1-to-1 targeted marketing is the dream of just about any sales and marketing organization. It is highly coveted and extremely difficult to attain to, especially if you have thousands or even millions of customers to serve.
However, there are some industries (or better stated companies within industries) that have come very close to reaching this nirvana. One company and industry that is often cited as a leader in 1-to-1 is Harrah's Casino in Las Vegas (or Harrah's worldwide), but other gaming companies have started to follow suit and are attempting to play catch up. At one of their casinos, a "guest" playing on the casino floor that is starting to lose consistently will at an opportune time be greeting by a casino staff member that will offer the guest show tickets, free dinners at a buffet or restaurant within the casino, or another valued commodity to avert the possibility of the guest having a negative experience (and potentially keep them at that facility). Implementing this 1-on-1 guest rewards program has been very successful for this and other gaming companies both in terms of customer satisfaction and ROI that they are considered models in the world of high-touch database-driven marketing. You may have heard the phrase "Vegas-Style" when referring to CRM database marketing before and this is one of the reasons why.
Given that I've worked at the company that supplied many of these companies with the underlying technology that drives this 1-to-1 CRM success, I am familiar with the keys to success in making an effort like this happen. While the ROI is significant; the effort, energy, and investment required to realize this dream is also extremely significant.
So what are the keys to success? Here are, at a very high level, a few required steps:
1.) Committing to create a single, 360-degree view of the customer: As long as the data that a company uses to drive decisions regarding customer interactions is disintegrated, there is no possibility of being able to market Vegas-style. There must be a single source for customer data that is strictly governed at a high level in the organization and is considered the single source of truth. This is important because whenever a customer interacts with you and this interaction isn't aligned with other interactions they have with your company, then that interaction cannot be factored into your relationship with the customer. In a case where customer data exists in multiple places in your organization, each group that interacts with the customer will have their own version of the truth, and those versions can conflict with one another. In that case, your company can look schizophrenic to your customer, which does not help your brand. Implementing an effective 1-to-1 strategy requires consistency and consistency requires accurate, complete, and well-governed data. In this world, giving data governance the appropriate attention, visibility, and authority is paramount to your success.
2.) Committing to marketing based on data-driven customer insights: The reason that Harrah's dual-active data warehouse understands when to alert the casino staff that a customer service professional is needed on the floor is twofold: First, Harrah's spent time reviewing the behavior of its guests from the casino data and knew with a certain degree of certainty when those "points of frustration" would occur and decided as an organization what the rules of engagement would be. They knew not just intuitively when to make an offer, they reviewed the data and knew exactly when to act. Second, they took the data analysis and decided as an organization what the rules of engagement would be based on insights. These rules were built into the database, along with a certain degree of flexibility to ensure that the personal touch would not be lost. However, the decision to act was decided, vetted, and justified prior to that high roller losing a quarter of a million on the slots and the show ticket giveway action put into effect.
The true value of data analysis is on the front end strategy development side of the marketing process. While it is valuable to analyze "what happened?" once a campaign has completed, it's value is not nearly as significant as the value of predicting "what should happen and how should we drive behavior based on our insights about the customer?" In fact, "what happened?" gains a lot more value when the strategy itself is based on rock solid data-driven insights. This creates a feedback loop where future campaigns can be refined and strengthened based on validated or perhaps invalidated insights and assumptions.
3.) Committing to align your organization around the roadmap: The "Vegas Style database," once the insights were analyzed, the customer data completely consolidated, and the rules of engagement decided upon, defined the going forward marching orders for interacting with the customer. This is not only key to developing consistent communication with the customer but it is paramount to strengthening the company's brand. A brand, being a "promise of value," is built over time when the customer's experience with you consistently matches up with their expectations of you. When these expectations are high and they are consistently met, then your value to them and their loyalty to you grows. To achieve this, everyone on the organization needs to be working from the same playbook, the same customer data, and the same M.O. - it's why the West Coast Offense won the San Francisco 49'ers four Super Bowls in the 80's and is why Harrah's consistently "wow's" it's visitors with it's guest service.
At the end of the day, 1-to-1 marketing is not technology-driven, even though it is technology-enabled. It is a strategic decision that requires investment in organizational alignment and cultural focus in addition to the technology. It is worth the effort, however, as people in the gaming industry will attest.
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