Marketing is a field that is ever-evolving and sees several advancements every year. Businesses around the world are finding numerous ways to connect their audience with their product. The latest addition to it is Personalized marketing which is based on consumer interest and demographics. It eventually leads the way to One-to-One marketing.
What is One-to-One Marketing?
One-to-One Marketing is an aspect of relationship marketing. It focuses on having a more personalized experience with your audience. It communicates with the consumers directly. This kind of interaction helps build customer loyalty and is expected to generate high returns on investment.
It is not a very new concept as it has existed since commerce began. Since the beginning of commerce, even the smallest business remembered certain details about their customers to improve their services. Because of this, it is also known as a ‘segment of one’.
The fundamental reasoning is that buyers help in adding value to the business by providing information to the marketer which in turn is received and used for creating a rewarding experience for the customers. Another belief of One-to-One marketing is that different customers should be catered to differently as their needs and value to the firm differ. It stresses the importance of putting more marketing efforts on the most valuable customers.
It is based on several strategies which include:
• Focusing on individual consumers for which consumer data and technology is used. They divide the consumers into groups based on the information.
• Responding to your customers' query through personalized interactions.
• Customizing products or services according to the customer interest.
Where is it used and by whom?
As internet shopping is growing day by day, it has lead to the growth of this form of marketing. With the collected data, companies develop marketing plans which are different for different consumers. Customers often go back to an online retailer’s website where they previously made a purchase. There they find a section like ‘suggestions for you’ or ‘based on your purchase’. They may receive similar suggestion via email. This comes under One-to-One marketing.
Renowned names like Amazon and Netflix have developed a sophisticated One-to-One marketing strategy where the system tracks each click by the customer, recording and further categorizing them based on purchase to maintain an individualized customer profile.
One relatable example would be Spotify’s ‘Discover Weekly’. It is a playlist of tracks curated to include what it expects a user will like to listen to. It is just like any other personalization and recommendation platform. The process is carried out with the help of a system that determines a user’s “taste profile,” based on listening behaviour and popular playlists among the entire Spotify audience.
The results for ‘discover weekly’ were not so great. The people behind it realized that personalization is not always accurate. Though they have suggestions to make it work such as adding the discover weekly song you like to your library and skipping the one you don’t like.
Overall, not all personalization strategies are going to be perfect. Even if you have a great system, they are just the best-educated guesses about what is going to be the best for your consumers. To tackle this, it’s best to first identify your most active consumers and invite them for a pilot run of the algorithm you are using. Collect the feedback from them and work on improving your service.