(continued from Internet Retailer: Do You Know Me? Part 2 of 8)

The following is an excerpt from the Internet Retailer article, "Do You Know Me?", by Don Davis.

More Design Work

In term of making use of the integrated customer data, Petco initially will use it to produce customized monthly e-mails. Each e-mail can be personalized with up to 12 items the customer has purchased or shown interest in.

In the second phase, Petco will customize the web pages visitors see based on their profiles. Customers who have made online purchases in the past or signed in to ther PALS account can be identified by cookies placed on their computers.

"The biggest challenge is the amount of creative you need for targeted home pages," says Lazarchic. "If I know you're a cat customer, the center theme of the home page and the offer shouldn't be dog-focused, it should be cat-focused."

Lazarchic expects to be sending personalized e-mails using the new data store by May.

The first phase of Lazarchic's plan should be standard practice, or at least in the plans for any progressive email marketing campaign and any decent email service or marketing software provider should be equipped with the tools required to deliver personalized, dynamic content. The foundation of behavior based marketing is the ability to tie customer records with sales data. That single connection gives marketers the ability to develop and execute a variety of email campaigns including: customer reengagement/win-back, customer retention, and customer acquisition.

The second phase to the Petco plan may not be for everyone, but is an innovative marketing move for those who do have an e-commerce component. If graphic elements other than featured products are made dynamic, too, then that extends the idea of relevant marketing to "relevant branding". If the look and feel of the website reflect the identity of the customer and/or the relationship between the individual customer and the product, then increases in customer acquisition and retention can be expected.

"More design work" is definitely needed to initiate these campaigns but the bulk of the work would only need to be done once, and the pages/emails generated by dynamic combination of the various elements would result in the equivalent of potentially hundreds (if not more) of static marketing messages. It may seem like a big undertaking at first, but in the long run, automated marketing solutions will undoubtable save time and resources while strengthening customer relations.