Individualisation in marketing must be a priority

Alistair Blaxhill, executive director at Communisis, has considered the difference between personalisation and individualisation and how to get it right.

To most people, the use of the terms 'personalisation' and 'individualisation' in everyday use would mean much the same thing.

To a marketing director, however, these terms are used to describe two very distinct marketing techniques deployed to meet the increasing demand for more targeted communications.

Despite this, when it comes to personalisation and individualisation, organisations are still regularly failing to make the distinction between the two, and it's fair to say that in the UK, companies have generally only just got to grips with the former.

To clarify the distinction, personalisation is the process of tailoring certain aspects of a communication to an individual.

Personalised components of the communication often include things such as name, address or detailing a specific interest in products, services or activities.

'Individualisation' on the other hand is more advanced, and can best be summarised as the practice of creating communications that are driven by an individual's preferences.

This is made possible through a combination of insight, modelling and data analysis.

Right place, right time, right channel and right message - this is widely regarded as the Holy Grail for marketers, and yet it has been quoted so frequently that it is perhaps in danger of becoming meaningless.

The sentiment is undeniably sound, but organisations often still struggle to execute it effectively.

However, with advances in technology, targeting the right message through the right channel can become a reality for all businesses, and it doesn't have to be cost-prohibitive.

Document composition technology now enables marketers to make customer communications a more profitable process by ensuring that the content, irrespective of channel, is relevant to its recipients.

One reason why these developments are hugely important comes down to how much the internet has altered consumer expectations.

If they have a log-in for a particular site, they have now come to expect the site to 'know' them and their behaviour.

Sites such as Amazon have long been individualising the customer experience by pushing products at their customers that they think will be relevant to them based on previous purchases.

More recently, applications such as iGoogle have added to this tailored medium.

Numerous surveys have proved that organisations that get it right on the web generally receive higher customer satisfaction.

But this doesn't just have to be the domain of the internet, as it is relevant for all marketing disciplines.

Data is the keystone and must be used as the basis of the communication lifecycle, from delivery through to response handling.

This can be applied from fully customised statements and bills to on-demand marketing collateral and self-service web applications, through to individualised correspondence and proposals produced interactively by customer-facing employees.

The benefits of individualisation include better brand equity with highly customer-focused communications, improved customer satisfaction and increased cross-sell opportunities.

In the current economic climate, the premise of right place, time, channel and message takes on even greater importance, and it's clear that those organisations that place individualisation as a priority within all communications will emerge stronger in the eventual upturn than those that choose not to.

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