Yo!
True luxury is an experience that anticipates what you would like and delivers it without being asked. And can fulfill your slightest whim of customization. And before you think that it involves demanding a bath in champagne, hand-delivered organic popcorn or a Cinderella carriage for your darling 10 year-old, it could be creating a unique mix of masala or offering you a special length of sleeve on a shirt. With changes in manufacturing and marketing it is possible in many categories to customize an offering for niche groups. But of course, every customer is unique and wants to be recognized as such. And some attributes vary with mood, time of day, past purchase history so the customization that worked one day won’t work the next. As a participant at our recent CMO Roundtable co-hosted with NetCORE pointed out, the day after we buy a washing machine we are a different person from the day before, with new needs. For example, going back to that customer with a better offer is likely to be received very badly now that the transaction is done.
So what customers want is that marketers track them (in a non-creepy, non-intrusive, legal way) in real-time and make relevant, contextual offers in the appropriate media. As consumers we all know that you are more likely to be presented with ads for discounted toilet paper just when your boss is using your laptop for her presentation. Why does this happen? We’ve been exploring the topic of personalization across our recent webinars, tweetchats and CMO Roundtables and distilling the wisdom from the thought leaders who participated, here’s what marketers need to do to make this a reality – (a) remove the silos – customer data should be available to everyone who deals with them (b) data has to be real-time (c) automation is fine, but not automatic – there has to be intelligence in the algorithm (d) make the communication and the product contextual Sounds easy, but as another participant emphasized, it’s really hard for any company that’s older than a couple of years to do this because of all the legacy systems and processes.
If you’d like to taste a little bit of what these sessions were about you can see the Storify version of the Tweetchat here, recording of the webinar,Deck that was used and a short note on the CMO Roundtable and photos.
I’m heading out to catch some sun, and here’s wishing you a bright weekend!
The post It’s For You. And Like,er, a 1000 Like You appeared first on Paul Writer.