The term one-to-one marketing first gained popularity in the 1990s. Don Peppers, Martha Rogers, and Bob Dorf used it to describe a type of customer-focused, relationship marketing that involved a fairly sophisticated amount of personalization for its time. 

The goal was simple: Listen to your customers and provide them with personalized, relevant experiences that encourage customer engagement, increase revenue, and build customer loyalty. If that sounds familiar, it’s because personalized marketing is all the rage today. 

Twilio Segment’s annual State of Personalization Report found that 89% of decision-makers believe personalization is invaluable to their business’ success in the next three years.

Whether you think of one-to-one marketing as relationship marketing, customer relationship management, or a form of personalization, a one-to-one marketing strategy is a powerful way to build lasting customer relationships. 

What is one-to-one marketing?

One-to-one marketing is a marketing strategy that combines personalization with customer-driven customization to develop a personalized relationship with each customer. It’s the antithesis to mass marketing and generic marketing messages, and is more targeted than traditional segmenting.

Using a mix of data-driven marketing techniques (retargeting, segmentation, etc.) and behavior-based marketing (customer preferences, recommendations, loyalty programs) brands engage with customers as individuals instead of as a uniform group. 

This personalized touch stands out from annoying batch messages by tailoring marketing messaging to customer needs and preferences. Marketers use customer insights and data to deliver highly relevant messaging that encourages customers to take the next step on their customer journey.

The resulting marketing messages are one-to-one from a customer perspective, but modern marketing tools make it possible to implement and scale this type of marketing strategy. Composable content, extensible platforms, GenAI tools, and automation make it easier for marketing teams of all sizes to implement one-to-one marketing and reap the benefits of making individual customers feel seen and heard.

A one-to-one marketing strategy is more than just personalization

Personalization is part of a one-to-one marketing strategy, but one-to-one marketing takes this a step further with customization — learning and honoring customer preferences. While personalization might use locale, journey mapping, etc. to personalize content to a segment of customers, one-to-one marketing combines this with customer-selected preferences to create unique marketing journeys for each customer. 

One-to-one marketing enhances the customer experience across channels

One-to-one marketing works well in combination with multichannel marketing strategies like omnichannel marketing and transmedia storytelling. Like other multichannel marketing strategies, one-to-one marketing requires a deep understanding of your customer base, and the ability to orchestrate personalization and customization across all channels and devices while maintaining brand consistency. 

One-to-one marketing also empowers individuals to choose how they experience your brand. In doing so, they become a part of your brand story and are more actively engaged in how they experience your brand. 

Could one-to-one marketing be the solution to your biggest marketing challenges?

Marketers are being asked to do more with less. Marketing budgets have dropped 15% from last year’s figures, reports Marketing Week. This puts increasing pressure on marketers to implement strategies, like data-driven marketing and personalization, that increase efficiency of marketing efforts and reduce churn.

Increase the efficiency and effectiveness of your marketing efforts

Data-driven marketing, a key aspect of one-to-one marketing, can lead to a 15-20% increase in campaign ROI. One-to-one marketing is the ultimate targeted campaign using both data-driven insights and customer preferences. With AI and other marketing automation tools, marketers can leverage customer data and preferences to target individuals at scale, maximizing the impact of their marketing investment.

Reduce churn, increase customer retention

One-to-one marketing empowers customers to shape their experience with your brand. Through multiple customer interactions, people share information and set preferences that help you build a stronger relationship. This gives customers something to lose if they switch brands. Even if another brand offers the same level of personalization and customization, it will take time for customers to teach them what you already know.

More benefits of one-to-one marketing 

• Cost efficiency: In addition to better targeting and greater efficiency with marketing dollars, one-to-one marketing can reduce costs by directing customers to self-service channels. For example, TELUS, a telecommunications company, achieved a 9% reduction in support costs by improving their online support portal and creating seamless handoffs between self-service and live agent assistance.

• Customer satisfaction, loyalty, retention: Not only are customers hesitant to give up a relationship they've built over time, the customer-focused nature of one-to-one marketing enhances the digital customer experience. Combining personalization and customization enables brands to deliver more timely, relevant marketing campaigns and tailored experiences that increase customer satisfaction.

