One-to-one Marketing: How to Personalize your Strategy

A 1-to-1 marketing strategy can help you generate more revenue from your existing customer base by improving conversion rates, profitability and ROI. After all, intensive business development brings better results and requires less costs than extensive expansion. 

Today we will tell you more about this methodology, give step-by-step instructions on its implementation, present examples of successful cases and draw conclusions about the benefits of personalization of advertising appeals. 

One-to-one Marketing Definition

One-to-one marketing is a strategy in which a company addresses a specific consumer directly rather than the entire target audience. This approach helps to form a trusting relationship. It increases loyalty by increasing both the frequency of purchases and the average check amount. 

According to many experts, the one-to-one marketing definition is the narrowest segmentation of the customer base. Ideally, the segment should include just one customer — hence the name of the strategy. Naturally, such a result can only be achieved with the help of modern technology.

Another answer to the question of what one-to-one marketing is can be maximum personalization of advertising appeals and customization of the website content. To achieve the desired result, it is necessary to form a unique page for each visitor, taking into account demographic and social characteristics, history of interaction with the web resource, intentions and aspirations. Once again, we are talking about the application of modern technologies, with a special emphasis on the implementation of artificial intelligence. 

Benefits of 1-to-1 Marketing

The main advantage of implementing such a strategy is the ability to speak the same language with a customer. Business becomes closer to consumers — it is no longer a headless corporation created to generate profit, but a friend who can recommend a useful product to improve the quality of life. One-to-one marketing builds trust and loyalty. In its turn, it provides significant benefits, which we'll talk about in more detail. 

Improved financial results

Loyalty means repeat purchases. Customers are motivated to contact the same company again and again. They may look at other products next time, which will increase the amount of the check. In addition, loyal customers often recommend their favorite products and services to people they know, expanding the company's customer base. 

Optimizing the product matrix

Successful implementation of a one-to-one marketing strategy allows for a better understanding of the target audience members. As a result, a company can improve its products by making them more attractive to its target audience.

Marketing budget optimization

Personalizing ad appeals significantly increases conversion rates. Even if the cost per appeal increases, the overall marketing ROI improves. As a result, a company can reduce costs while maintaining a constant target audience size or seriously increase market coverage through additional funding. 

Examples of One-to-One Marketing

Strictly speaking, such a strategy cannot be called new. Sellers have been using it since time immemorial. Employees of stores, restaurants and other businesses often remember regular customers and their preferences. This allows them to establish trusting relationships and create a loyal customer base. If we look closer at larger examples of one-to-one marketing, we can think of a few famous brands. 

Netflix

The largest streaming service in the world relies on maximum personalization of content. Its application studies every detail of the user's behavior, including the history of watching trailers, the speed of page turning and the number of shows watched to the end. This allows the service to tailor recommendations for each user. 

It is personalization that has made the company the market leader. According to its representatives, individual recommendations account for 80% of views. The introduction of a one-to-one marketing strategy has increased the company's revenue by $1 billion a year.

Spotify

Another streaming service — this time a music service. A successful example of one-to-one marketing was the introduction of the Spotify Discovery algorithm. Focusing on existing playlists and listening history, it suggests interesting tracks that a particular user might like. The application of artificial intelligence makes such recommendations as effective as possible. 

Surveys show that more than 70% of users of the service regularly use the Discovery function. But its usefulness is not limited to increasing the loyalty of listeners. The algorithm also attracts the attention of young artists, making Spotify an ideal platform for promoting new talents.

Sephora

The chain of cosmetics stores developed a unique loyalty program. All customers who agree to fill out the questionnaire can become its participants. At the very start they get discounts, bonus points and even pleasant birthday presents. But real personalization starts when an amount of purchases exceeds a certain threshold. A consumer becomes an "insider". He or she receives personalized recommendations, learns about new products of popular brands before anyone else and can attend exclusive events. 

This approach demonstrates maximum trust. It makes a client a member of a closed group, minimizing the likelihood of choosing another retail chain.

