Bespoke - A Tailored Approach to Marketing Automation

Bespoke, tailor-made or custom. Marketing automation can improve results through personalization

In the built environment profession, the term bespoke is used liberally and without much consideration to meaning. Interior designers often misuse the word bespoke. We've seen it used to describe the act of placing a Baker side table in a recently painted foyer. Just what is bespoke about dropping a large manufacturer's ready-made (antonym) table in a room? Hell, we've even seen advertisements for "bespoke" plastic bags. I guess this is because they print your logo on them. Bespoke serves to define tailor-made clothing, among other things, but it takes the term custom design or made-to-order to the utmost in custom. Traditionally, bespoke tailoring honored a consumer’s desire for complete control over the fit, the style, even the fabric of the clothing they ordered. Bespoke can be seen as luxurious, but it is not a synonym for luxury. I find my Mercedes-Benz luxurious, but the act of choosing the color and an interior package does not make it bespoke. 

A Bespoke Approach to Marketing 

Marketers now have the ability to ‘tailor’ a website experience, email marketing and the sales process for prospects using "smart content" automated marketing and a Customer Relations Management software, or CRM. 
An example of this is the custom website experience by personalizing your content for every individual that visits your website.  Smart content can be personal and engaging. This approach might include saying hello on a home page by using the visitors name or auto-populating an address for a visitor.  Personalized content can also be about changing whole sections of a page for a visitor. Using the information you’ve gathered from contact forms, you could provide information on something you know they showed interest in on a previous visit.
Automated email workflows are a series of actions that you can set to occur based on triggers tailored to consumers’ personal information and behavior, but workflows are more than elementary automation. 
Agencies can now build marketing automation actions to meet virtually any criteria, for any reason. In truly bespoke fashion, your web presence can change to meet the interest of a viewer.

Using Contact Information

Smart websites can update or remove contact information based on certain behaviors indicated by activity on the website. When customers enters their e-mail address or personal information, the system is alerted, logs the contact information and sends a welcome e-mail to the client explaining your products and services. Triggers can be set to send the client’s information into subgroups, from “potential lead” to “lead” to “potential sale.”

Call-to-Action Buttons

Marketers can also send personalized emails that contain a calls-to-action. Maybe your target market researches your service or products on the weekends. Instead of generalized calls to action sent out in batches, set the trigger for early morning Saturdays and Sundays, and create a more personalized call to action. Potential clients will wake up to your message.

Prospect Demographics

Automation tools are built to help marketers tailor triggers according to an action taken on a website. Automation and personalization will allow you to determine your customer's demographics. You tell the system what you know about your lead, and the system keeps track of it for you. You can tailor personal messages to clients who have viewed a specific page on your website,  have a certain number of employees, or by prospects from a precise location.

The marketing world has seen a dramatic shift in recent years towards automation. Marketers are dependent upon it, but a bespoke approach is beginning to change the way businesses do business. Outbound marketing was successful before the rise of the Internet when consumers were swayed by price-points. Marketing automation has changed the way we communicate online. As prospects become savvy, generalized calls to action are no longer as effective. These days but a select few understand the value of automated, bespoke marketing workflows, giving those who use them a competitive edge over those who don’t.