I was reading an interesting article by Umair Haque on the threat of open customer rebellion and how industrial age businesses are completely unprepared to change the ways they  engage, treat and manage customers.He writes:

"Yesterday's massive, sprawling organizations could pacify "consumers" by buying them off with a discount or three, an overblown celebrity promising the moon, an entirely new "brand" designed as camouflage, or adding an extra blade or five, patty or three, or cylinder or four, and calling it "innovation." But that probably won't pacify people concerned not merely with what they "get," but with what, if anything, you're really contributing to society".

He goes to quote an interesting example:

"ING customers mobilised on Twitter and other social networks to protest at bonuses paid to bosses at the bank, one of the biggest in the country. The threat of direct action raised the spectre of a partial run on ING, terrifying the Dutch establishment. Fred Polhout, union organiser at the bank, says: "People were outraged. We heard about the bloated sums being paid again in the City and in New York; but suddenly the issue exploded on our own front door."

To me this is a lovely articulation of  how unprepared many companies are. It made me think of some interesting analogy of how new information age thinking has to drive changes in industrial age-mindset companies:

1. In the industrial age, there were labor unions who acted as interest groups for community who produced goods. The customer had no power as they were fragmented across markets. The information age is creating customer unions where customers come together to rally against companies which do injustice to them, their enviroment, their community, unfair business relationship & services etc. 
2. The labor unions could take the cause of only one company, theortically speaking. But, customer unions can have members across different products/brands across geographies and pose a larger threat.
3. The customer unions are self-engaging members who pose a potential threat to companies who undermine their power.
4. The customer unions can come together within a few hours and disrupt the brand reputation built over years by companies.
5. The customer unions have the power of internet, social media to engage & collaborate for this cause and will disengage once the cause is achieved.
6. If there were union leaders who drove the labor unions, here there are customer leaders who drive the opinions and issues. Companies need to identify them as they emerge from time to time for different reasons. But address them with agility.
7. Authencity and honesty will be the hallmark of successfully handling these customer unions and companies need to find new innovative methods of handling them openly & with transparency.

It's time companies and marketing departments realize this and find new ways of truly engaging with customers and their opinions.

With Social Web taking shape over the last couple of years( over 500 million customers are socially networked) and showing signs of aggressive growth, customer profiles are increasingly getting accessible and I see more and more misuse of the same.

The recent one that I have experienced is in Linked-in where I get almost one request a day to join one forum or the other. The forum effectively is a method to network and conduct business without my permission. This is the starting instance of professional misuse of the network. I see this as an evolved spam in the garb networking with your peers in the industry. Similarly in the B2C arena, with google, facebook and  soon to announce google's groupon like services, our data - both demographic and behavioral, is  increasingly getting threatened to be misused. Take another services company Spokeo, they claim to be #1 reverse email company to find email addresses of customers and they are even the first ones to link your physical address with your email address! Days are not far-off when all your information will be out on the web!

In the traditional offline world, there were regulations that were brought-in like DNC lists for telecalling, Unsubscribe for email marketing etc. but these are archiac in the online social world. How do we ensure that content providers and service providers - who trade our data for advertising revenue be controlled? This are exactly the questions customers are being besieged with as there is a huge information overload which can lead to blindspots for marketing programs. 

This is where new service providers seem to be mushrooming. For example - Personal.com is an interesting model where their proposition is:

1. Where customers set the rules to share their data, not companies!
2. It helps customers manage their identify across various services that they access to.
3. Instant personalization of content, offers etc. basis their profiles and information
4. Advertisers compensate customers for having a dialog with them!

I believe the day is not far-off when customers will clamour for control of their data and seek not just commercial returns as it is widely touted but even advice, mentoring, support, customer care/service that they can get for the information they share will evolve. 

The world of direct marketing is undergoing a sea change where there is a marriage of new digital marketing tools & methods to the old world direct marketing principles & vehicles.

In fact, almost a decade back, I had coined a term "Hybrid marketing" as the future of marketing - the convergence of online and offline techniques. I am glad to see it come of age. The internet, mobile &  direct mail needs to converge and work together to drive better ROI for brand marketers. 