• Increase sales and customer lifetime value: One-to-one marketing tactics include personalized recommendations, loyalty programs, and reminders that something is left in your cart, all of which can help boost sales and increase customer lifetime value. 

• Customer engagement: One-to-one marketing actively engages customers and rewards them with more personalized experiences. Listening to customer feedback, enabling customers to set preferences, and using that information to tailor their experience builds trust and increases the likelihood that they will open future emails and continue to engage with your brand.

Next generation tools make it easier to implement and scale a one-to-one marketing strategy

When Peppers, Rogers, and Dorf first introduced one-to-one marketing, they noted that “your company’s information technology department may be too swamped — or not sufficiently developed — to handle all the tasks that one-to-one marketing demands: maintaining a customer database, having one system communicate seamlessly with another, and tracking each customer’s contacts with the company.”

Today marketers have access to more advanced technologies, better integrations, and content management solutions that work across channels. 

For example, the Contentful® Composable Content Platform:

• Empowers marketers and reduces dependency on developers.

• Unifies content and data from multiple systems to enable a data-driven strategy.

• Lets you manage and orchestrate content across multiple experiences for greater consistency and reach.

• Provides seamless integration with all the tools you need.

• Offers 100+ integrations and plug-ins, including GenAI and personalization tools.

• Is enterprise ready so you can scale quickly and with confidence.

These capabilities make it much easier for brands to enhance their existing marketing campaigns with one-to-one marketing. 

How to implement a one-to-one marketing campaign

Start by analyzing customer data and insights to create customer profiles. Organize these profiles into narrow customer segments or groups. Map the ideal journey for each segment and develop personalized content to move individuals through the customer journey. This includes choosing the right channels for each touchpoint and empowering individuals to customize their experience. Once you launch the campaign, continue gathering customer insights and data so you can further refine customer groups and create more targeted messaging for each touchpoint.

One-to-one marketing examples

We experience one-to-one marketing every day: text messages reminding you that an unused reward expires soon; an email from Amazon saying they found something you might like; a spot-on recommendation for a new binge-worthy show. Behind the scenes, leading brands use modern tools like the Contentful® Composable Content Platform to make large-scale digital experiences feel more like a one-to-one relationship.

Below are a few examples of one-to-one marketing campaigns powered by Contentful.

1. Loyalty programs

Loyalty programs encourage customers to sign up and provide information about themselves in exchange for exclusive offers, rewards, birthday treats, and other perks. As the name implies, a loyalty program increases loyalty, but it also gives brands the ability to track customer interactions for more targeted, personalized offers. See how KFC and Costa Coffee increase their customers’ appetites and build strong relationships with loyalty programs powered by Contentful. 

2. Personalized content

Whether they’re buying flowers, navigating health issues, or trying to get their finances in order, people appreciate a personalized approach that meets their needs and avoids awkward missteps. For example, Bloom and Wild combines dynamic content with customer preferences so that they can deliver Mother’s Day messages to those who celebrate while showing completely different content to those who don’t.

Flo Health develops personalized content for specific audience segments like women who are expecting or those who have miscarried. Targeted versions of the same content make it easier for users to find exactly what they need and avoid content that might be upsetting. MoneyLion lets users mix and match products on their mobile banking app so they can get advice, perks, and rewards that support their unique financial needs and goals. 

3. Self-serve content

The principles of one-to-one marketing — understanding your customers, identifying customer groups, and using customer data to tailor content to individuals within those groups — can enhance self-serve experiences. This helps companies like TELUS reduce costs by encouraging users to use self-serve support content. 

Targeted self-serve content can also help people navigate personal challenges such as mental health. Unmind and CredibleMind are two well-being platforms that empower people to shape their mental health journey through personalized interactions and resources. Contentful provides powerful content management, delivery, and integration capabilities to ensure these personalized journeys pull from consistent, up-to-date content. 

Let Contentful help you implement scalable one-to-one marketing campaigns

One-to-one marketing helps brands deliver personalized, customized messaging that builds customer loyalty, improves conversion rates, and increases sales. To access these benefits, you need an API-first platform that connects marketing content with customer data and gives teams access to all the tools they need from CRMs to personalization to GenAI tools that help them scale content operations efficiently.

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