One-to-One Marketing Thrives Online

Many of us love to go into our favorite little shop where we know the owners and the inventory. Whether it’s a boutique with just the right accessories or the small coffee shop with the best latte, it’s nice to enter a business where people know us and know what we like.

But as Bob Kemper points out in his Marketing Experiments blog, “One-to-One Marketing: The true promise of Dynamic Offer-Content Customization,” physical shops are not the only places that know your name and buying habits. Online Marketing companies collect information such as our names, addresses, likes and dislikes, and any number of trends from our online purchases.

While it may seem daunting giving so much of our information to online companies, is it any different than that tiny coffee shop?

It gives familiarity to a shopping experience when you sign on to a website like Amazon where they know who you are and have some recommendations of what you might like to buy; just like the boutique owner does.

This also can carry into email marketing. Sending an email directed to consumers’ interests and shopping patterns, shows that you know their preferences and want to cater to them on a personal level.

One-to-one marketing experiences may be few and far between in the local box store, but are alive and well in online marketing. This personalization can help direct new sales and assist in the continuation of getting to know customers’ tendencies, thereby allowing companies to better understand the future trends.