Peppers& Rogers has interesting article on the same. There are some interesting points and applications that has been brought out in this article:

Now, thanks to an emerging technology called QR Codes, or Quick Response Codes, direct mail can go immediately from print to interactive. A consumer with a QR Code reader on his smartphone can quickly scan this two-dimensional barcode on a direct mail piece and be immediately taken to online content without having to type in a Web address. In this way, QR Codes turn that printed direct mail piece into an interactive mobile response, transforming static messages into hyperlinks to just about anything online.

We know the positive statistics on the power of personalization, and now the Web itself can be personalized. A personalized URL (PURL) provides a Web address for an individual so that the content at the address can be unique for that visitor. When a direct mail recipient logs on to a PURL, information from the marketer's database can be used to tailor the Web experience for that person. Additionally, the website can track the respondent's activity and modify what is offered based on the consumer's actions. That interaction can also be very useful in making future print and online communications.

A QR code can link a smartphone user to a PURL, allowing a business to create unique QR codes linking to PURLs for everyone on its direct mail list. Once on a PURL microsite, a visitor may be invited to sign up for monthly newsletters, view an embedded video, or request a mailed fulfillment package. And the good news is that all of this online interaction can be measured for campaign ROI.

Email and SMS mobile text messaging can also be integrated into a multitouch marketing campaign. For example, a consumer receives a direct mail piece that contains a QR Code. She scans the code with her smartphone and is immediately linked to a personalized website. Then, shortly after that, she receives an email or SMS text response thanking her for visiting the site. Based on what information she chose to share, she may receive an additional direct mail piece, text, or social media notification as a follow up. Thanks to postal delivery alerts, it's even possible to spark curiosity and anticipation in a consumer by notifying them via email or mobile that a personalized package will soon arrive in the mail.

The fact really is that traditional direct marketers have to adopt these techniques by using them effectively in their marketing campaigns. The digital marketers have to get adept in using the direct marketing principles by seamlessly converging these new tools & techniques to the offline  marketing techniques.

Only  when this is done,will brand marketers see the benefits of " true" response, engagement and conversions.The reality of customer engagement, growing customer relationships and increased customer conversions will become visible.

I don't see too many direct marketers and digital marketers having the skills and competency in using these "ambidextourous" techniques of both the worlds. The faster they learn & adopt them, the faster they will be able to demonstrate the ROI in their marketing campaigns.

In the recent past, i had written saying that we will move in the near future from "search" engines to "do" engines. Looks like Eric Schimdt recently has been talking about serendipity engines as the future. 

Forrester writes about this.

As you look into the future, the distinction between “search” and “discovery” gets muddy.  While it sounds like science fiction to suggest that technology can help search for things you don’t even yet know you want, the opportunities to improve human discovery are very real.  Combining a person’s context—where they are, who they’re with—with their past opinions and actions and the opinions and actions of others can create tremendous value and relevance.

Imagine you’re someone who has positively rated Mexican restaurants in the past.  As you drive through town around lunchtime, your device alerts you to a well-rated Mexican restaurant that is nearby and likely to suit your tastes.  This information may not be welcome at 8 a.m. or 2 p.m., nor would it be welcome to someone who hasn’t expressed an affinity for Mexican food.  It is the combination of social media, individual preferences and context that creates the opportunity for proactive discovery rather than reactive search.

This isn’t about opening your Yelp application on your smartphone and seeing the same search results as everyone else; it’s about having hardware and software that intuits and presents the things you really care about.  There are already examples of simple "Serendipity Engines" available, such as Netflix's rating system—the more movies you rate, the better the recommendations you'll receive.

What is exciting about this future is the continued progress toward empowering consumers. 

How will this evolve over the next few years will be interesting to track. Service & solution providers will need to build and integrate their development around these trends.

I was recently reading an interesting view on  the need for an online data portability policy & the do's and don't for companies and marketeers to publish such a policy. This kind of a policy, I believe, is becoming very important as we leave a lot of personal information online and users like me must have control on the information that can be shared or ones that must remain private. So is the case with consumers who visit a company website or marketing microsites or social websites where they again leave information about themselves( this is just not an unsubscribe policy!).

Imagine that you are on a social networking site and their revenue model is targeted advertising. Social networking sites today use this information to link marketers to consumers with similar interests/views - both positive and negative across multiple websites. The economic value of such information is huge and it must be left to each consumer to let such sites enhance the online experience in a customized manner using customized content. One cannot assume everbody wants customization of digital experience and intrusion of such sorts is despicable.

With more and more Apps, APIs etc. growing in acceptance and usage, this is a very important step that marketers and companies need to be cognizant of.

