djw's LiveJournal

Personalization: Coming Full Circle, Part 1
By Arthur O'Connor

We've come a long way in personalization. So far, in fact, that in many ways the industry is right back to where it started.
Once a carefully defined (as well as manually intensive and very expensive) niche strategy, personalization has recently become a grab bag of uncoordinated, incompatible, and overlapping tactics aimed at general consumers.
Lured by the bold promises of one-to-one marketing and "mass customization," many businesses embraced personalization without a strategic framework for investment and without understanding either the value of customers over time or the value of the Web as a channel to influence their behavior.
In many cases (as with so many doomed customer relationship management, or CRM, implementations), companies have undertaken personalization initiatives without even a management commitment to customer supremacy, organizational incentives, or infrastructure.
After so many failed -- or at least disappointing -- experiments with click-stream analytics, rules-based personalization, and data mining solutions, businesses are realizing that the complexities of individual customers aren't readily captured and gleaned from Web servers logs or huge data warehouses -- no matter how fancy or expensive the analytics.
Given the tremendous investment required to get a meaningful look at customers, businesses are now focusing on the concept of "service to value." In essence, they are ret

Travel industry news - Moreover... online news headlines from thousands of news sources

The Registry

Aquarius Travel of Phoenix, Arizona, was selected to represent Oahu's tourism at the Bridal Show in the downtown Civic Plaza.

This event, which has always proven very popular, was again a hotbed of Activity. Lyn D. Woodbury, CEO and owner, said that her company had tremendous response to it's Bridal Registry promotion. This enables friends or family to help newlyweds have the honeymoon of their dreams. This is how it works.

For $50.00 (US), a non-refundable deposit, which is applied towards the honeymoon, Aquarius mails you a personal pin number upon receipt of registration. Instead of buying Shower or Wedding gifts (oh, how many duplicate presents will the lucky couple receive) guests can use your pin number to contribute to your honeymoon. Everybody's a winner!

According to Louise Lauritano, Lyn's business partner, '..nobody had a chance to even take a coffee break - it was that busy'. Could it be that Oahu's tourist figures are about to increase, we're betting they will.