I read a post today from Seth Godin, Faux familiarity is worse than none at all, about how often marketers today overuse and abuse personalization when communicating electronically with prospects and customers.  I have been an avid fan and promoter of CRM (customer relationship management and customer relationship marketing) principles and practices for more than a decade and have seen many of these techniques successfully implemented as well as terribly abused over the years.

Companies spend a significant amount of time and money creating incentives to attract new customers.  This is an age-old tactic that continues to be used because it works.  These incentives range from free services, percentages off their contracts or some other perk or tchotchke.  Regardless of their success, I have always wondered depending upon the value of the incentive, how current and long-term customers perceived these tactics…especially if they are not eligible.

Over the past twenty years I’ve been fortunate to have worked with a number of great companies and helped develop and manage their various CRM and loyalty programs. Many of these include National City Bank, Makers Mark, Valvoline Instant Oil Change, Canadian Mist, Kentucky Lottery and Purina to name a few. With any loyalty program and marketing campaign, it is imperative from the beginning to establish goals and develop measurements against those to identify success as well as areas of improvement.

One of the most common questions as marketers we receive is how often to communicate with our prospects and consumers.  Regardless if it is door-to-door, telemarketing, direct mail, email and now social media, the question has always been the same, how often is too much?