"Hello (enter your name here) welcome back to the GAP. We have your size of jeans on sale this week." Sounds like a scene from the Tom Cruise movie, "Minority Report," but this type of futuristic personalized marketing is not as far away as many people may think, and even better, it’s coming to you, right here in Sharm.

It’s always easier to sell something to someone, when you know who they are, what they like, what they don’t like, and what they have purchased before, from you or from someone else. Personalized marketing makes it cheaper and easier for businesses to reach their target audience. All you need is access to the right people, with the right information, and the right technology. 

Marketers dream about this stuff! Imagine some of the benefits from a business point of view: 

• Lower customer-targeting costs 
• One-to-one relationship marketing
• Marketing spending effectiveness 
• True targeting of promotional materials 
• Location based (they are already in or near your store) 

And some definable perks for the customer too: 

• A satisfied ego
• Personalized information sent to you
• Instant Sale items, the moment you walk in. 
• Promotional offers just for you 
• Easier Transactions 
• Measurable Results

Just to name a few. 

Technology is moving forward, and so is the ability to market and advertise products and services to the exact customers you want. The ones who are looking for you. The ones you are looking for. This scenario is not far away. 

With the opening of Easy Print, Sharm’s state-of-the-art print shop, offering both offset and digital printing, personalized marketing is available, ready for you to use. With the combination of database and technology, Easy Print can print your flyers with the recipients name on it, preferred colour scheme, and preferred image. Each and every single one. It’s that personal. Print a magazine cover with the reader’s name on it, if you feel like it.

Think about it this way, why print 5000 offset flyers, when you can print 300-targeted ones, choosing the people whom you want to receive your promotion. Why print and store a season’s supply of collateral materials, when you can print daily to specific people? Why think generic, when you can choose specific? Times have changed. We are in an era of a new world, a new world order as some may say. To survive you need to change. 

New – new - new everything. Personalized marketing is the new media. New media options have inundated consumers in recent years, and with so many entertainment and communication technologies available, consumers are harder to reach. Consumers are no longer tolerating "interruptive" advertising to the extent they used to, and more personal marketing strategies are becoming a very effective method of appealing to consumers. With the internet, cellular phones, video game systems, on-demand cable, DVRs and other technologies, consumers are not as accessible via mass market advertising like television or print. They are now "jacked-in" to infinite information on an unprecedented scale. They know what products are available, and they know how to find them.

With this vast information and product access at their fingertips, today's consumers don't want to be barked at by persistent sales pitches. Instead they want to be spoken to like a friend, want to know what the product can do for them, they want to be engaged. So do just that – get personal with your clients.

Remember, today's science fiction is tomorrow's science fact. "Would you like those jeans in blue or black Mr. Cruise? Thank you, they will be delivered to your home within the hour."

Got something to say, email (editor@sinaiweekly.com).