Giving me a fudge cake with chocolate frosting on my birthday because you know that’s my favorite is “Personalization”. But writing my nickname The Matt Man in strawberry gel on top of the cake is “Identification”. Personalization and identification are often used interchangeably, but actually identification is a subset of personalization in sales and marketing and we should understand their differences.
I previously wrote about Transformania’s innovative DearMe™ features which allow you to automatically take CRM personalization and identification to exciting new levels of detail and control. Creating personalized salutations and content is now at your fingertips, including the power to suggest common nicknames, pull accurate data from standard email addresses, and recognize familiar professional designations with ease.
This fantastic tool lets you build personalized messages that correctly identify your customer, user, or member. You can both send a personalized email about chocolate cake because you know they love that, and you can also correctly identify them with the greeting “Hi Bob” because you know they prefer “Bob” rather than “Bobby” or “Robert”.
With this power to personalize email marketing in ways never seen before comes the need to reimagine your CRM and how it can work for your business. Your CRM is transformed from a familiar, often under-utilized, operational tool to an innovatively strategic and analytical asset that creates impactful return on investment by:
- Automating the acquisition of client data in support of personalized content
- Enhancing the identification, storage, derivation, processing, and reporting of client-related data
- Optimizing the intelligent and strategic use of high-quality, client-related data to support all aspects of client service, sales, and marketing
- Integration of personalization technology across an organizational infrastructure to generate consistent customer experience (CX) and value.
Competitive advantage comes from shifting from traditional mass marketing and customer segmentation towards a personalized, one-to-one marketing strategy. Think of it as achieving one-on-one marketing through mass customization of your CRM. Consequently, the power to personalize and the ability to engage data quickly, accurately, and seamlessly is shown to be essential to:
- Increasing market efficiency and sales conversion, both digital and traditional
- Creating streamlined and intuitive workflows
- Increasing client retention and loyalty
- Enhancing client satisfaction, branding
- Creating and managing market personas.
Email identification should no longer be considered a feature of a business but as a key business strategy. Significantly, it is reimagining personalization as a strategy that drives a company’s commitment to digital and online marketing (including email marketing) as well as strategic marketing management.
Email marketing has several primary objectives, including building client loyalty, trust, and brand awareness. But the reality is that over 50% of recipients delete an obvious marketing email within two seconds of opening it while, in strategically executed campaigns, over 75% of recipients read the entire message. Sending emails is simply not enough; sending emails strategically and with a deeper understanding of who your clients are is the new standard for businesses in every industry sector.
Research shows repeatedly that the content delivered in highly relevant and strategically personalized email marketing is one of the most effective marketing tools available. It is also the third most influential information source for business-to-business (B2B) audiences, along with personal recommendations and industry thought leaders. Tellingly, the research is clear: the more strategically personalized an email is (the use of familiar names, for instance), the more relevant the email will seem to readers, the more likely it will be opened, and the more likely it will generate a unique click through.
The day of the one-size-fits-all email campaign has long passed. Approaching your CRM as a newly imagined strategic tool is the new business normal. And CRMs reimagined as powerful strategic assets underscores the power of Transformania’s DearMe™ personalization and identification technology and dozens of other data enhancement features are the future of CRM strategy.
