Fueling Personal Relationships and Directing the Customer Journey

The Pursuit of 1:1 Marketing

Data, data, and more data. With modern day marketing required to be more personal than ever before, marketing departments are becoming more data-driven than ever before.

The Shift to Personalization

In this current day and age, marketing has almost completely shifted from a mass, shotgun-like approach, to a pinpointed, near surgical operation, keen to establish and emphasize the personal relationship between company and customer through data… lots and lots of data. It’s no longer about spreading the news regarding your latest offerings, it’s become all about creating a unique ‘customer experience’, with an underlying longing for company and customer to journey together.

The key to building 1:1 marketing experiences is to know and understand your customers. It is important to find out why your customers make certain decisions, what their preferred channels of engagement are, which segments respond best to which offerings, at what times, at which frequency, and so forth. These elements combined can be used to build a ‘single customer view’. However, personalization does not always equate to 1:1 marketing, as many brands face economical and/or technical hindrance. Personalization entails taking key characteristics of segmented customer groups and using them in further engagement.

Data Collection and Integration

Collecting data to fuel personal brand relationships is a struggle of the past. Much of the data described above is most likely already being captured and stored in your company’s databases. Trying to integrate these disparate sources of CRM, purchase, social, web, and especially third-party data, among others, into a single, actionable database is a far more challenging task. However, it certainly does not end there. Once the data is integrated into one massive database, correctly analyzing the right data and retrieving relevant insights is yet another challenge waiting to be solved.

Data Analysis

Machine learning, a method of data analysis defined as a sub-set of artificial intelligence (AI), has made its introduction as a proven solution capable of analyzing ‘big-data’ and generating prescriptive analytics, which, together with advanced segmentation techniques, has turned out to be extremely useful. Marketers no longer need to rely on their gut feeling. According to Gartner’s 2015 survey of data-driven marketers, more than two-thirds planned to base the majority of their decisions on data and analytics within the next two years, continuing the massive shifts to measurable insights, and bringing a halt to simply ‘guessing’.

By analyzing prescriptive analytics derived from large integrated sets of customer data, marketers can get a better understanding of the customer journey, and form personal relationships by:

• Using personalization to engage their audience, via knowledge of first name and basic demographics, to lifestyle, hobbies, interests and behavior.

• Understanding their customer needs, preferences, and decision making processes leading to purchases.

• Constantly adapting and improving the customer experience based on the customer behavior, making each brand engagement as smooth and fulfilling as possible.

Fundamentally, creating a single customer view is part of a broader mission for marketers moving forward - how to better understand the customer, and leverage that understanding to drive more relevant marketing that delivers meaningful value.