New Technology Allows Small Business to Market One-to-One

One-to-One Marketing Technology for Small Businesses

“One-to-one marketing” has been a well-known buzz word for marketing professionals for more than 10 years. The term refers to marketing communications that are customer-centric, and use information provided by the customer to offer only those marketing messages that are of most interest and relevance to the individual.

One-to-one marketing requires a rich database of information about the interests and preferences of customers and prospects. Capturing this information and developing personalized communications was all but impossible before the Internet. Prior to the Internet, contact information was typically captured over the phone by a customer service agent, or extrapolated on the basis of the customer’s purchasing patterns.

I probably understand the value of customer data more than most because I worked for the rare company that had lots of data about its customers even prior to the Internet—USAA.

Because of its many different divisions, USAA knows a lot about its customers, known as “members.”  The company knows the ages and gender of members’ children. The kind of car they drive and the size of members' homes. If a member has an insurance rider, USAA might know they own furs, pianos, collectibles, and antiques. If a member booked through the USAA travel agency, the company would know their last vacation destination. With all of this information, it was relatively simple to segment the customer base into lifestyle and life-stage groupings, as well as on the basis of even more distinct data.

When the term “one-to-one marketing” was coined, the Internet was young, and the concept was more a goal than reality. For most companies, technology just didn’t support one-to-one marketing.

Today, things have changed. Now, many companies rely on customers (and prospects) to provide information about their needs and desires in web-based forms. Even small companies can afford web-based systems to capture and create personalized marketing communications.

An excellent example is the Asenz360 web marketing system that I offer to my clients. Asenz360 captures and stores up to 5000 unique pieces of information about each contact in a relational database. It allows you to email customers with surveys and use other interactive devices to add to your knowledge of their needs. For sales made online, it also automatically keeps track of customers’ purchasing patterns.

Based upon this information, you can communicate with your contacts through email—and even through the website itself—with personalized and uniquely relevant offers and marketing messages.

Here is another example: Snaptags. MillerCoors Brewing Company is using snaptags to market its new craft beer, Colorado Native Lager, which will be marketed only in Colorado. MillerCoors hopes to build a loyal customer base that will recommend the product to others. The snaptags use mobile phones to capture information about the customer, and to communicate with them via text messaging.

How do snaptags work? Every Colorado Native label is affixed with a snaptag, which, if photographed on a mobile device and texted to a specified phone number, allows the brand to begin a conversation with its drinkers.

When the customer sends the photo, MillerCoors captures his/her phone number and sends a text reply requesting their birthday. If the customer says they're older than 21 (drinking-age legal), they'll be queried with Colorado-centric  trivia about their hobbies and interests, and the database will remember the answers and use them to craft future communications and offers to each individual drinker.

Depending on what each purchaser tells the brand, he/she could receive communications on outdoorsy activities such as hiking or skiing, Colorado sports trivia or notices about bar nights and special offers. It'll also inquire about their favorite local charities, which will receive 25¢ from each case sale.

MillerCoors plans to use only the snaptags and social media like Facebook to market Colorado Native Lager. The company hopes to seed the brand through word-of-mouth and to let consumers feel as if they "discovered" the beer for themselves, which encourages them to introduce friends to it.

With new technology like what is behind the Asenz360 platform and the mobile device technology that MillerCoors is using, businesses can make the promise of one-to-one marketing a reality. And, those are only two examples of what is now possible. That should be exciting for many businesses, large and small. For a consultation on how your business could benefit from one-to-one marketing techniques, give me a call or send me an email.

Posted by Janet Macdaniel on 2nd June, 2010 | Comments | Trackbacks
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