The more personalized a brand’s message is, the more likely it is to convert prospective customers into spending consumers.  Personalized messages can be sent to a customer’s email inbox or their mail box and the more targeted your message is the more likely it is that your customer will click through, follow up or respond to a call to action.

Personalized marketing is not only changing the way marketers communicate with customers, but it’s changing a consumer’s expectations of product and brand messages.  No longer are consumers satisfied with generic, mass messages that may or may not pertain to their interests – they expect brands to conform to their needs.  Because of this, every touch point you have with your customer is extremely valuable and it is also very important to collect, analyze and properly develop customer-centric messages from the data you collect.

How can you achieve such targeted and effective marketing?  You need to maintain and update your database.  Using an analytical platform that can collect and store customer information so you are able to analyze and sort your data.  By segmenting your database you are able to create personalized messages based on consumer’s buying habits and interests.

The next step before sending out a personalized message is to create a mail piece using Variable Data Printing. VDP enables your brand to print individualized and unique messages in one print run.

How do you use databases to produce customer-centric messages?

Timothy Freeman

President

Print & Graphic Communications Association