Only a few years ago most marketers thought true one-to-one marketing (1:1) was an impossible dream.
Marketers all talked about making the right offer to the right customer at the right time (the three “rights”), but ‘spray and pray’ campaigns in which each recipient got the same communication, were closer to having at least two “wrongs”. Customers have different needs, so what might have been the right offer or time for one customer was likely the wrong offer or wrong time for another.
What was possible was segmentation, a big step forward. Marketers divided the customer population into addressable segments. For consumers (B2C), the segmentation was often based on demographics. For businesses (B2B), firmographics such as SIC code or company size were the criteria. Some more sophisticated companies used behavioral metrics such as RFM to segment their customer population. The results were almost always better than spray and pray.
Segmentation is a relatively early step in the evolution of direct marketing…DOWNLOAD TO READ MORE