Personalized marketing is not only changing the way marketers communicate with customers, but it’s changing the consumer’s expectations of product and brand messages.  Consumers are no longer 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 important to collect, analyze and properly develop customer-centric messages from the data you collect.

To create personalized messages, your mailing list needs to be more than just a list of physical addresses or email addresses. It is necessary to include as much information as possible to enable you to segment your list into people with like-interests and purchasing habits.

Here are some of the components you should consider including in your databases:

• Track which services/products are used or purchased by each customer.
• Track how they make purchases — online, in-store, catalogue, etc.
• Track how often they contact customer service.
• Track how often they purchase.

Tracking which products they purchase allow you to make judgements as to what to offer them in the future that relates to the products they’ve purchased in the past.  Additionally, tracking how often, enables you to best judge when to send your personalized message to that particular portion of your target audience.  Furthermore, by tracking how they purchase, you’re able to best judge which communication method would be best to reach them.

Timothy Freeman
President
Print & Graphic Communications Association