A key part of our business is delivering programs (as a service) to merchants that enable them to provide better service to consumers and hence encourage them to use the merchants services more. Thinking through what makes a good experience for the consumer is critical. Too many merchants treat personalization as pasting a users name on a standard piece of collateral. This is still mass merchandising, to reach the goal of speaking to each consumer as a unique individual with unique needs requires a lot more than that.

I draw a lot from my formative years when I worked in my family's retail stores. There the staff knew almost every customer by name, there shopping history and something about them and worked to make the shopping experience positive. To translate this to the modern world there are three things a good program does for the consumer:

1. Speaks to individual users differently and in a way they resonate with
2. Makes the users life easier in some way.
3. Provides clear reciprocal value for the personal information delivered.