Generic Personalization – Oxymoron or Marketing Dynamo?
When we think of personalization, our first instinct is probably to visualize things like “Dear Dave” or “Dave, we would welcome the opportunity to ….” Why do we use these kinds of techniques? Quite obviously, they put a personal touch into our communications and, as long as we don’t go overboard, they can be very effective.
Although application of this form of personalization will continue to grow in popularity, laser/digital printing can be expensive and you must also ensure that all substitution data fields are populated and that all substitution conditions have been accounted for (see blog post Being Creative with Variable Print).
If the goal is to put a personal touch into your communications, you might also consider generic inserts that are specifically tailored to the target groups on your marketing database. In this case you are not dependent on data substitutions, but you must be able to clearly identify the different groups that you plan to target.
Marketing opportunities usually exist within both your current customer base and with those that are not currently using your products or services. If launching a new product that should appeal to both groups, you could use different insert cards for each group. For example, let’s suppose that a fictitious company, Healthy Home Healthcare, carries an acetaminophen-based product called Myaminophen. Their database contains both consumers that are brand loyal and others who use different analgesics as their primary pain remedies. As the campaign will target each group, they have developed insert cards for those using competitive brands as well as those that are brand loyal.
Message for consumers using competitive brands
New Myaminophen All-Day provides effective pain relief from dawn to dusk and lets you get on with your day. Although you might not presently be using Myaminophen for pain relief, we invite you try the enclosed samples the next time pain sets in and enjoy the quick relief that Myaminophen can bring!
Message for consumers that are brand loyal
As a user of Myaminophen, we invite you to try our new Myaminophen All-Day that provides effective pain relief from dawn to dusk and lets you get on with your day. Like all Myaminophen products you have used, you can trust Myaminophen All-Day to bring quick relief when pain sets in!
Each of these messages adds a subtle, but personal touch and communicates with the consumer at the appropriate level. There is no personalization like “Dear Dave”, and they are generic in appearance, yet they are personalized insofar as the pointed messages that they communicate to the consumers within each group.
Like all forms of personalization, this technique does require enough sophistication within the database to enable us to segregate record streams by groups and communicate at the appropriate levels. In a mass mailing situation, there can be some splitting and merging of streams to maximize geographic concentrations and maintain preferred postage rates. However, the associated costs are usually far less than what you would pay for personalization using name substitutions.
So, as we can see, “generic personalization” is not an oxymoron at all, but actually a marketing tool that can add some subtle and insightful communication to a marketing campaign.
As always, if there are any questions, please do not hesitate to contact us here at Highland Marketing.
