Comparing 1:1 Interactions Between Channels
One-to-One marketing (1:1 in this book) means considering each customer as an individual, and tracking their individual behaviors over time in order to serve their unique needs.
Ironically, this form of marketing is done by two kinds of businesses on opposite ends of the spectrum: A small offline business, such as a butcher, can feasible remember his customers' preferences and buying habits; and a large online business with the resources to maintain a large amount of data and implement rules-based marketing.
Also, one of the requirements of 1:1 marketing is an ongoing relationship with a customer that enables you to identity trends and patterns over time. It's not uncommon for sites to include "personalized" features that are based only on the last action taken - this is not one-to-one marketing, but is an event-based offer. The misuse of the term "personalization" is rampant online.
Online Interactions Following Offline Activity
A handful of examples are given for offline interactions that drive online activities: a person who has received a personalized offer offline (catalog, inline ad in a billing statement, etc.) will visit a Web site to follow up.
From a brand marketing perspective, a bad in-store experience can drive a flurry of word-of-mouth activities in blogs, as can a promotional event.
Similar to promotional codes, it may be possible to provide personal access codes (that identify the individual, not just the source) taht may be entered into a registration form, order for, or provided as URL-string information to identify the individual user.
Offline Interactions Following Online Activity
Ditto what was said in the notes from the last chapter regarding customers who research online to make a purchase offline. When offers are personalized, it becomes a bit more difficult: if the offer is truly personalized, it is not available to the general public, so the online user must provide some evidence of their identity at a brick-and-mortar outlet to take advantage of a promotional offer.
Another example given is the online "wish list" or gift registry, in which individuals tell others what gifts they would like to receive. This is a nice activity, probably not useful unless your firm does a lot of business selling items that will be given as gifts to others in instances where culture and propriety are tolerant of gift-grubbing.
Create a Multichannel Marketing Customer Profile
Since metrics measure the behaviors of masses of people, they are not applicable in 1:1 marketing - the focus instead is on the task of gathering data on individual behavior across all channels (this may later be aggregated for analysis, but that's a side effect).
To create a multichannel marketing profile, a firm must have a method for tracking contact with customers across all media. This is commonly done by the creation of "accounts" that enable (or require) the customer to identify themselves as individuals when making contact with the firm in any medium.
A multichannel profile can best be conceived as a table, in which the actions are listed in rows and the media are listed in columns, enabling the marketer to do in-dept analysis of the activities of a given customer in each of the media in which business is done with them.
It's also worth mentioning that one-to-one marketing is generally effective in businesses that get a large amount of business from a small number of customers (the top 10% of customers provides 75% of all revenue), and where tapping into these "gold" customers (or using the data collected to transmute others) can potentially have a significant effect on the bottom line.