Relationship marketing is built on the premise that if you deliver content that is personalized and relevant (and that your audience has told you it wants to receive!), you'll generate more revenue. But that doesn't mean you jump from sending plain text emails with generic content to delivering rich media emails to an audience divided into 8 different segments, with each segment having 24 different content zones! Or that you switch overnight from sending a generic quarterly newsletter or universal online catalog to creating a highly relevant email or Web experience for everyone in your database.

Takeaway:
Think of your path to relationship marketing as a continuum — a straight line made up of small incremental steps. Plot all the steps you need to take to reach ultimate success. Then patiently move forward, one step at a time. This way you'll see a continuous improvement in results while keeping your relationship marketing program easy to manage.

Every time you move along the relationship marketing continuum by adding another element of personalization or relevant content, you will likely boost response. But you will also experience an exponential increase in complexity. That's how problems can arise if you go for too much too soon. Your in-house resources are probably limited, and are your gating factor for how fast you should proceed. Sure, you can outsource most of your program (we'll discuss this below). But content development, strategy, brand oversight and results analysis need to be managed in-house. It doesn't matter if you have an in-house team of 1 or 20 running your program. The best way to make complexity a non-issue is to master each step before moving forward.

Takeaway:
Move along the continuum in small steps, so you don't outpace your in-house resources. Remember, any step forward brings better results. This way, you'll find you are able to increase your results with the resources and time you have.

	•	Strategy - messaging, branding, tactics, benchmarks, results analysis
	•	Creative - concepts, copy
	•	Design - illustrations, templates, layout, animation
	•	Technology - infrastructure for development and delivery
	•	List Purchase - identify the best performing lists

Takeaway:
You'll see better ROI if you outsource what you can't do well. Be sure to grow your knowledge so you can bring specific activities in-house when you've gained the expertise needed to get best results.

Building and maintaining your own online marketing infrastructure is time consuming and expensive. There are several vendors with powerful platforms that are affordable, flexible, and scalable. They will serve you well wherever you are on the relationship marketing continuum – from basic emailing to the delivery of relevant content and offers that are dynamically inserted into emails or Web pages. The economics don't justify building your own platform. Keep in mind, however, you will need to work with an agency or develop in-house expertise to get full value from the technology. Most companies only utilize a small percentage of the power that's built into these platforms, leaving a lot of potential relationship marketing revenue on the table. So the same rationale applies here as above: by spending a little to get maximum results from the technology, you will actually boost ROI.

Takeaway:
Don't even think about building your own relationship marketing technology infrastructure. Select an online marketing platform vendor. Then work with an agency or dedicate an in-house resource to provide the expertise you need to get maximum value from the technology.

Your online marketing platform is flexible, enabling the fast delivery of content in a variety of formats. Best of all, it is designed to produce e-communications or Web pages using dynamic technology, which keeps the cost of production and delivery way down. This platform sits between your CRM and database, extracting and entering information through a two-way pipe. By enabling fast, cost-effective delivery of relevant communications, it helps you get full value from your CRM or database.

Takeaway:
It's not practical to use your CRM for relationship marketing. Using an outsourced online marketing platform helps you get more value from your CRM or database.

The customer or prospect profile is the repository for the data you'll use for relationship marketing. It can live within your CRM, your marketing/sales database, or be externally hosted within the outsourced online marketing platform. To build this profile effectively, you'll need to find the right balance between content your audience wants to receive, and what you can deliver. This balance is critical, and a prime point where relationship marketing can easily spin out of control – or fail. For many companies, the profile will have to be in alignment with an existing CRM/database structure. For all, it has to be synergistic with actual product/service offerings and matched with key features and benefits. What this means, in short, is that you have to give your audience what you want them to receive, and skillfully guide them into asking for it. This approach reduces complexity, and leads to better results.

Takeaway:
Reduce complexity by guiding your audience to state preferences that match what you can easily deliver. While you work at keeping it simple, remember you still have to provide meaningful, relevant content. Or it's best to lay low until you have it.

As your relationship marketing expertise moves along the continuum, you'll be drawing more and more from an individual's profile to dynamically generate relevant content. And you'll be constantly enriching this profile through online "dialogues" or by tracking behavior. But at each step, for each interaction, you control what information you gather. By combining marketing skill with technological acumen you can ask questions, cue responses and track specific behaviors that enable you to segment individuals into manageable groups. And of course, these groups will align with your CRM/database structure, product/service offerings, and key features and benefits. Initially, you can lump large numbers of people into a small number of groups to keep the 1:1 process simple. You'll still provide content that is more relevant than you were doing before. As you take steps along the relationship marketing continuum, you'll have people segmented into more groups, and be delivering richer content. Sure, the process gets more complex as you go. But you'll find yourself achieving significant ROI with a minimum of hassle, if you follow the clear steps we've outlined above.

Takeaway:
Segment individuals into manageable groups, and you'll achieve significant ROI with minimum hassle.