NY Times carried an article last week about the new kinds of banking services that are emerging in the post recession era! Some of the new names that they mention are SmartyPig, Kasasa, PerkStreet etc.

The concept is pretty simple these are simple online checking or savings accounts with an objective to save you from the grips of mega banks. They give you higher interest rates, help you achieve your goals with some smart savings plans, no surchage fee ATMs access etc.

I am not really sure how these new concepts work as we have seen online only banks, peer-to-peer banking come and go. But, surely what I seem to take out is that :

1. Customer are increasingly thinking more about savings today than spending
2. They don't want to pay for services that are hidden or having surprises. The need for transparency is becoming more and more important.
3. There is a need for these banking institutions to align their products to a customer's investment goals. Save-to-spend later is an interesting twist am seeing in these services or products.
4. There is a need to simplify banking and some of the services to make it more accessible to many.
5. It is also interesting to see community banks coming together to offer these services. The smaller banks looks like were far more closer to their customers than the bigger ones. But, clearly just transactional relationships will not be order of the day for the banking instituions.

Joseph Jaffe makes some incredible points in his new book Flip The Funnel.

Most industries really forget existing customers in their strive to grow market share through new acquisitions. For example, the auto industry is no exception. He makes some fantastic points on how Automotive industry must focus on retention as a foundation for acquisition:

Instead of “ending” all outreach efforts at the point of customer purchase, why not use this moment of truth to kick relationship building efforts into high gear? For some reason, most auto brands become goldfish the moment their customers drive out of their showrooms with their new leased car. Out of site. Out of mind.

Here are some opportunities that he identifies:

Acknowledgment – everything from courtesy follow-up calls to period check-ins; calls on birthdays; updates on new accessories, technology patches. And then again there are the two most powerful words in the English language, “Thank you” (there’s also I’m sorry but that’s another story for another day). The other day I went into a local bank to apply for a loan. My contact made a point to introduce me to the owner of the bank. When last did you meet the owner of your local dealership? Do you even know who they are? Or more importantly, do they even know who you are?

Dialogue – Does your local salesperson have a Facebook page? Maybe they should? What about the brand itself: are they active on Twitter? Does that even mean anything? More importantly how do they escalate or route queries or concerns to the right and relevant parties?

In the automotive world, there is a gaping chasm between sales and service (support).

I could not quite disagree with him on this. Take a look a host of opportunities available for them

Not many companies or brands have mastered the art of treating retention as a form of acquisition. They neither have templates nor a  follow-up plan of how to leverage this. This either ends-up in poor investments in retention or even if they invest in retention programs, there is no organized method of  building a value out of the efforts that are put in. Hence, the results are neither measured nor made a part of the overall enterprise-wide initiative.

Remember, retention cannot be made a department responsibility or accountability but needs an organization-wide ownership. This has catalytic effect on acquisition because of better word-of-mouth, better customer experience, better customer feedback gathering and resolution across departments.

When is your company ready to treat retention as a form of acquisition? Make it happen today.   

I had blogged sometime back about Dripvertising in 2007 and recently it was interesting to read an article on Drip Marketing Campaigns by Peppers & Rogers. They shared many of the views that I had shared in that post. I certainly believe the future of marketing is doing more and more of drip marketing campaigns. Consumers are definitely tired of " too-much-marketing" in the face and therefore nurturing your prospects and customers is becoming more and more important.

Here are some salient " How-to-do" list from their post which I believe is how next-generation marketing campaigns will evolve.:

• Attitude adjustment: Will you make a decision to become a truly nurturing company? Begin with a well thought out philosophy of actually helping customers succeed, not just helping them buy more.
• Database cleansing and prioritizing: Identify and profile A-, B-, C-level customers, prospects, and centers of influence. Do you have their explicit permission to touch them, especially via email?
• Unique value proposition: Can you articulate and dimensionalize a statement that correctly and rapidly positions and differentiates your company from others?
• Hone your elevator pitch: Your elevator pitch has the potential to be the most profitable 60 "selling" seconds you will have with a prospect. Tell a story and keep it simple, defining the problem or challenge your product and service addresses.
• Campaigns -- not blasts: Relationships grow from trust. Trust grows from a feeling of authentic helping in all interactions. To ensure enduring interest, keep the law of deposits and withdrawals always top of mind. Nourish and cultivate a relationship with messages that matter and content that really counts to people you care about.
• Create, test, automate, delegate, and nurture it (or ditch it!): Persistence, professionalism, and authenticity keep your touches real, fresh, and always helpful in some way. Automate and replicate your efforts with the best of CRM refinements and email marketing tools that make nurturing a breeze.
• Good things come to those who wait: The frequency with which you touch your clients and prospects will vary based on your relationship with them and the nature of your business. However, your touches should be spread out (five to six weeks) so as to not be intrusive, yet frequent enough to remain top-of-mind. The payoff will come to those who practice patience. Not many marketers and salespeople are patient enough to communicate with a client or prospect for one or two years before making a sale.

