As marketers we are all looking to reach “nirvana”: target the right person with the right message, at the right time. Its the clear path to driving conversion rates that exceed expectations. The days of blasting promotional messages to all, or at the very least, many are dead and gone. The conversation has changed. We must put ourselves in the customers’ shoes and target them individually as best we can through data driven strategies.

The data driven marketing concept is no longer a myth or impossible to put into practice. The fact is that excuses like resource constraints, budgets, and lack of data are just that – weak excuses. There are ways to quickly and effectively harness customer and prospect information you most likely already have on hand. Here are five ways to get this done in rapid fashion.

Step 1 – Make a list. If you are a multi channel marketer there is no doubt a lot of customer data floating around in silo databases (like Email, POS, and Web Analytics). It continues to amaze me how many marketers don’t know where their customer data is being stored and how to get to it. Do some digging and make a list. Dust off your old copy of your preferred flow charting software to document the current state of your data flows. This “state-of-the-state” view will allow you to identify integration points moving forward.

Step 2 – Build an alliance with your IT folks and marketing technology vendors. Marketing and technology now go hand in hand, with many organizations and marketing parties logging into multiple interfaces daily to execute campaigns and track results (Email, Web Analytics, E-commerce, etc). Technology vendor account managers are incentivized to grow your business, so leverage them in this manner as much as possible. Run ideas by them, ask for advice, understand the pricing associated with integrations, and inquire about what their other customers are doing. Internally, your IT folks should also be your partners in crime, and misjudged to be your enemy; they will no doubt play an integral role in the data and technology integration process. Together, you will identify opportunities, prioritize, and build out a strategic roadmap with common goals in mind.

Step three – Identify relevant customer data points. Look for standard customer data points, such as customer ID’s, purchase history, and order value within your available sources that will allow you to build rich customer profiles for target marketing. Doing so will also mean that your IT team will give you less push back if you only need to ask for basic customer information. The goal here is to find the data points that will allow you to target customers with content and offers that are relevant to them as an individual based on the preference and purchase information you have on them.

Step four – Pilot with email. Email marketing continues to drive the most return on investment versus any other marketing channel in the online marketing portfolio. Such campaigns provide an incredibly flexible medium to leverage for data driven campaigns. Nearly all the best of breed service providers include API (Application Programming Interface) solutions for data/technology integrations and dynamic content engines that will allow you to populate emails with targeted content and offers. Pick a population of your customer and prospect databases to do a split test. Target your test group with a data driven campaign and the rest with your standard messaging.

Step five – Implement a test and learn methodology. Set some realistic goals as you pilot your initial data- driven campaigns. A couple of small wins will give you the insight you need to expand your strategy to include additional integrations (web analytics, e-commerce, social media, SMS, etc). Over time this incremental approach will allow you to become a rock star one-to-one marketer.

The common theme to all these steps is in their common-sense simplicity. If marketers can take a few moments to put these steps in motion, their productivity and ROI could skyrocket. It’s really more of a question as to whether an organization can afford NOT to leverage their existing customer data to realize higher conversion rate and sales. Otherwise, companies will leave money on the table without even knowing it.

On May 6th, Red Door hosted a panel discussion on Customer Lifetime Value that included a number of industry experts.

Red Door Interactive President, Reid Carr started the session with a quick introduction of the panel and the topic at hand. He pointed out that acquisition and conversion strategies often dominate the focus of Web marketers at the expense of retention and extension strategies. This leads to a lost opportunity for engaging with your customers and creating long-term value instead of one-off conversions.

At that point, the panel discussion kicked-off with speakers, Rick Enrico of Juice Media, Susan Tull of BlueHornet, and Katelyn Himes of La Quinta Hotels. Instead of providing a transcript of the entire session question-by-question, I’ll just summarize the main points made by each individual during the Q&A.

Rick Enrico proclaimed that the future of marketing lies in automated one-to-one communication with customers through multiple touch points. By leveraging data from marketing channels such as mobile, social, search, and email; companies can segment their users by behavior/interaction/analytics and then generate content that is hyper-relevant to each segment. Companies should use segmentation and relevancy to replace “batch and blast” in their marketing communications. Moreover, companies should move towards a pull marketing strategy in which they give customers a choice about how they interact with the brand. One customer may want to be contacted by mobile text message when a specific product is available, while another may want to be contacted by email when the company is offering special promotions. By giving customers the option to choose the content and the medium, companies will generate better customer lifetime value.

Susan Tull focused on email communications and started by pointing out that marketers have been talking about automated one-to-one marketing communications for ten years, but that now the tools are available to implement it effectively. Marketers need to get started with segmentation and one-to-one marketing now or they will be left behind. Companies should take a “crawl, walk, run” approach so they aren’t intimidated about acting now. You can worry more about advanced strategies when they get further into the process. One easy strategy to get started with is email link segmentation. Look at what links people are clicking on in your emails and segment those people into groups based on their behavior. Then follow-up with those various groups with relevant messaging based on the links they originally clicked on.

Susan stressed that the first thirty days after someone opts in to email is typically the best/most profitable time to engage with them. The rest of the panelists nodded in agreement. Companies should send a series of messages during that period to encourage the customer to engage with the brand and/or make purchases. With regards to analyzing results, many marketers are mistakenly judging the value of a campaign by looking at one-off transactions when they should really be looking at customer lifetime value.

Katelyn Himes gave the in-house marketer’s perspective on customer retention and value. Companies should leverage behavioral data to further engage with their target market. For example, La Quinta saw their email response rates nearly double when they segmented respondents and non-respondents and sent a special follow-up message to each group. Marketer can also see great value when they create event-triggered email campaigns. Event-triggered emails tend to be more relevant to the user and may increase their patience and receptiveness in receiving other promotional offers via email. By analyzing and segmenting users based on recency, frequency, and monetary value (RFM), companies can be more strategic with who they market to and how they market to them. Lastly, Katelyn stated that companies should treat their customers like a spouse. Give them a chance to provide feedback, listen to their feedback, and take the necessary actions to create a happy long-term relationship.

In the end, the whole panel agreed that customer perception is reality, and that testing is crucial to any marketing efforts that a company undertakes.