Kaplowitz: personalization must go beyond "passive" to "transactual".In her presentation at the recent NEPA marketing conference in New Orleans New Orleans (ôr`lēənz –lənz, ôrlēnz`), city (2006 pop. 187,525), coextensive with Orleans parish, SE La., between the Mississippi River and Lake Pontchartrain, 107 mi (172 km) by water from the river mouth; founded , consultant and copywriter Barbara Barbara maid exemplifying personal and domestic neatness. [Br. Lit.: Old Curiosity Shop] See : Orderliness Kaplowitz differentiated among three types of personalization Custom tailoring information to the individual. On the Web, personalization means returning a page that has been customized for the user, taking into consideration that person's habits and preferences. in marketing: active, passive, and transactual. She cited Amazon.com (Amazon.com, Seattle, WA, www.amazon.com) The largest online shopping site and one of the most widely known e-commerce sites on the Web. Founded by Jeff Bezos in 1995, it had 11 employees by year's end. Within four years, it had more than 1,600 employees and four million customers. as an example of all three types. "Active personalization is when you ask the reader or subscriber to tell you what they want. That's what Amazon is doing when they ask if you want to sign up for information on particular genres, for example," she said. "Transactional personalization is when you use a customer or prospect's past buying or viewing history to tailor A tailor is a person whose occupation is to sew menswear style jackets and the skirts or trousers that go with them. Although the term dates to the thirteenth century, tailor future transactions. With Amazon's, that translates into not only showing you what you've bought, but also showing you what others who have made the same purchase bought in addition. "Passive personalization utilizes the information that's been a staple 1. (language) STAPLE - A programming language written at Manchester (University?) and used at ICL in the early 1970s for writing the test suites. STAPLE was based on Algol 68 and had a very advanced optimising compiler. 2. of general DM and of the newsletter industry. It's information you've gathered about a subscriber or visitor, including name, geographic region, and perhaps the length of time they've been subscribing. "If the file is b-to-b and sophisticated enough, that information would also include something pertaining per·tain intr.v. per·tained, per·tain·ing, per·tains 1. To have reference; relate: evidence that pertains to the accident. 2. to the SIC code of the industry they work in. With consumer publications, it might be something that uses age or number of kids. "All three types of personalization have their place in the future of newsletter marketing," Kaplowitz concluded. "It's critical that our industry move beyond simply using passive personalization--especially if our subs and prospects are reaching us via the web. "I recommend that companies look to using personalization in both their marketing and editorial--to make the newsletter subscriber's experience a truly personal and, if at all possible, interactive transaction." Barbara Kaplowitz, president of Big Huge Ideas, is a marketing consultant and copywriter. 7702 Whiterim Terrace, #200, Potomac, MD 20854, 301-983-6634, fax 301-299-2935, CoolCopy@aol.com |
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