5 Can’t-Do-Without Tips to Start One-to-One Marketing
As a 11-year veteran of marketing, I don’t quite go all the way back to the stone ages of marketing when print reigned supreme, but can vividly recall my marketing colleagues and I constantly zeroed in on direct mail response rates, and the resulting activity, as the ultimate measure of success. Granted, we were working in a sort of old school industry (private aviation, of all things) as far as marketing goes, in which no company seemed to want to take a leap into doing marketing differently than their competition. But growing up as a marketer in this environment, and looking back on that time, I wish I could slap some sense into myself and my colleagues.
Unfortunately, too many marketers fall into the same habits that marketers 10 years ago did. Taking the easy route of marrying up a mailing list to a static, one-dimensional direct mail piece. Just take a look at your mail when you get home from work tonight. We call it “junk mail” because it’s not personalized or relevant to us or our interests. We toss it out without giving it 2 seconds of our attention because it’s as plain as day that it was sent by a company who is not as interested in identifying our interests or pain points as they are in dumping their mass marketing list onto a postcard and hoping for a few random responses.
If I come across over-passionate, it’s because so much of the mass marketing we receive should be eliminated, and the sender could experience far greater response, if they try one-to-one marketing. Simply put, one-to-one marketing is all about personalizing your marketing communications, whether it be in digital or print. At the basic level, you can use the recipient’s first name in the copy on your direct mail piece, for example. At a more creative and impactful level, you can design their name or company name into an image used on the piece… like in the image in this blog post.
Here are 5 Can’t-Do-Without Tips for One-to-One Marketing:
- Stop sending mass email by starting to use your recipients’ first name (or first and last, depending on the nature of your relationship) in all of your outbound marketing.
- Speak with a marketing company like Prime, who has the technology and experience of using variable data printing and imaging, which enables you to personalize any material (digital and web), like the image to the right. With a mail list and a creative strategy, amazing things can take place!
- Seek out more information, beyond names and addresses, that distinguish each of your contacts and prospective customers. That data will allow you to make your messages more relevant and create higher response rates. If you are a car dealership, for example, and you know who test drove that shiny new red truck, you should use the image of a red truck in your marketing to them.
- Use personalized URLs (pURLs) when you want greater response rates to surveys, event registrations, and sales campaigns. Research has proven that if one’s name is in the URL, there is a better chance that they will open the link and respond. But be sure that you are offering something of value for their time; don’t just collect information and abandon them!
- Turn your campaigns into programs. Your one-to-one marketing should not consist of just one piece on one occasion. Make it a program that offers a different message, but always of value and relevancy, across a long period of time. You want to build relationships that turn into customers and partnerships. One-and-done will only cause your recipients to forget you.
I hope these tips help! I’d love your comments and questions.
P.S. Test Drive personalizing domains and landing pages here! http://trypersonalizedmarketing.com
