过去夫妻经营店提供个性化客户体验的日子已经一去不复返了。然而大数据的发展有可能将可定制带回我们的生活。
现在数据的收集和分析行为越来越复杂，营销人员有机会评判线上营销是否有前景，并且能直接对接用户的个人需求。像亚马逊之类的公司已实践产品推荐系统有很多年，而B2B的个性化会最终迎头赶上。
今天，B2B营销人员使用个性化手段来促进营销，既部署在入站流程又部署在出站流程。然而，现代营销的个性化手段仍存争议，这一手段是否有用，以及如何处理与用户的隐私关切之间的关系都悬而未决。
DecisionLinks公司的总裁David Bailey表示，“许多人都在购买客户重定向与网页个性化的服务，但是他们并未花时间去研究这是否有效”。 DecisionLinks是一家预测客户引流效果的智能系统提供商。
入站营销的个性化
Forrester Research的首席分析师Rob Brosnan表示，个人化发展迅速，已突破传统的基于横幅广告的再行销手段，进入涵盖Web和多渠道的入站营销手段。
比如，个性化的入站营销包括，根据用户档案提供独特的网页内容，或者在用户再次访问网站时给出特定的产品供应信息。Brosnan认为，提供此类服务的市场规模正在以年均40%的速度增长，而这一趋势将延续下去。目前提供此类服务的公司包括Adobe, Causata, IBM, Maxymiser 以及Oracle。
“有意思的是大多数B2B公司已经有了足以进行个性化营销的内容，问题在于他们向用户展现这些个性化的信息。”Insightera公司的联合创始人Mike telem做出如上表示。这家公司提供营销个性化软件，帮助企业实现向网站访客提供个性化内容这一目标。
入站营销个性化的应用出现时间不长，而出站营销的个人性已经有很长的历史了。出站营销的个性化手段往往被称为客户重定向或者客户再营销。举一个最简单的例子，用户在访问某一品牌后，重定向技术将把访问的cookie存入用户使用的浏览器，而后在用户访问其他内容时向用户提供指定的横幅广告（前提是用户访问的网站是营销人员投放的广告网络的组成部分）。重定向技术几乎在任何互联网交互过程中采用，无论你是在填写一份表单，将某产品放入购物车，访问一个网站，打开一封电邮，访问Facebook或者对EDM做出回应。
尽管个性化营销手段发展很快，但重定向技术仍然存在不少问题。DecisionLinks的Bailey发展，要对重定向技术的营销性做出可靠地评估十分困难。
“评估的透明度是一个问题”，Bailey认为，“许多机构调整营销活动的数据或者结构，使活动看起来有效，但实际情况很难说。如果问题是用户会重新点击这一网站么，答案是肯定的。但是用户最终是否完成购买的操作呢？从我们的早期数据来看，这一投资似乎是值得的。但这主要是因为我们专业瞄准了底层的用户。他们已经做好了购买的准备。如果处在购买流程中稍高的位置，就很难判断是否有效。【译者注：对buyer funnel并没有找到比较合适的译文，从网上转一张buyer funnel的图，以增进大家的理解。译者水平有限，致歉！】
重定向策略也很容易出错。Epsilon公司在线解决方案部门的高级副总裁Kerry Morris表示，营销人员经常错过在多种不同渠道中应用营销手段的机会。“不要仅仅重定向网站的访客，你应对所有渠道的用户实施重定向，比如电子邮件的用户，目录直邮的响应者，以及在实际部门中购买的用户。”
第二个错误在于营销人员如何看待成功的来源，Morris表示“如果营销人员将成功仅归功于最后接触的渠道，用户购买前和卖方联系的最后渠道会被认为是造成转化的唯一渠道。由于重定向策略来源于其他互动行为的驱动，往往发生在购买流程的后期，这往往使得它将其他渠道、手段带来的效果纳入自身效果衡量中去。“
营销人员需要设计鼓励用户参与的规划，这些规划利于增加客户访问网站的频次。否则用来识别客户访问的Cookie终会失效。
ReTargeter公司的营销经理Ilana Bercovitz建议，将访问次数与广告被展示的次数关联起来评估，并且在目标用户采取你所引导的行为之后停止这一活动。
采取最佳策略实施客户重定向十分有用。Ilana Bercovitz认为，”重定向技术对品牌营销的效果是公认的，但是人们往往意识不到重定向技术对用户引流和将用户引导到购买流程底层带来的效果。，
除了在评估效果上会面临问题，用户对隐私的担忧也是数字个性化技术的一大问题。无论是通过cookie定位用户，跟踪用户访问行为，或者收集用户的数字信息来提供用户关心的内容都会面临这个挑战。
Bercovitz强调，广告显示的重定向技术完全不会存储任何用于识别用户的信息。“这一问题变得越来越负责，人们关心隐私，但是我们的技术并不会侵犯任何人的隐私。”
原文如下：
The days of mom-and-pop shops offering an individualized customer experience have mostly become a thing of the past, but the growth of Big Data may be pinging customization back.
