The world economic forum and many futurists believe personal data is the new asset class that will emerge as a competitive advantage for many marketers. It is important that marketers start using this data  intelligently, judiciously and in a manner that benefits and engages the customer. Else, this is one area that can have a severe backlash from customers just like the occupy the wall street episode.

Personal data may be the new oil but refining and using it sparingly with relevance is becoming a very important issue for marketers to focus and address.

Who is the owner of our personal data?

However,  there is an emerging debate around the ownership of personal data as digital outposts & sites are gathering data about customers like never before. Google recently released a new privacy policy last week which  redefines how this data will be used across all Google properties that we as their customers have an account. The new Google privacy policy reads " We may use the name you provide for your Google Profile across all of the services we offer that require a Google Account.....We also use this information to offer you tailored content – like giving you more relevant search results and ads...."

Clearly, the challenge that is becoming a key part of the debate is who is the owner of this personal data  and what of it can be used and by whom.

My View

I personally believe customers should be given control of their data. Customers must give permission about which of this data can be used basis their interests and lifestyle needs to companies, advertisers and marketers. And thereby brands can deliver value to these customers.

Imagine personal data lockers being available which customers can own for a fee(much like the demat of company shares that have happened over years across different countries & markets). There will be several central agencies that hold this data and provide access to customers  - with a front-end which provides flexibility to give permissions to customers to release this data for commercial purposes. If the past few decades were the era of credit bureaus, the coming decades are the era of data bureaus.

Imagine a customer wanting to buy a car ticks the check-box on the need or expresses the need to be a part of a community of interest.Many marketers and companies then vie to build a dialog and a conversation with the customer - not spam her with emails, irrelevant ads and messages on mobiles. All the searches that customer does then become available for relevant ads to be shown to her online. Then, the sales & marketing teams of different marketers & products unlock a new engagement platform to woo this customer.

The customer experience is therefore refined, relevant and customized like never before using the data that is in control in the hands of the customer. 

Imagine the power of this data. Imagine its efficiency. Imagine its effectivness. If personal data has to remain as the new oil, the control & flexibility must be in the hands of the customer.

Sharon Drew Morgan makes very interesting points in her article where she draws attention on how marketing automation software needs to add decision facilitation technology to their offerings.

She writes, any such marketing software like Marketo, Eloqua,  just help capture some names - email addresses, telephone nos etc. which is great but there is no way to understand at what stage is the prospect in the buying process. This is the precisely where such software must add value to any company's lead management process.

I agree with her, as "stage of buying/decision process" decides in the lead's mind, the kind of information they need & plays a huge role in evaluation & purchase decision. According to me, each person, who is a lead, could be in different stages in the buying/decision process:

1. Trigger stage - where the person is just evaluating the need
2. Consider stage - where the person is considering to buy or not
3. Search stage - where the person is actively looking at all choices before making the decision
4. Choose stage - where the person is close to making the decision & is in a compare mind-set
5. Buy Stage - Where the person looking at all offers/discounts and ready to pay the cheque

Marketing automation software need to "integrate" or "tag" this decision-based thinking that goes through a prospect's mind to ensure a precise method of tagging the lead. This will certainly have downstream effects on what information is shared at each stage with the prospect by both the sales  and the marketing team that can accelerate decision making or conversion.

Capturing the name alone is not good enough. Calling it Hot/Cold/Warm may be better but not good enough too. It is important for marketing automation softwares to "tag" the leads by the the stage in the decision cycle to truly value-add to the marketing automation process.

When I talk and work with people and clients on many assignments, the challenge I find for enterprises to be customer-centric is, how to bring marketing & technology together. Increasingly, technology is getting adopted in many customer-centric channels like never before and marketing is getting more & more real time & thefore technology is becoming a nerve-centre for marketing. The future , I have always thought is the changing( or can I call it merging) role of marketing & technology folks and the need for them to work together.

I read an interesting article today, if there is a need for a CMTO ( Chief Marketing Technology Officer)! I thought this was quite interesting. Who  is a CMTO and what does he or she do?

" A chief marketing technology officer (CTMO) — use whatever label you prefer — is simply the lead marketing technologist, organizing and managing that team. He or she reports to the CMO, not the CIO. Again, this is ultimately a marketing responsibility. There should be collaboration with IT, of course, assuring that marketing fully leverages its infrastructure and complies with technical governance standards. But collaborating is better than being solely dependent."

I find this very thought provoking and I do feel this is doable. The role of the CMTO is to ensure the right technology - either already invested is leveraged across the enterprise or if to be invested is partnered and led by this role - to collaboratively ensure this is adopted enterprise-wide.

