Gone are the days of a media landscape that is dominated by mass-market advertising and cookie-cutter consumers. Today’s customers have become worn out by the tidal wave of meaningless, non-targeted communications. To cut through the clutter, communications need to be meaningful and relevant to the consumer. Generating relevant marketing communications generally means creating personalization or customization for potential customers. At the same time, however, relevancy also includes presenting customers with unique offerings, identifying channel preferences, and coordinating the appropriate timing for marketing communications.

Marketers understand that relevancy can prevent customer defection, improve customer satisfaction, increase customer spending, and reduce marketing costs. In InfoTrends’ recently completed multi-client study entitled The Cross Media Direct Marketing Opportunity, more than 450 marketers were surveyed. Over 39% of marketing campaigns were segmented (one-to-few), while 21% were highly personalized (one-to-one). What this means is that over 60% of marketing campaigns are targeted.

Figure 1: What percentage of your marketing campaigns fit into the following categories?