True one-to-one marketing capabilities exist in the digital marketing arena, even if they are not being deployed as much as they should. It’s ideal for giving customers and potential customers the right information they need, when they need it, to move through their buying journey. It’s beneficial to the brand, because they are able to give people the right marketing messages when they can do the most good. It’s beneficial to the consumer in that they get more relevant information to satisfy their needs and wants, at the time they’re looking for it.

Digital is ideal for one-to-one marketing. It’s where we interact in real time, see what actions and questions consumers have, collect relevant information and get feedback on whether or not we’re meeting their needs. But, even with all that data creating one-to-one digital marketing shouldn’t connect with on a hyper-personal level, because it might come across as kind of creepy. As James Smith, EVP of the Americas at Criteo, told Liveramp, “The overall intent is not to message the consumer with the most specific means possible, but to give them the recommendations or messages that they need at the right point in their path to purchase.”

Retarget Your Web Visitors

One of the easiest and most obvious strategies for digital one-to-one marketing is to retarget the people who visit your website. It’s an easy process of creating a pixel that is placed on the user when they enter your website. If they are interested in a product or service while on your site, you can place targeted digital ads featuring that product or service in front of them as they move around the web. Some sites tend to overwhelm them a barrage of ads for the product they just viewed. That can be seen as creepy, too. It’s much better to do it in a more subtle way so they feel like they just happened to see ads for that thing they were considering, reminding them of their interest in it.

You can tailor your messaging based on what actions they performed while on your site. If they left an item in their shopping cart without buying it, you can serve up ads with a discount and see if that motivates them to go back and purchase  If they were just reading information about it, they might not be far enough along in the purchase cycle to buy now, so in this case you might want to show them ads that give more reasons to buy or additional information.

Segment Your Data

If you have a good database management system or someone managing it for you, it is easy to segment your data to give you the ability to send relevant messages at the right times to the right people. You can segment your customers by how valuable they are, how likely they are to buy and a number of factors that relate to their own specific customer journey.

After you create the segments, you can send different digital messages to each group based on those factors. The better you segment your data the closer you can get to one-to-one marketing. For instance, we discovered a new segment for one client that we called Fashion Proud – they enjoy having nice, stylish things and being complemented from others on their good taste. For this segment, you would send them ads and emails featuring your most fashion-forward products. Then, make sure your SEO/SEM drives them to the more fashionable products on your site. In your content marketing, you would create content directed at them that feeds into this trait. And since we know they crave complements on their good taste, after their purchase, you should send them messaging encouraging them to share the items they’ve purchased on their social channels and on review sites.

Use Predictive Modeling to Create Customized Communications

Another thing to do with your database, is to create predictive models that allow you to predict what your customer’s most likely to purchase next. You can analyse your data and develop an algorithm that predicts the most likely next purchase, based on what they’ve bought before. Once you have this knowledge, you can send them marketing messages that feature the item most likely to be their next purchase. This gives them relevant messaging and helps move them through their buying journey that much quicker.

Dynamic Creative Builds Truly One-to-One Ads on the Fly

Much like how programmatic has changed media buying, dynamic creative has the potential to change digital marketing. We now have the ability to develop variable creative that changes to fit the specific person and what they’re searching for. What is dynamic creative? Infectious media defines it as “simply any creative that changes automatically based on information about the user, whether this is related to their behavior, location or context.”

You build a template for your ad or even a video with each part clearly defined within the dynamic system. Then, based on what is known about the person you’re marketing to, the photo, product, offer, headline or any number of factors can be swapped out to provide that individual with the most relevant piece of communication. This can even be done with online video, where the algorithm edits together specific pieces of the video to serve up one that checks off all the right elements for that specific consumer. This process creates digital communications that truly are one-to-one marketing messages.

Use Your Data Gathering to Create Better Targeting

Whenever you create one-to-one digital marketing communications, you can gather further intel that can be used to increase your effectiveness in all media. For instance, I ran a Facebook contest for a client. In order to be entered into the drawing, you had to leave a comment telling us what show you were most likely to binge watch, if you won the prize (which related to watching TV with the family).

The information from the thousands of responses was given to the media team to better target these people by adjusting the TV buy to be in the shows the customers told us they watch. We can further use the information we have on them to better craft messaging and better target them within our Facebook ads and posts as well.

These are just a few strategies marketers can use to create better one-to-one marketing in their digital efforts. It’s an always-changing, fast-paced part of the marketing toolbox. As tools and methodologies get created or refined, our ability to connect directly to each customer increases. If you do it right, everybody benefits.

Mike McClure, thinking digitally

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A version of this post originally appeared on the Yaffe blog I was the editor for 13 years.