IN-DEPTH: Collection of information forms the marketing backbone of everything that has to be done for a brand

Published: 08 Jun 2010

IN-DEPTH: Collection of information forms the marketing backbone of everything that has to be done for a brand

The critical step to developing true one-to-one marketing communications is in organising, analysing and segmenting the database.

Many companies make the mistake of rushing through these strategic steps in order to implement the tactical portion of their marketing plan. This is a critical mistake. A one-to one marketing communications plan is a 360-degree examination of the customer: their intent, motivations, demographics and psychographics, geography, media consumption, as well as transactions.

The key to one-to one communications is developing true attitudinal segmentation methodology that ties into a segmented channel strategy that allows you to take advantage of ways consumers utilise content and make sure the content they receive is as relevant as possible.

“The key for executing effective one-to-one marketing is to understand what is uniquely important to each customer to enable messaging to be created that is timely, relevant and useful to them,” says Jim Hornthal, CEO, Triporati.

Hornthal spoke to EyeforTravel’s Ritesh Gupta about personalisation and customisation, collecting information from all the consumer touch points and other related issues. Excerpts:

Travel businesses continue to gather customer preferences and have been looking to provide improved personalised features for travellers. How do you assess such efforts?

No doubt this has been a growing trend, and an important investment that brands are making to better serve their most loyal customers while also working to differentiate themselves from competition on features other than cost. A lot of these efforts are focused online in gaining a deeper understanding of the plans that a user has already made, and then using that information to market travel enhancements, upgrades, or add-ons. Not enough has been done in understanding the primary motivations that drive the initial destination selection, which is an area where Triporati’s resources have been focused.

How should one go about developing true one-to-one marketing communications and customer experiences across a varied customer base?

The key for executing effective one-to-one marketing is to understand what is uniquely important to each customer to enable messaging to be created that is timely, relevant and useful to them. Any email campaign, or “TOP 10” list that gets sent to millions of people misses the boat. Mass marketing is yesterday's headline.

Each part of the on-going conversation between brands and consumers is built upon a deep understanding of an individual customer's goal and objective. Any given site is likely to just be one step in an overall travel planning experience. However, if a given online engagement provides for the efficient collection of useful, relevant information, a subsequent marketing conversation can logically follow-up on that initial visit in an attempt to serve the needs of that consumer before all of the purchase decisions have been made.

The first and most important step is the proper collation of data from all touchpoints and cleaning of the information. Once data is stored, rules set then with quality management, every communication that reaches the consumer (email, RSS, web etc.) should be individual to their personal history (browsing, purchase, opt in etc). Effectively implementing and managing is no mean feat and requires experience. What should one be wary of?

There is a delicate balance between customising too much, and customising too little. Finding that resonant tone of "you know me", without being "you're creeping me out" is one of the marketing challenges in this "open social" market place. A key objective should be to properly identify where the consumer will find value added through personalisation and customisation, and focus on an area where the existing brand has logical permission to operate.

It is surely the objective of every company to garner as much information from all consumer touch points, both online and offline. Has it really formed the back bone of customised communications strategy for all brand users?

The objective would be to garner as much useful information from relevant touch points where practical and economical. Data collection that cannot be mined can be an exercise in frustration.

Making use of data, garnering relevant information from analysis of that data, and then using that knowledge to take profitable actions is hard work. Leading brands understand this, and are working with many internal and external resources to refine this approach.

Last year an executive told me: Every page of the website in the future will effectively be individual to the user, a major move towards this, this year will be the release of TLD’s, companies that can afford and know how to effectively utilise this technology will undoubtedly be industry leaders. What do you make of such developments?

It depends on the degree and level of customisation. Not every page warrants customisation so the key is understanding what pages in a site can truly add huge value to a customer that it needs to be customized. Customising a page just to customise it may not even be noticed by the customer and may not even be valued while adding significant amounts of complexity and cost.

How do you assess the adoption of behaviour analytics at this stage?

It is important to not over-weigh real-time analytics at the expense of asynchronous communications and other aspects of the consumer conversation/dialog. A typical leisure travel booking incubates over time, from several weeks to several months. Research, planning, exploration and discovery are ingredients in this recipe. It would be a mistake to only look at the session that results in a booking and forget about the foreplay that went into that transaction. That would be like knowing to take the cake out of the oven after 20 minutes, but not knowing what went into the batter in the first place.

There are early signs that can be detected for a lot of vacation bookings 60-90 days prior to a booking. How suppliers react to that window of opportunity is critical to maximising the value of a given consumer relationship/conversation. Unless analytics include these important elements, they will only tell part of the story of what does and does not work.