| Lesson 4 | One-to-one marketing |
| Objective | The power of personalization and portals. |
One-to-one Marketing
When a prospect walks into a retail store, the seller needs to have a plan. Do you pounce on the potential buyer with a hard-sell stance?
Do you let them wander the store because you do not want to annoy them? Probably both of these extremes are poor choices.
Personalization and Portals
In most scenarios, you want to watch the prospective buyer's behavior and engage them one-to-one with just the right touch and just the right
information. Simulating this selling technique is what personalization and portals are all about. Many first generation e-commerce sites do not offer personalization and portals because represent rather sophisticated approaches to e-commerce site building.
Cookies and Self-Profiling
When you personalize a site, you need to know who your customer prospect is. This is often done with cookies.
Another technique, however, that enables you to capture customer/prospect demographics is known as profiling.
Profiling means you ask a site visitor to identify themselves. You can encourage visitors to self-profile by offering free information, free products, or special membership access to a portion of the site, etc. If the visitor gets a benefit from identifying themselves, they will. When they profile, you may ask them to identify their address or a zip code, what they do for a living, how much money they make, how often they use the Web, etc. Each time thereafter you want to have the user identify themselves again, usually through a userid and/or password. In some cases, you can offer visitors a portal user interface (or portal view) after they profile themselves. The portal user interface enables them to control the content they will see, or at least the classes of content they will see, whenever they visit your site.
Another technique, however, that enables you to capture customer/prospect demographics is known as profiling.
Profiling means you ask a site visitor to identify themselves. You can encourage visitors to self-profile by offering free information, free products, or special membership access to a portion of the site, etc. If the visitor gets a benefit from identifying themselves, they will. When they profile, you may ask them to identify their address or a zip code, what they do for a living, how much money they make, how often they use the Web, etc. Each time thereafter you want to have the user identify themselves again, usually through a userid and/or password. In some cases, you can offer visitors a portal user interface (or portal view) after they profile themselves. The portal user interface enables them to control the content they will see, or at least the classes of content they will see, whenever they visit your site.
Tracking Behavior of your Customers
Once you know who your customer is, you need to track their behavior. What portions of your e-commerce site do they visit?
Which banner ads do they click on?
What products did they almost buy (backed out just before closing the purchase)?
Once you know the behavioral pattern of a particular user, you can create personalized content that will appeal to their tastes.
Which banner ads do they click on?
What products did they almost buy (backed out just before closing the purchase)?
Once you know the behavioral pattern of a particular user, you can create personalized content that will appeal to their tastes.
Advanced Digital Architectures
Involving Marketing
Portals and personalization require marketing involvement. Portals and personalization offer compelling content to drive a one-to-one marketing relationship. This task ultimately falls into the realm of marketing campaigns. Portals, personalization, and one-to-one marketing on the Web provide the marketer with the electronic means of creating leads and making offers, just like any other sales channel.
Ultimately, however, you should exhibit some care in e-commerce one-to-one marketing. Marketing should coordinate campaigns throughout all sales channels to prevent channel conflict and pricing inconsistencies.
Below is a SlideShow which discusses various forms of e-commerce advertising; which can be made part of an electronic campaign using portals and personalization.
Ultimately, however, you should exhibit some care in e-commerce one-to-one marketing. Marketing should coordinate campaigns throughout all sales channels to prevent channel conflict and pricing inconsistencies.
Below is a SlideShow which discusses various forms of e-commerce advertising; which can be made part of an electronic campaign using portals and personalization.
- Affiliate Marketing:A website may contain a link to your ecommerce site
- Many portals such as Yahoo offer storefront property. Companies can purchase Web real estate from a portal and use that space as a channel for their goods and services.
- Many portals offer web hosting where the portal provides a framework for a company's electronic storefront.
- Banner advertisements are ads that link to the advertising company's website.
- Banner ads can also advertise contests. In order to qualify for the prize, consumers must provide basic data such as name, address, household income,age, and marital status
Advertisers have discovered that contests help limit false information submitted by consumers; many who might submit false information to try a service are motivated to submit true data in case they win. In the next lesson, you will learn about e-procurement and supplier enablement.
The following paragraph discusses portals and personalization to build a customer base.
Portals and Personalization
- profiling: site visitors identify themselves by signing on for membership
- portal user interface: enables visitors to control exactly the content they will see
- tracking: monitoring a visitor's behavior on your Web site
- cookies: a technology used to gather information about site visitors
Business-to-Business (B-to-B)
The exchange of products, services or information between business entities.
According to market research studies published in early 2000, the money volume of B-to-B exceeds that of B-to-C by 10 to 1.
The Gartner Group estimates B-to-B revenue worldwide will be $7.29 trillion by 2004, a compound annual growth of about 41 per cent.
Web-based B-to-B includes:
- Direct selling and support to business (as in the case of Cisco where customers can buy and also get technical support, downloads, patches online).
- E-procurement (also known as industry portals) where a purchasing agentcan shop for supplies from vendors, request proposals, and, in some cases, bid to make a purchase at a desired price. For example the autoparts wholesaler (reliableautomotive.com); and the chemical B-to-B exchange (chemconnect.com).
- Information sites provide information about a particular industry for its companies and their employees. These include specialised search sites and trade and industry standards organisation sites. E.g. newmarket makers.com is a leading portal for B-to-B news.