| The Myth: Many marketers act as if the introduction of social and digital media will suddenly "make it all better" and reverse declining response rates and customer disengagement. |
| The Reality: Unless we match our media and messages with the customer’s individual preferences regarding what information is relevant, and what channels should deliver those messages, all our social and digital media marketing will accomplish is add one more way to achieve more multimedia irritation! |
| This is one of several major findings based on Voice of Customer Relationship Research from companies such as Microsoft, NBC Universal, IBM, and MSC Industrial Direct. Other findings include: |
 | The poor economy and empowerment of the web have significantly increased buyer expectations of relevance and value. |
| The “center of power” has forever shifted from the marketer to the consumer. |
| Marketers who succeed will rely less on “Spray and Pray” blasts and more on engagement and conversation, on the customer's terms. |
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| Recent VOC learnings have identified four critical consumer megatrends to which marketers must rapidly adapt. We will discuss trends 2-4 in upcoming blogs. |
| Megatrend 1: Consumers, (BtoB and BtoC), are shifting from being passive recipients of marketing messages to creating and managing their own networks of multichannel, value-added sources. |
| The Challenge: How do you gain entry into their online and off-line worlds? |
| The answer is based on relevance and preference-based opt-in relationships. Once consumers have opted into a relationship and self-profiled, and once they experience messaging relevance, they often develop surprising levels of interest in receiving or accessing deeper levels of information ... via multiple channels! |
| Becoming one of those trusted multichannel sources is now a critical priority. |
| Jamie Nordstrom, President of Nordstrom Direct, notes that the store is carefully cultivating “people who shop at Nordstrom in more than one way, since multichannel shoppers spend four times, on average, what a one-source shopper spends.” |
| Try This: |
| Emphasize the value of opting in to a relationship with your company, via all media and channels. |
| Then personalize the communications per individual opt-in preferences, so the value and relevance is obvious. This will encourage deeper levels of on-going self-profiling. |
