In last week’s ‘thank you blog series’, during the episode of thanking people for their business, I briefly mentioned the topic of giving the customer a personalised marketing experience. Personalised marketing can be summed up as when a company aims to deliver individualised marketing material to suit the specific customer’s needs and requirements. These needs and requirements can be based on website behaviour (e.g. which parts and/or products on the website a customer visits tracked by cookies), data profiling and personal influence.
Amongst those who know what personalised marketing is, there is a common misconception that personalised marketing only works in a business to consumer environment. This is totally incorrect as buyers in a business to business environment are people too and are influenced exactly in the same manner as consumer buyers do. Ultimately there is a decision maker in every B2C and B2B purchase, personalised marketing material just need to be adjusted to that decision maker.
Before the Digital age, personalised marketing on a large scale was nigh on impossible, but now with the introduction of computers and the internet, everything is measurable. Through the data from customer buying habits and yearly spend combined with customer profiling, you can really narrow down what your customer is likely to buy and when they are going to buy it. For example you know that ‘
Customer X’ spends Y on buying items in Category Z during April every year. Using this information in February/March you can send an e-mail to Customer X, asking if they are due to place their order in April, as there have been some updates in Category Z which also work well with items in Categories A, B and C.
This communication not only encourages the customer to purchase from you by putting yourself in the forefront of their mind, but it also encourages them to spend more with your company by introducing them to product categories they may not have seen before. This example is just using three measurable factors, imagine how personalised you can make the buying experience with more identifiable information.
How does personalised marketing work with promotional products? This form of marketing is all about 
providing a customer experience that is unique to that person. As I mentioned in the thank you blog, we are seeing more and more of our manufacturing suppliers investing in machinery that can individually brand names. This trend is laregly down to people wanting to provide this personalised experience for the customer. The great thing a personalised product does is, it adds percieved value to the product. In the UK I specifically remember in my school years how cool it was to have stationary with your name on it, we don’t lose this feeling years later, products just seem to hold, if not a higher monetary value, a higher sentimental value when they have your name on them. Here at BTC Group we obviously love branding, but we definitely love to see branding in unique ways, a fantastic example of this are these amazingly designed personalised calendars. Calendars are always useful, no matter who you are or what job role you are in, organisation is key! Each page has an different design incorporating your name in some way.