Glossary Index


Glossary Index


Glossary Index


Glossary term

One-to-one marketing

Quick definition

One-to-one marketing is the practice of personalized marketing content, personalized attributes, and humanizing communications to create unique conversations with individual customers.

Key takeaways




Mistakes include siloing channels and teams within an organization and delivering invasive messages

Bruce Swann is a product manager at Adobe and has worked at Adobe for five years. Bruce supports Adobe Campaign, which is the product within Adobe Experience Cloud that allows marketers to plan, launch, and measure experiences across different touchpoints where consumers engage. Bruce has more than 15 years of experience working with digital marketing disciplines like web analytics, social media, mobile marketing, and email marketing.



Q: Why is one-to-one marketing important?

A: The value of one-to-one marketing is that it can build trust between a consumer and a brand. If a consumer is willingly participating in a one-to-one conversation, that can translate to customer loyalty, increased purchases, and an overall better relationship between a company and their buyers.





To get started, companies need a marketing database that has personally identifiable information (PII) data, or known data, about a customer. On top of that, they need a campaign management tool to send direct communications to someone based on who they are, where they live, what transactions they’ve made, or the segment they're in. Companies should also employ a marketing analyst who has knowledge of the underlying data and either the necessary creative skills, the ability to collaborate with an agency, or someone with creative skills to make sure the optimal content and message is being sent out.





A: One-to-one marketing needs a proper data foundation where an organization can start to build up a knowledge base of who their customers are. They should then have an analytics solution they can use to understand and anticipate what customers are likely to do.

Companies should also have the necessary customer relationship management tools to target and segment an audience, then deliver appropriate content across channels like email. Having an email tool is helpful, as email is a powerful channel an organization can use to engage with customers on a one-to-one basis, and it’s also a great way to activate customers in other channels.

Q: What are the benefits of one to one?


The benefit of one-to-one marketing for the consumer is that they feel known and appreciated by the brand. They also have easier access to content, information, or product details, and can more efficiently engage with a brand.

Q: What mistakes do companies make?

A: A common trap that organizations fall into is doing things in silos. They'll have one team sending out emails, another one owning mobile, and another team owning social. And what ends up happening is they're all using their own tools to support engagement in those respective channels. Organizations get stuck thinking about channels individually and lose sight of the fact that customers don’t see brands that way.

Companies can break out of the silo trap by having common goals, KPIs, and tracking metrics across different teams. There also needs to be an understanding at the highest level in an organization that they place a high value on putting the customer first.


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