The importance of 1-to-1 marketing is clear to everyone, but most companies are still at the beginning of the road towards it. This appears from our annual quick scan of Dutch companies with large customer databases.
These companies meet the basic requirement for 1-to-1 marketing because they have a lot of data available. But to then do good things with it is a big challenge because the data are not linked. In addition, it appears that the organizations surveyed have customer retention as their main priority with digital transformation at a distant second place. So most of the focus is on business as usual, but there is an awareness of the need to digitize products and services to better serve customers and make processes more efficient. The pressure to change is felt by a third of the organizations, with retailers, publishers and media companies in particular looking for new revenue models. It makes sense, too, because in more and more sectors, services and information are purely digital and that's where you have to make a difference. There are no physical components that you can use to strengthen your competitive position as is the case in retail, for example.
Challenges for marketers
We also zoomed in on the specific challenges for marketing in the survey. At one is marketing automation (48 percent), followed by customer retention (41 percent). Real-time availability of data/responding to customer behavior and getting more return/results with current marketing budgets (both 38 percent) are in shared third place. As such, real-time data is not important for every type of business. If you sell subscriptions, you don't need to know down to the second whether someone has entered into a transaction. But of course there are campaigns where you do need to react quickly, such as when a Web shop visitor leaves his shopping cart. If you ask a few days later if he is still interested in those products, you are often too late.
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E-mail remains most important means of communication
How do companies maintain contact with their (potential) customers? Email and social media are unchanged as the most important communication channels with 100 percent and 93 percent coverage, respectively. What is striking is that the "my environment" is on the rise. Also interesting is the fact that print still scores high as a communication tool (72 percent), probably due to its higher attention value compared to an email in the inbox. If your message is something to think about (becoming a donor, visiting a physical store) then direct mail can be a very good way to accomplish that.
But email marketing, as mentioned, dominates the communication mix. Bulk mailings remain a popular campaign form in this regard: 97 percent of companies surveyed use them. While the sending is automated, the timing is determined by the sender, not the available data. Where you want to go, of course, is for the behavior of the customer or lead to determine the message, channel and timing. Is someone threatening to drop out? Show a popup that highlights the free return or offers a discount. Then, of course, you need to know what trigger brings that person back on board. Twenty-eight percent are running these types of campaigns with predictive components.
