Who controls personalized Customer communication?

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Marketers believe that creating “personalized communication” is important to drive a relevant communication strategy. But often they do not have control over the personalization process. Often very shoddy and “very personal” communication gets sent out by local sales folk which does nothing to enhance the brand perception and even less to the effectiveness of the communication. In a bank ,the billing process is possibly as “personal as it can get” but rarely would you find anything but mass communication tumbling out of your credit card bill envelopes. A lot of this is to do with the economics-mass offset printing is still far more economical than any form of personalized digital printing! Imagine the amount of truly relevant information that can be sent to me as a credit card customer because the bank knows my usage so intimately.

But this rarely happens and this is what we at Cequity call “lazy marketing”.

A new study, called ‘The Power of Personalization’, by the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) Council brings the discussion on personalization back to reality. It focuses on the products, benefit and relevance of customized content and communication which should make marketers rethinking their marketing activities. The study surveyed over 700 senior executives ranging from CEO, CMO, SVP, and VPs of Marketing from across different market sectors.

Short summary on some important findings (by en-ovationblog)

- Over 56% of marketers content that personalized communications out-perform traditional mass-market delivery; digital, database-driven channels offer the most upside potential for engaging in customized communications.

- Chief marketing executives are seen as the primary owners of personalized marketing initiatives. However, sales and customer relationship management groups most frequently maintain control of the data that provides the foundation for these campaigns.

- While many marketers are still working at tracking the overall effectiveness and ROI of personalized communications, almost 40% say they are generating either “extremely effective and measurable ROI” or “better response rates than other programs.”

- Individualized letters and email are the most common form of personalized communication.

- Conversion and close rates are the primary measure of success, followed by email actioning, website traffic/page views, and impact on retention and churn.

The executive summary of ‘The Power of Personalization’ can be downloaded here.