e-Connect With Your Customers

Web marketing is akin to jumping from a parachute. If it does not open, you are dead. Cannot jump again!

It is crucial to get your web presence and internet marketing strategy right, the first time. Today's customers are demanding. They are mature and expect to get what they deserve, they demand relevancy. If what you're trying to communicate doesn't connect with them and their issues in a split second, you've lost them. You get less than 6 seconds to create that first impression. Competition is only a click away! Knowing who your customers are and what they need is a requirement to compete in today's competitive online world.

Anticipating what they want and providing value at the right time, place and format is what is needed to win. What distinguishes online marketing from various forms of database marketing is the incredible wealth of data and the velocity at which everything moves. Consequently, businesses that are able to successfully measure, segment and digest thousands or even millions of customer transactions in a fast and efficient way will realize significant competitive advantage.

The proper use of customer information and segments will benefit customers too. Customers should perceive the information and offers they receive from you as a benefit (if it's relevant) of having a relationship with your company.

For a start you need to reward every click.

How do you touch a customer's life through segmentation and a database? There are many ways, some of them so simple that we may overlook them. For example, some sites will greet me by name and more importantly provide recommendations based on previous selections and tracking behavior patterns. Personalization is nice, but recommendations are more valuable. A good benefit is to offer an introductory discount or money back guarantee.

What also works is anticipatory marketing. Reaching out to subscribers on important occasions and personal milestones is known to work well on the web. The Grand Hyatt Dubai is a good example of offering valuable F&B propositions to members of their loyalty program. Relationship marketing works on the web.

As online marketers, we often think of optimizing our marketing investment simply in terms of yielding the highest results such as sales, orders, or some other success metric to the lowest common denominator of everyone on the planet, thus gaining the biggest possible results. Over the last few years-we've pushed every single ad, message, promotion, and new site design we can think of to the entire world and we treat every person as though they are the same person.

Remember, every human is unique and has to be treated uniquely.