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Relevancy - the new black for online marketing?   

by: Martin Day

Information Overload

With information overload rapidly killing traditional forms of online advertising - today the key to effective marketing is relevancy.

Smaller businesses with a niche or limited product range are more often than not focused by default but for the larger company with a diverse product range the 'all things to all men' approach to advertising is becoming less and less effective.

Monthly newsletters may have worked in the past but with the online marketing juggernaut churning out newsletters after newsletter along with countless other marketing material the newsletter is loosing its punch.

With over zealous spam filters and the sheer weight of marketing material it is not enough that a newsletter is well written and well presented it has to be wanted, and to be wanted it has to be relevant.

How confident can a newsletter editor be that if a subscriber did not receive their regular copy that the subscriber would look to see why; how confident can anyone be that the subscriber would even notice?

For the larger supplier who has a diverse product range the websites and newsletter has to become 'intelligent' and move away from the 'these are the answers to everyone's problems' and develop the individually customised websites and newsletters that says 'these are the answers to your specific needs'.

Adding intelligence

To achieve high relevancy companies need to be able to accurately profile their customers and likely to be at the heart of a high relevancy marketing initiative will be a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) database.

Along with demographic and personal information such as location, age and gender a good CRM database will also store the customer's lifestyle preferences and build up an individual picture of each customer's likes and dislikes.

Amazon is one such company that has led the way with website relevancy and with their 'one stop' shopping philosophy and vast range of stock it is easy to see why it makes sense for them to highlight to each individual consumer what products may be of greatest interest.

Amazon do this by greeting their returning registered users by name and offering recommendations based on previous purchases and profile information that can be further fine tuned by each customer.

A company that builds an effective CRM database with accurate and current information is in a position to develop both on and off line precision marketing.

With good CRM information newsletters can be delivered with the most relevant story first, a simple step that could make the difference between a potential consumer dismissing, or reading, what has been sent.

How to achieve accurate and effective CRM information

The CRM database is a pool of information and the first task for any company wishing to take the CRM approach is to populate the CRM database with quality information. The most obvious starting point is existing customers and the information that has already been collated such as any existing inquiry and ordering processes.

However, although useful ordering and inquiry processes will not on their own fully profile the existing customer and nor will they profile the potential customer.

A good, cost effective method of populating a CRM database is to conduct online surveys and questionnaires where demographic and personal information can be gathered along with lifestyle and general profiling information.

A small incentive may be required to ensure a good response but companies need to take advantage of the human trait where many people are willing to express an opinion. Online surveys can be targeted at the existing customer in the form of customer satisfaction and product evaluation surveys as well as the potential customer in the form of market research, advertising and general promotion.

Using to days breed of online survey websites such as www.surveygalaxy.com anyone can now generated online surveys on the fly, they are easily adaptable and can be used to react quickly to shifts in the market. Online surveys offer an effect non-passive marketing channel, quite unlike any other form of advertising, where the survey mentally engages the consumer.

Using an online survey websites such as www.surveygalaxy.com where the gathered survey information is stored in a database it is a simple task to upload the relevant information into the CRM database.

If the CRM database is the queen bee of any precision targeted marketing campaign then the online survey represents the worker bee, gathering information and delivering the message.

With good CRM information companies are able to reduce their costs by not wasting time sending information to people who have no interest in their product. By keeping their powder dry for when they do have something that a particular consumer will find useful and of interest they will be able to maximise their marketing resource and develop better communication with the consumer.

When it comes to marketing relevancy is undoubtedly the new black.

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