One to one marketing is a framework suggested by Don peppers and Martha Rogers. One to one marketing is also part of CRM marketing and is a smart way to acquire and maintain customer information in a consumer oriented companies. Generally one to one marketing can be used to increase overall customer satisfaction, customer loyalty as well as customer retention.
One to one marketing is also known as personalised marketing. In one to one marketing, the company tries to build variants of the product which targets a specific segment of the population. Thus this requires a high level of interaction between the company and the customer which is the base of one to one marketing.
There are four steps in the framework of one to one marketing.
1) Identify prospects and customers
The first thing which a marketer should do is that he should ensure he’s not targeting the mass market blindly unless and until the product is actually a mass market product. A company would be better off by targeting the population segment by segment. This helps you in staying strong in your core group and also expanding to other groups. Thus one to one marketing, wherein you are interacting with the customer, will help you identify your prospects as well as your future customers.
2) Differentiate customers on the basis of their needs and values to the company
Each company has a core group of customers giving them the maximum margins. By concentrating on this core group of customers, you are ensuring that the margins of the company remain high. The company needs to make sure that it is concentrating on both the existing customers as well as new customers at the same point of time. By giving value to both the groups you can expand your customer base.
Thus you are differentiating the customer based on his own value or their need. The customers who are being retained by your company are customers who value your product whereas the new customers who are coming in your company are customers who need your product. Thus you can differentiate customers based on their need or value.
3) Interact with individual customers
By interacting with individual customers you can improve your knowledge of them. This helps in building strong relations with the customer. A satisfied customers who has interacted with the company would also recommend the company or the product to his or her own friends. Furthermore by individually interacting with the customer you can also understand the customers unique requirements and thereby give customized offering for each segment of the customer. This is exactly what the next point is about.
4) Customize the product service and message to each customer
Nowadays if you look at banks then you would see that they have a large number of financial products. Each and every one of the financial products targets a different segment of customer. An insurance plan may target a father who is looking for insurance for himself, on the other hand a financial plan may target a senior citizen who has already retired. The message and the product for each and every type of these offerings is different. Thus these entities are customizing their message as well as the product to have a better one to one connect with their customers.
One to one marketing is not applicable to all companies but it is only applicable to companies which have a very large customer base. This is because one to one marketing requires a high investment in terms of the database which has to be stored. This investment comes in the form of server requirements, data maintenance and data warehousing costs.
One to one marketing can be especially useful in companies such as banks, retail chains, food chains and others. These are companies which actually have to prosper sell their own product and therefore they also have numerous product lines. The customers of these companies generally the by from the company itself or update the product regularly. Does in these companies one to one marketing can be imprinted in an excellent way.
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