I am bombarded in a day with hundreds of emails and SMSs- many of them are promotional emails and SMSs. I simply ignore them.

I sit in front of the TV to watch my favorite program and I see a ticker running with messages.Just fails to grab my attention.

I am out to watch a movie and suddenly I realize there are "product placements" intelligently( supposed to be) weaved with the script. My mind shuts immediately as I realize I am being marketed at.

Many consumers like me are getting a lot a savvier than ever before and in one of my conversations with my clients, she was telling me how the hell do I market in a world where most of my best prospects and customers are in Do-No-Call or Do-Not-Disturb lists! 

How does one do marketing in a world when the door is already shut?!

Welcome to the world of relevance marketing. This is increasingly becoming important as many marketing messages are just being ignored or it's money wasted as the consumer is just indifferent. How does one practice the art of relevance marketing.

1. It starts with being genuine and authentic. Facebook fan club/Apps has become a fad. Soon it will lose its relevance after the initial hysteria is over. May be start a help desk page in Facebook for your brand to answer any queries or may be even have a click-to-call service as an app in your Facebook page,twitter or mobile which connects the customer with your already existing call centre.
2. Follow the customer learning journey   - It is important to understand at what stage is your customer or prospect at. It is important not lose the communication script & trigger at each stage. As the customer or prospect knows more about your brand, the intensity of her queries or help is different. It pays to focus your attention to this detail. 
3. Bring the data together for the dialog - Many a times the availability of multi-channel options creates fragmented knowledge across the company among customer facing executives. How can we identify repeat customers or  visitors and make them know enterprise wide, how can you fuse the data available at the call centre with web, how can your link service data with customer billing/purchase data? Start the data journey with small experiments and accelerate them with quick wins. Knowing this can help relevance marketing greatly.

My friend Sandra Zoratti has written an interesting article on this topic:

Step 1.Consumers want precision marketing. On the brand side, this process must begin by first deciding what problem, or pain point, you are seeking to address.

Step 2. Next, marketers need to evaluate and then leverage the data and campaigns currently in place.

Step 3. The next step is to synchronize your campaigns and determine the best message for the channel.

Step 4. Once a test campaign has been launched, the next step is to measure the results based on a wide range of criteria and, most importantly, bottom-line measures.

Step 5. After the initial test, it's time to refine and repeat the above steps to produce the same or different results.

Read more here

CMO council has come-up with an interesting report that many marketers have faced as consumers themselves - irrelevant communication!  Many of these marketers talk about it but do nothing about it for their own brands or products. Here are some startling facts to think about:

• While 64 percent of consumers say promotional offers dominate both the email and traditional mail they receive, only 41 percent view these as must-read communications.
• 91 percent of consumers who opt out or unsubscribe to emails, 46 percent are driven to brand defection because the messages are simply not relevant.
• The threat of customer churn and disconnection intensifies as 41 percent of consumers say they would consider ending a brand relationship due to irrelevant promotions.
• An additional 22 percent say they would definitely defect from the brand!
• Nearly three quarters of consumers have received promotions for products they have previously purchased from the company
• 73 percent of consumers would be open to receiving print statements if mailed materials were recyclable or part of a sustainability program
• Nine out of ten consumers open monthly bills delivered via traditional mail, compared to 72 percent who open bills delivered via email
• When given the opportunity to choose, 51 percent of consumers prefer to receive product or service promotions via traditional mail while 44 percent prefer email.

It's really true esp.for myself  as a customer(as the report highlights)- I have seen many companies calling me to buy the product when am already their customer!

There is a need for marketers to add a relevance filter to their customer management process. It's high time they start integrating the channels of customer interaction & communication to make this happen.