I had a true well-executed one-to-one marketing experience today with a marketing services vendor, who will go unnamed. This vendor provides database marketing and creative services. They showed their services capability by implementing it for themselves…ate their own dog food so to speak.
Their services involve sending a highly personalized, full color direct mail piece to prospects and following up with similar personalization on the web site. Here’s how it worked for me…
I received a direct mail post card, full color. My name and company name was all over the direct marketing piece in a meaningful way, with context. The creative was compelling, and they even integrated my name into the call to action URL.
So I went to the site. I landed on simple page that welcomed me by name and by company. Site was well done with a primary call to action for a demo.
After 6-8 pages of the demo, where they provided actual examples and continued the personalization, I landed on the infamous “Tell Me More” button. I knew what was coming…request for my information for a account exec to call me…but I was into it now so I clicked anyway to see what that looked like.
What they did was simple, great, yet is rarely done…The form was short AND had all my information pre-populated. I never entered it, but since I started with the personalized url, it knew who I was and pre-popped the fields with the same info they used to mail me in the first place. All I had to do was add email address and click ‘submit’! I didn’t though. I closed the browser.
Now here’s the best part…
No more than 15 minutes later I get a phone call from the vendor. They knew I had been to the site and responded immediately (7pm my time, 5pm their time).
I know the technology behind this is not rocket science. And they didn’t have my preferences, since they simply bought my name. What impressed me was the blending of meaningful personalization, compelling customer-focused messages, high quality creative, and unheard-of real-time lead response. How many companies blend left and right brain execution like this? How many company handle leads that efficiently!? Most companies can’t answer emails within 48 hours.
I’m not sure if we will use their services, but I was impressed enough with their ability to execute for themselves that I had a conversation with the account exec and we’ll follow up in a month. We’ll see what happens.
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