Increasingly sophisticated data gathering and analysis now enable marketers to identify online prospects and speak directly to their personal needs. Companies such as Amazon, with its product recommendation system, have done that for years, but b2b personalization may finally be catching up.
Today, b2b marketers are using personalization both for in- and outbound marketing efforts, in desktop, and to a lesser degree, mobile environments (see sidebar). But modern marketing personalization can stir up controversy, sparking questions about if it works and how to handle privacy concerns.
“A lot of people are buying [retargeting and Web personalization] services, but they haven’t spent a lot of time answering [questions about] if it works,” said David Bailey, president of DecisionLinks Inc., a provider of predictive lead intelligence systems.
INBOUND MARKETING PERSONALIZATION
Personalization is quickly moving beyond traditional banner-based remarketing to inbound marketing for both the Web and multichannel environments, said Rob Brosnan, principal analyst at Forrester Research.
Tailored inbound marketing can, for example, include serving up unique Web content based on a visitor’s profile or making specific product offers to returning customers. The market for these services—provided by companies such as Adobe, Causata, IBM, Maxymiser and Oracle—is growing by 40% a year and will keep growing, Brosnan said.
“The interesting thing is that most b2b companies already have the content to ping personalization,” said Mike Telem, VP-business development and co-founder of Insightera, a provider of marketing personalization software that enables companies to serve tailored content to website visitors. “The problem is that they don’t have ways to present that information.”
While inbound marketing personalization is relatively new, outbound marketing personalization—also known as retargeting or remarketing—has a longer history by Internet standards. In its simplest form, retargeting involves dropping a cookie into a prospect’s powser after they engage with a marketer’s pand in some capacity, then serving up banner ads specific to that user no matter where they go on the Internet (provided that they visit sites that are available to the ad network the marketer is using). That remarketing is possible with almost any Web-based interaction, whether it’s partly filling out a Web form, putting a product in a cart, visiting a website, opening an email, visiting a Facebook page or responding to direct mail.
But despite its rapid proliferation, there are still questions surrounding remarketing. As Bailey at DecisionLinks found out, it can be hard to get reliable numbers on its effectiveness.
“Transparency has been hard to find,” Bailey said. “A lot of agencies tweak their numbers or structure a campaign so it looks like it works, but it’s hard to tell [if that's so]. If the question is “Will they click back?’ The answer is yes. But will they end up buying in the end? From our early data, it certainly seems like it will be worth our investment, but that’s primarily because we’re targeting lower-funnel prospects. They’re ready to buy. If they were higher up in the buying funnel, it would be harder to justify.”
Retargeting campaigns may also be vulnerable to mistakes. Kerry Morris, senior VP-online solutions at Epsilon, said marketers often miss an opportunity to expand the tactic across other touch points. “Don’t just retarget website visitors, he said. “You should also retarget email openers, direct mail responders and consumers who make a purchase in a physical store.”
A second mistake is related to how marketers attribute success, Morris said. “If a marketer is using a last-touch attribution approach, then the last contact to occur before the purchase will receive all of the credit for the conversion,” he said. “Since retargeting is by definition triggered from another interaction, it typically occurs later in the purchase process, so it will receive a disproportionate amount of the credit.”
Marketers also need to design engagement programs that will increase the frequency of customer website visits, Forrester’s Brosnan said. Otherwise, cookies used to identify customers essentially expire, he said.
Ilana Bercovitz, marketing manager at ReTargeter, advises putting frequency caps in place on the number of times an ad can be served up and stopping a campaign when the prospect takes whatever action you’re trying to encourage.
Following best practices can make retargeting useful in multiple ways, she said. “Retargeting is definitely effective for panding,” Bercovitz said. “[But] people don’t realize how effective retargeting can be in lead generation or lead nurturing, and moving leads further down the funnel.”
Aside from the question of whether it works, the issue of privacy is constantly hovering around the issue of digital personalization—whether it’s dropping cookies into people’s powsers and following them across the Internet or assembling a digital profile of a website visitor in real time and serving up adaptive content.
But, Bercovitz said, it’s important to note that display ad retargeting does not store any personal identifying information. “It’s an increasingly complex space, and privacy is a concern; but we’re not infringing on anyone’s privacy,” she said.
来源：www.btobonline.com
评论：
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