5 Steps to Create Effective One-to-One Marketing Strategy

If you want your business to expand and grow easily, automate your one-to-one lead generation process as much as possible. This means you'll need a software base to implement a one-to-one marketing strategy. We tell you what tasks it will solve. 

Step 1. Identify customers

It's important to create a portrait of your typical customer. Who is your customer — a hipster in $1200 sneakers, a modest school teacher, an experienced tourist or a successful businessman? The following techniques can be used to determine characteristics of your customers:

• studying the product — its features, price category, positioning, etc.;
• conducting surveys and focus groups as part of a comprehensive marketing study;
• collecting information with the help of modern cloud CRM.

The last option is especially important for a one-to-one marketing strategy. Most CRMs can be linked with other applications to fully automate the process of creation of advertising appeals. 

One of the most successful tools in such a case is Claspo. This tool allows you to generate pop-ups with customized offers. You can add recommended products, personalized discounts, bonuses, and more.

Step 2. Create a database

Information is the key to success in any business. You must continuously study your customers throughout the history of your interactions. You will be interested in the smallest details:

• time spent on the website;
• products viewed;
• preferred communication methods;
• interests and hobbies;
• speed of adding products to the cart, etc. 

The database can contain both quantitative and qualitative characteristics that describe what cannot be expressed in numbers: belonging to a certain social group, favorite color of clothes, etc. Application of artificial intelligence and computerized learning techniques helps to determine the influence of each characteristic on a user behavior and to form an effective advertising appeal. 

Step 3. Keeping in touch

A purchase is not the end of a customer lifecycle, but the beginning. Therefore, the next step of one-to-one marketing is to continue interacting with a consumer. You need to remind him or her of yourself and encourage repeat conversions. And it is very important to do it correctly, following the below recommendations:

• choose the best communication way — email, push messages, SMS or newsletters in messengers;
• determine the ideal frequency of communication — advertising should not irritate a user;
• test different types of messages — reminders, personalized recommendations, newsletters, etc.

Being in touch with your customer for a long period of time brings lots of benefits. The obvious ones are reminding them of your company's existence and maintaining loyalty. The non-obvious ones are the ability to update information and collect additional data. Customer characteristics are dynamic and tend to change over time, which affects marketing effectiveness. 

Step 4. Segmentation

The ideal for one-to-one marketing is a minimum segment size. By personally addressing each customer, you maximize your impact. But in reality, dividing your target audience into such single segments is very difficult, especially at the very beginning. It is much better to start with aggregated segmentation:

• demographic;
• social;
• economic;
• behavioral;
• psychographic. 

Even such enlarged segments will significantly increase the effectiveness of advertising appeals at the early stage. But you should not stop there. Your task is to split large groups into small clusters. Experiment with different characteristics, test hypotheses, study competitors' strategies and keep moving forward!

Step 5. Improvement of customer’s experience

All of the above one-to-one marketing techniques allow you to personalize your sales funnel — from brand introduction to transaction completion. Your goal is to make the offer as compelling as possible and remove any barriers to conversion. To do this, you should use the right software that allows you to:

• personalize text and multimedia elements of landing pages;
• create pop-ups to attract attention and retain customers — Claspo will help you with this. It is a convenient service for creating widgets without programming;
• add personalized recommendation widgets;
• inform about recent conversions.

Remember that the system will work effectively only if there is a high degree of automation. Your CRM should collect information about customers and fill the database, which, in turn, will help to segment the target audience, choose the appropriate scenario and form an advertising appeal. Thus, the success of implementing a new marketing strategy will largely depend on the right selection of tools. 

1-to-1 marketing: what Claspo can do for you

Claspo is perfect for personalizing advertising appeals. The tool can be easily connected to most existing CRM and website content management systems. The high degree of integration allows you to select the right customer characteristics from the database to generate customized offers for each user. 

You can even use Claspo with zero programming skills. The tool offers a visual widget builder — just drag and drop the desired elements onto the screen and fill in the text fields to create pop-ups. 

Try Claspo for free to see a real boost in conversions and increased customer loyalty. Choose the perfect subscription for your business from a wide range of plans.