One-to-One Marketing: If you could, would you?

The concept of one-to-one marketing has been described and predicted for nearly 30 years. The idea being that as databases, containing information on prospects’ needs, habits, likes and dislikes, continue to grow, retailers should be using this data to fashion highly personalized offers.

While many of the major retailers have made good strides, main stream success has remained elusive—especially for financial institutions. Most continue to seek a fool-proof way to automate the process of zeroing in on the “next best product” to offer their customers.

As a result, millions of dollars are being spent annually to gather and mine data on existing customers in hopes of identifying “cross-selling” opportunities based on “calculated” needs.

MCIF approach misses the mark
Today, the focus of much of these mining efforts is to create ”campaigns” where offers are made through a range of media (i.e. newspapers, billboards, radio, TV and the Web); and, groups of customers or prospects in a geographical area are targeted for a specific product.

To launch and manage these marketing campaigns institutions invest in MCIF technology as a basic way to provide a structure for managing (one size fits all) campaign activities. But, this approach is outdated, and a poor use of limited corporate resources. This is especially true as channel investments continue at a rapid pace with a second generation of internet banking, mobile banking and the use of social media; not to mention the sales training investments for branch and call center staff over the past 5 years.

Enable front-line staff to close business
The opportunity exists right now to change this practice. It’s time to stop launching global campaigns and instead, fashion personalized offers that are delivered to customers and prospects through your existing channels. Don’t make any more expensive media placements! Enable your frontline staff to deliver offers and close business on the spot or effortlessly (automatically) refer customers to an appropriate representative for closure.

How? It’s all about the unification of delivery channels…because unification allows for true integration of your sales and marketing programs and the ability to learn more about the customer, directly from the customer! Beginning with the earliest new account activity and building with “on-boarding” campaigns and subsequent interactions with the customer, you can capture insights into their real-life needs and product interests—rather than “calculated” values essentially spit out by an MCIF system. 

Reel customers in via their channel(s) of choice
Just imagine…your front-line staff and self-service channels can actually ask a customer about their needs, lifestyle factors and interests and then log this information into a centralized contact history database. In this scenario, the customer’s channel of choice also becomes part of the equation where you can interact with them when and how it best suits them—whether in a branch, on the phone, through the web or via mobile device.