Information OverloadWith information overload rapidly killing traditional forms of online advertising - today 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 larger company with a diverse product range 'all things to all men' approach to advertising is becoming less and less effective.
Monthly newsletters may have worked in past but with online marketing juggernaut churning out newsletters after newsletter along with countless other marketing material newsletter is loosing its punch.
With over zealous spam filters and 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 subscriber would look to see why; how confident can anyone be that subscriber would even notice?
For larger supplier who has a diverse product range websites and newsletter has to become 'intelligent' and move away from 'these are answers to everyone's problems' and develop individually customised websites and newsletters that says 'these are 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 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 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 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 most relevant story first, a simple step that could make difference between a potential consumer dismissing, or reading, what has been sent.