order to better satisfy the needs of the best ones. At the same time, low-value customers do not get as much time and attention because they have low growth potential. The goal of this step is to optimize and improve contact with chosen customers. In addition, engagement of each customer is reached by means of using communication channels and strategies that he or she enjoys most of all.
Customizing Offerings in One-to-One Marketing
Customizing offerings involves modifying the company’s product or service so that they meet the needs of the best customers. Such decisions are based on the information gathered while defining, differentiating and interacting with clients. At this stage the product itself, or some aspect of the product (packaging, service, etc.), is customized so that the consumer product or service exactly corresponds to the client’s desires.
Alla Kondrat - Alla Kondrat+ is a Feng Shui topic editor at Suite101.com, as well as a full time freelance writer and translator (Russian and Ukrainian). ...
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