In today’s digital world customers expect a relevant, personal and ‘non-spammy’ experience…in fact, they demand it and react to brand interactions accordingly – 84% of people would walk away from a company that doesn’t listen and the flip side of that is 74% would respond positively to companies that understand them. So get it right consistently and you’re on the right path to being a winning brand.
Too many marketers ignore this advice and adopt a “one size fits all” approach with regard to their customer interactions, marketing at everybody (or nobody, depending on your perspective). Mass communications are often highly counterproductive and can seriously irritate customers. Ineffective and counterproductive, it’s high time that the “spray and pray” approach is scrapped in favour of a personalised and data driven marketing programme.
Think singular
To be effective, marketing communications should be tailored to individuals, regardless of channel. Leading B2C organisations and effective marketers recognise the need to be able to identify, understand and engage with their customers (and prospective customers) across channels and critically at the right time. An important and rapidly increasing trend is that brands are taking a more strategic approach to the use of data.
In a recent Experian poll it was found that Chief Data Officers at leading brands believe they can increase profitability by as much as 15% by better management of their data. It’s vital to have a data strategy and a clear one at that, which helps brands fully understand their existing customers and audiences.
Customer experience is the key battleground in marketing and the best way to improve the customer experience is to be able to tailor it to the preference of each individual. This is where ‘segments-of-one’ come into play.
The customer as a segment-of-one
To treat customers as individual segments you have to think of them as such. A larger segment may have several thousand customers in it, but brands still need to treat each one of those within that segment as an individual. They may differ wildly in certain areas (football team supported, car driven, political empathy or purchasing habits) and it depends on the original segmentation exercise – not only how detailed it was, but also what factors the brand chose to differentiate on.
This shows how important it is to conduct an accurate as possible profiling process that produces segments you can rely on and then action effective marketing activity as a result. It also demonstrates how critical the thinking behind each segment is.
It’s necessary to be able to personalise or segment within each group. What you need, essentially, is a database with data about the customer that can be used for personalisation, a segment containing that person, and an automated process to facilitate communications using not only the segment information, but also every piece of data available to you, in order to provide an individual experience.
Today’s marketers have access to so many different types of data and customers have more touch points than ever before. Each touch point – whether that’s social media, email, direct mail or SMS (to name a few) – is an opportunity to understand and know more about that customer or audience. The key is making sure you are collecting and accurately recording as much information and data as is available because every time an individual interacts with your brand is an opportunity to collect and record data.
Shift your marketing to the cutting edge
It’s all very well to lay out a process of reaching out to customers as a segment-of-one, but to do this marketers must have the right quality of data, and the right tools to make use of it. Collecting and analysing first party data forms an important part of boosting customer understanding and should form the backbone of a successful campaign. Coupled with accurate segmentation, deep customer insight and a dynamic cross channel capability this can brands the insights required to reach customers in a personalised fashion, in real time.
Building the ability to reach customers on a segment-of-one basis allows brands to communicate with customers on better terms and differentiate themselves in a crowded market. Thinking of communications as just that – a means of talking to customers – rather than a campaign can boost engagement, advocacy and loyalty. Every marketer should view that as an important goal.