Finally, customers must see the benefit of technology in their interaction experience with any company. The role of the CMTO is to make this happen.

There is a great article in Time Magazine which talks about "How companies know everything about you?".

There are many relevant points that are being made there but I really don't concur with all the blame &  privacy issues that are being made in the article. I agree with the need for privacy of my data and of course, am against littering of my personal information. But, before we jump of the hook and start  blaming the internet, industry leaders like google, facebook, twitter &  other data marketing companies, we as consumers need to think about the following points:

1. Free email : There is nothing called a free lunch right? When you have a free email id which you have  opted to take and use extensively, the companies need to find a business model to make money. Hence, they decided to build a business model around targeted advertising using the content and information that you access. The money they earn is being used to store our email data, provide uninterrupted access to your email, maintain the infrastructure etc. So, are we as consumers ready to pay for such services and also therefore define or give information access, rights to these companies on our terms? 
2. Customer aggregation platforms have done it for decades, so what's the stress?:  Television, radio station, newspapers did it for decades. The content that consumers watched on TV was subsidized by advertisers, broadcasters & electronic appliance companies to name a few - They paid to reach consumers and group of consumers like you. Every interruption of ' your valuable time' when you watch your favourite movies and soap operas is 'invasion of our privacy'. We chose to live with it, till new digital media like internet, mobile came-in. There were no laws to stop this invasion of privacy. The new media companies have now found a new method to hawk this information. Are we as consumers ready to pay subscription charges for such content and define access rights for this information on our terms?
3. Intermediation leads to social litter, disintermediation protects it: Any intermediator, we know, controls the information, prices and margins. This has happened time and again to us as consumers. The farmer faced this many decades ago as he could not get the right prices for his produce as the intermediators held them to ransom till disintermediators intervened and build an efficient supply chain. The banks are the age-old intermediators who have made pots of profits( and they make it still) by making money on our money!  I see many social media platforms as intermediators - I never was able to connect with my friends who I had lost for ever till they came-in and made it easy. I see it as a huge a benefit. But, the information they hold is a goldmine and they have to find ways to monetize it to remain in business. Are we as consumers willing to pay for being members of these social platforms - even a couple of cents, if we really find them valuable and beneficial? Therefore, we can define access rights to these platforms on our information on our terms? 

To conclude, what I see around me emerging is businesses like information vaults, personal information utlities (PIUs) firms like allow, Personal which talk the right language of consumer control but as a consumer I would like to know what are their terms of agreement with my preferred platforms - social media, TV, email service provider, communities on the Net am a member of, financial services provider, govt.( they trade social security nos. for a price too!) etc.. There needs to be terms of transparency, terms of portability, terms of usage,terms of enagement   etc. before we as consumers jump-in and start embracing these platforms.

Else, this will be a case of one more of the many fads that  we will fall into and we will undermine our data once again!

I recently received a mail from my favourite airline Jet Airways, that I have been downgraded! I am a member of their loyalty program for years now! And this is not the first time this has happened to me. It also happened in 2001 and 2002 too.

The letter read - "...since you have not had enough flights with us, you will be downagraded. Our Dynamic Tier Review (DTR) formula, unique to Jet Airways - DTR is an award winning, multi-period and multi-criteria-based tier review. It has no precedent anywhere in the world. With DTR, upgrade to the higher tier is quicker and tier renewal is easier. The DTR evaluates a member's tier based on Tier Points and Tier JPMiles earned....."

I was disappointed. As a customer, it did not matter to me if the DTR was award winning for Jet Airways! It surely did not work for me ( the downgrade letter was templated too with such high sound words and sentences!). 

It made me think about the structure of current loyalty programs across the world and their relevance when loyal customers like me are click away from the next best offer!

Here are some questions that came to my mind:

1. In a year of recession and tough 2 years for business, I was suprised how the DTR did not take care of this business environment. I did'nt fly so much as Jet would have wanted. So, Jet's view of my loyalty is transcational - fly more( at full price or premium prices and get rewarded more!). I too will behave the same way in the future, I presume. Question #1: Can't loyalty programs be flexible, adapt to new environment, and why reward only transactional loyalty?
2. Given the unsettling business environment that it was over the last 2 years, why would me even as a "fiercely" loyal customer, travel in Jet if the fares were not competitive. Finally, if there is no value, loyalty cannot be bought with points. Question # 2: When there is a challenge of intrinsic value in the product,  will loyalty progams deliver - No. It is better to focus on the product rather than upset customers. Companies must know, customers will move on in such circumstances!
3. I have been surprised with their loyalty program  not paying attention to customer experience, in spite of being a Citibank-Jet Platinum card member. Every time redeeming their upgrade vouchers was a pain. The little travel that I did in these 2 years, whenever I presented the voucher, I was told it was applicable only on full price tickets! Funny, not sure what world they were living in. Question # 3: Do companies that run loyalty programs pay attention to  such little details that affect customer experience? They took trouble  a few years back to invite me to their co-branded card, but forgot to look at my spends and credits to give me waivers at such tough recessionary period.The bank has no clue, whatsover.
   

