Marketing more fun when it was simpler

July 5, 1999

BY MICHAEL KRAUSS

Do you ever get confused as a marketer?

Are you a "traditional" marketer, or a "new age" marketer? Do you worship at the altar of mass television advertising and coupons, or do you live in awe of the power of opt-in and opt-out e-mail as a tool enabling customer relationship management?

Are you an old-line "Interruption Marketer" or a hip "Permission Marketer?"

Worst of all, are you "stuck in the middle?"

"In the past five years, the whole customer relationship management discipline has re-educated the chief marketing officer and chief executive officer that customer care is a strategic weapon and an asset to the company," says Larry Jones, CEO of MessageMedia, Inc., a Boulder, Colo.-based e-mail marketing solutions outsourcer.

"In the last five years, the person responsible for customer relationships -- the chief marketing officer -- has struggled with how to integrate the multiple media at his or her disposal," Jones adds. "Today's CMO is totally prepped for this new way of relating to customers. The problem is that traditional media like advertising, regular mail and telemarketing, work at a snail's pace or are too expensive."

Listening to Jones, I think life as a marketer was so much simpler in the '60's, before all this interactive technology arrived, and all these new buzzwords and concepts came on the scene.

Certainly the marketing-mix decisions were easier 30 years ago. The era of mass advertising was a comparative cakewalk for a marketer; all it required was a heavy dose of television GRPs, some print advertising, maybe some consumer promotion and some dollars to buy interest from the trade. That formula built dynasties at Procter & Gamble, General Mills and General Foods.

Today's marketing-mix decisions are much more complex. Through their book, The One to One Future, Don Peppers and Martha Rogers taught us that technology could enable effective marketing at an individual level. In his recent book, Permission Marketing, Seth Godin, vice president of direct marketing at Yahoo!, defines action steps for building just this type of efficient and effective, personalized marketing program.

Godin argues, "The goal of Permission Marketing is to reach out to customers who have signaled an interest in learning more about your products and services. It aims to move customers up the permission ladder, from strangers to friends to customers. From customers to loyal customers until we reach the 'intravenous' level," where customers are linked to providers by a near-umbilical cord.

By contrast, Godin labels traditional approaches "interruption" marketing, lamenting that customers are bombarded with too many intrusive advertising and marketing messages.

It sounds like Jones and Godin have been talking with each other.

What does all this mean to you? The answer is "plenty," and you need to move quickly. Here are three steps you can take get up to speed on this emerging practice:

Do homework. If you haven't read Godin's new book, hurry out and buy it. All marketers, regardless of their tribal affiliation (package goods, consumer durables, business-to-business) need to keep current with the new marketing concepts emerging as a result of interactive technology. Godin's tome will become a classic (and if you haven't read Peppers and Rogers, you're really behind in your reading and need to get to the library or bookstore pronto).

Explore. You have to explore the emerging new tactics and techniques. This doesn't mean rushing out and buying premium banner ad space on the Yahoo! or Excite home pages or go out blasting e-mails to everyone. Instead, it means you should be aggressively considering building a database of customers who offer you "permission" to communicate with them.

Test Drive. You also should be actively listening to the pitches and proposals of the various vendors selling these new services. Don't buy the car -- just visit the dealership. The good news here is that you can do much of your learning online.

For example, if you're not currently communicating with your customers using a database and e-mail, consider this tool. Opt-in e-mail means, quite literally, the customers and prospects with whom you communicate via e-mail can "opt-in" and choose to participate in your e-mail communications, or they can "opt-out" and decide not to receive your missives.

To start to learn more about these techniques, the following four web sites (among others) provide tools for marketers wanting to explore and adopt these interactive marketing tactics in their business but are unfamilir with e-mail based efforts:

Yesmail.com recruits people and businesses who give their permission to receive promotional messages targeted to their unique interests. These Yesmail "members" opt-in for e-mail offers coinciding with their personal interests. Yesmail has more than 5 million individual members and claims to be adding more than 1,000 new members each day. The site is more than four old.

DeliverE.com provides information to its "members" (individual consumers) via their "matchlogic" system. Members voluntarily provide their interests, hobbies and other personal information by visiting DeliverE and entering sweepstakes. DeliverE matches its clients' outbound e-mail programs with its members' interests and provides its members with information and offers about products and services.

Mypoints.com offers free rewards on the Internet. Members earn points every time they are on the Internet engaging in a marketing and promotional activity. It's similar to an airline's mileage program: Members share their interests, and the marketers provide the points and rewards. Points can be earned by shopping, reading e-mail, filling out surveys, taking advantage of trial offers, checking out cool Web sites and referring friends to Mypoints.com. Points can be redeemed at such companies as: Blockbuster, Sprint, Sharper Image, Olive Garden, Egghead.com, Peabody.com, Ebay, Eddie Bauer and Hertz.

MessageMedia.com is a hybrid e-mail marketing consultant and outsourcer. It helps clients build large-scale e-mail programs and manages their implementation for clients. It practices permission-based marketing and handles high-volume programs for the likes of USA Today, CMP publications and Standard & Poors.

After you've kicked the tires at some of these Web sites, you still may be confused, longing for the old days when marketing mix decisions were easier and more clean cut. But if you're like most marketers, you'll be pleased to see that these "new age" techniques offer you even more diverse and creative ways to communicate with your customers and understand their needs.

After all, on-line, e-mail and permission marketing may not be a panacea; they might even be "old wine" in new "technology age" bottles. But they sure might help improve customer loyalty, sales volume, product revenues and company profits.

Isn't that what packaged goods brand management was all about? n

Michael Krauss is a partner with Diamond Technology Partners in Chicago.
He can be reached at news@ama.org.