Happy Birthday, Allan!

Just after 8 pm on my birthday, this email landed in my inbox:

Hi Allan,

Here's to another year of happy travels. When you're out celebrating in Newbury you may like to hint to your friends that one of our top offers below would make a great gift. Or make this the year you visit that must-see destination (check out our favourites for the coming months).

Best wishes,

The Opodo team

Those ‘top offers’ included a three night city break in New York for £526, a flight to Dubai for £312 and an attractively priced 3-star hotel room in Bangkok for £16 (leaving me only with the challenge of working out which friend would pay for my £473 flight).

Opodo gathered some information from me when I booked a flight with them. And they are determined to use it. They know three things about me: that one of my names is Allan, the date of my birthday, and that I used to live near Newbury. They have decided that, as a result, they have a relationship with me.

If Opodo did in fact have a relationship with me, they would know this:

• No-one who knows me calls me Allan 
• I live near to Oxford 
• None of my friends would buy me a flight ticket or a night in a hotel in Bangkok for a present

We have to accept that mass marketers live in a world of personalised rather than personal relationships. But rather than trying to make our communications seem relevant, we should focus on making them actually relevant, by looking beyond the obvious.

On the face of it, Opodo know very little about me. In fact they know much more. They know my age/lifestage. They know that I booked a flight to a European destination, for two adults and a child. They know that I did not book a hotel, or anything else. They know it’s more than two years since I bought anything from them, that they have sent me emails at least twice a month since then, that I open them only when they feature a competition and click through almost never. All of this tells them much more about my propensity to buy from them than my birthday. Their challenge is not to remember to wish me many happy returns, but to find a way of tempting me to come back to them. And e-marketing gives them the flexibility to tailor their proposition, not just the way it is communicated.

Accurate, updated customer and prospect data may appear to be the solution to the problem, but it’s not the whole story. Knowing your customers’ names and birthdays may help to put the finishing touches to your communication, but it won’t guarantee relevance. So when you’re planning your next targeted campaign, don’t ask ‘what personal information are we using in this communication?’ Ask ‘what information are we not using, and how can we start to exploit it effectively?’

Make your message personalised and your customers might open it. Make it relevant and there’s a good chance they will buy.