Acquiring new customers can be a costly business, and depending on which study you believe, that cost can be up to 25 times more than simply retaining an existing one. So keeping the right kind of customers engaged and connected is undoubtedly critical for the success of any brand.
So how do you keep and grow your current customer base?
There are plenty of loyalty and brand initiatives an organisation can adopt to help with customer retention, but we’d like to delve into one particularly close to our own hearts, 1 to 1 Marketing.
If you’re unfamiliar with the concept, one to one, or personalised marketing, is an approach that treats customers like individuals, tailoring all outbound communication to best suit the drivers of that particular person or buyer group. Heavily data driven, communication is based on past behaviour and general demographic assumptions made around age, gender and geographic location. 1 to 1 follows the marketing mantra ‘right place, right time, right message’.
HOW IT WORKS
It’s no surprise that personalised marketing relies on personalised communication. Individual differences in age, gender or stage of life can be better related by variations in imagery and content. Timing could influence the urgency and frequency of the communication, and past engagement could determine the best channel.
All of these elements are managed with precision, to execute highly customer centric marketing strategies. Here’s an example of how simple direct mail piece might look with targeted imagery.
There are plenty of loyalty and brand initiatives, but we’d like to delve into one close to our own hearts, 1 to 1 marketing.
HOW AMAZON DEMONSTRATE 1 TO 1 MARKETING Arguably no other company has been as successful at building its brand around their customers than Amazon. Their understanding of consumer buying habits has led to more personalised and targeted marketing and a more customer centric approach. They cleverly use personalisation to make relevant product recommendations to their customers, based on past purchase history, past order value, location, age, gender and on-site browsing. The big thing I see about AMAZON, is their constant drive to do it better, based on customer feedback and regular surveys. The power is in the data and information they collect on their customers.
AN EASY SOLUTION FOR 1 TO 1 MARKETING Don’t have the same marketing and IT firepower as AMAZON? Understandably managing all these elements might seem like an overwhelming juggling act, with ever changing data, artwork and content versions, time based triggers and multiple channels, but breathe easy, there is a cost effective, easy to use solution. Printcraft, utilizing Xmpie software, is a developer of 1 to 1 cross media, marketing campaigns. The software provides the one stop solution for personalisation, artwork versioning, time based triggers, and most importantly, live data updates and reporting. Communication can be executed across both digital and print channels.
BUILDING A 1 TO 1 CAMPAIGN PLAN – our integrated marketing solution utilizes the Xmpie planning tool. An easy to use, drop and drag system lets you to map out the channels, triggers, rules and work flow of your campaign. The best part is that we work through this with you, doing much of the technical aspect and saving you having to pay for costly software just for this feature. This is how it works:
BUILD – sign off on the campaign, including your expectations on responses and returns, and we’ll begin the back end build. You will need to supply artwork and data, or work with our design and marketing team to generate some.
TEST – the most critical part of the campaign is to test – data, channels, response mechanisms, reporting, triggers, contingencies.
EXECUTE – finally your campaign is ready to launch for a one off, or multiple purpose use.
Want to know more? Contact one of our friendly team members who are happy to have a no obligation discussion as to whether this 1 to 1 marketing could boost your customer acquisitions.