Getting Personal

Personalisation is one of the “in” topics in marketing. People are fed up of junk mail and expect anything they receive to be not only relevant to them, but also focused directly upon them.

Addressing people by their name is the bare minimum when it comes to any direct marketing. How likely am I to open an envelope that says “To the Homeowner” on the front? It’s not difficult to find out my name for goodness’ sake, so to me it just says that whoever is sending it (and they seem to send me something most days) just couldn’t care less about me.

However, excluding Wecouldn’tgiveamonkeys Ltd., most businesses are now looking further than getting your name right. Once you know the person, you then have to make sure that what you send is relevant to them. Not only does this mean that the recipient isn’t infuriated by unsolicited, untargeted correspondence, but it also means that you as a business save money by only sending things to the right people. If you were selling yachts, would you send your glossy £5 brochure to all and sundry?

These days though, addressed and targeted still isn’t enough. Customers want it to be really personal. A few days ago I received two examples of this – one of which made me wonder “Why did they bother?” and the other which made me think “Wow!”

Viking Direct – the stationery people – send me a catalogue about once a month. It really can’t be worth their while because all I have ever bought off them was one ream of paper, and that was over the web. Think about it guys – you can save money here by not sending me a catalogue. I’m an occasional purchaser and 100% of the time I’ve used the web. That ream of paper must have cost way less than the catalogues propping up my desk.

However, Viking have decided to make me feel special by personalising my catalogue. In big red letters it says “Simon Brandon” on the front. Why? Is it so that I can stop people stealing it? That to me is personalisation without purpose. It ranks alongside one of my Room 101 contenders – TV screens in hotels that say “Welcome Mr Brandon.” It makes me feel so valued…

The other piece of direct mail which I received was, in my opinion, the best piece of marketing material I have ever seen. It was from Yell.com and not only told me a convincing story but was also completely personalised to me. The purpose of the mailshot was to get me to buy a weblink from Yell.com, but rather than telling me how everybody gets several thousand views per day, it told me how many people in my category get in my local area. It was a shame really because it spoilt my usual claim that Yellow Pages is all very well for a plumber but not for a marketer…

Below are three of the pages in the story that unfolds from the cleverly made mailer:

Yell.com have used personalisation to prove to me that what they are selling makes sense, and they did it in such a way that each new page I opened was designed to lead me further down their personalised path. This is how personalisation should be…getting personal with something in mind!

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