Loyalty programs are still in their 1.0 version.  Imagine a product that has not changed for 25 years! They still are in an old world order - "spend with us to earn rewards". Sometimes they have to recognize the value that customers get when they are out shopping for options, may not justfiy the reward they earn everytime if they have to stay within these products/brands. They need to transform given the new environment and options in front of customers.

Customer seek value and surely are willing to pay premium for loyalty but recognition, surprises and instant gratification will need to be weaved into these programs - on the assumption value needs to be earned in the customer's mind & wallet.

Rest assured, this is not a rant but earnestly these are thoughts that I had in my mind and coming out of experiences I have had with such programs over time.  

I often see a lot of digital marketing specialists treat social media data almost like traffic lights- a kind of sentiment monitor - Red, green and amber - here are the positive scores, negative scores etc. I wonder what marketing actionability does such visualization and presentation give to marketers. For the first few months, it may sound interesting to marketers, after that am 100% sure, they will get bored and start questioning the application and business impact of such data.

On the other hand, I see traditional direct marketers or database marketers or analytical professionals lost when it comes to social media. It is almost like finding their way in a maze and they often treat this as technology or a statistical problem that has no application in this medium. Also, they  have very little clue about this medium. There is  huge opportunity to apply  both powerful direct marketing principles, database marketing and analytical techniques to this social media data. In fact, digital marketing specialists too need learn from these  principles & techniques.

In fact here my view of how social media data is changing  all of this.

1. Direct marketing was always restricted because of lack of customer address, behavioural data and information - social media data changes all of that.
2. No more physical address is important. An address on the web, posts on social media sites can help identify the customer and their current behaviour, attitudes and concerns. Treat all of this as 'information for action'  rather than ' positive words or negative words of sentiment'. In fact sentiment on the web is dynamic. Action must be swift and dynamic to sentiments as they have a potential to make real-time impact.
3. Treat comments & posts data as response which can help build individual relationships and communities. This could have never been possible without social media.
4. Relationships in the past were based on only transactional data, today social media enables relationships based on individual behaviour - positive and negative emotions which can be deciphered. They need to managed as emotion-led customized campaigns with clear relationship metrics.

It was interesting see an article  by Bob Maclnnis & Sari Tamilio who also urges us to think similarly about social media data.

Do you agree? Would love to see your comments and thoughts on the same.

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.

I was just reading an interesting Location-based Marketing(LBM) promotion by Pepsi called Pepsi Loot. It's a great customer marketing example by a leading soft goods marketer like Pepsi. The fun in combining digital marketing with data, distribution reach, loyalty, customer engagement & customer experience is the future.

This is how Pepsi Loot works:

If your are a Pepsi fan, you can now use your iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad to earn credits toward free music by checking in to Pepsi-serving restaurants with the new app Pepsi Loot.

Using your GPS, the free Pepsi Loot app will display nearby Pepsi “Pop Spots,” or restaurants that serve Pepsi products. Once your device’s GPS shows that you’re at the actual location, you’ll be given the option to check in to the site. For the first check in, you’ll receive one Pepsi Loot credit—enough to download a free song—and one credit for every three check ins after. You’ll see a few of the featured artists in the "Loot" section of the app, along with a YouTube portal to artist videos. However, actually downloading your free tunes requires you to go to the Pepsi Loot Store website from an actual computer (and sign up for an account). The app will offer other exclusive deals at participating restaurants.

It's really smart location based Mobile marketing. But, I do have a few questions for brand marketers to consider:

• As  brand marketers, when you run an app in an online world, the world is your marketplace, how do I find my Pepsi "Pop Spots" in India? Your marketing promotions need to move beyond  borders!
• How can Mobile Apps become device neutral? That's when there is going to be mass adoption of such CPG marketing tactics.
• In a country like India, WAP phones, Internet on Mobile, Smartphones usage is still a long way for adoption. The most adopted VAS is SMS!  How does one use LBM to such an environment is critical for mass reach & usage. We need to see growth of  Mobile Apps for emerging mobile markets like India.