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Q:  Are you talking to me?
 
For ten years now, marketers have been promising more intelligent and effective means of communicating with their existing and potential customers. But the reality, argues David Arrowsmith of Protagona, is still far removed from that.
 
And the problem is not one of technology - that is available today! Rather, it is a case of having the right people and processes, and the wherewithal to make it happen.
 
"Are you talking to me? Yes, you, that enormous retailer which, despite enjoying my custom for the last 10 years, still sends me highly aggravating and insultingly impersonal direct mail imploring me to buy services I neither want nor desire, or indeed already subscribe to, with you. Come to think of it, you're starting to annoy me. Why, when there's so much technology available to you, do you insist on alienating me instead of understanding my needs and desires? In fact, I've had enough. I'm taking my business elsewhere. So if you are talking to me, you can stop now. I don't shop with you any more."
 
Another lost customer, and one whose move probably will never be noticed. And in today's ferociously competitive markets, coupled with uncertain economies made even more uncertain following 11 September, every customer counts. Airlines, banks, insurance firms, food and petrol retailers, and Internet services operations all face the same acute pressures, driven now by a customer base that expects quality, choice and service as well as a low price, and looks forward to near-instant gratification of those expectations.
 
The difference between winning and losing now is much narrower than it's ever been. But you wouldn't know it by the way most companies behave towards their customers and prospects. Wrong names, wrong addresses, wrong offers and wrong prices...
 
This is not a case of technology haves and have-nots. This is about making good the promises that have been made by marketeers for the last 10 years and more - that their methods would become at once cleverer, subtler, less invasive and much more effective in gaining and retaining customers. For over a decade now we've been waiting without any discernible movement.
 
True, the general environment has become more customer-friendly, but given the investment and hype over the last dozen years, we're justified in expecting things to have turned out so much better. One to one marketing, data mining, data warehousing, customer self-service, smart cards, brand loyalty, intelligent agents, intelligent profiling, multimedia touch points, salesforce automation, and supply chain and customer relationship management (SCM and CRM) have conspired to fill many more column inches than shopping trolleys. Brand managers, it seems, have learned little since 1990, or if they have they've failed to translate their education into best practice.
 
The good news is that there are some very good examples of intelligent and considered marketing, predominantly among fast-growing small and medium sized companies, suggesting there is some hope after all. Moreover, those instances highlight the value of people and process over technology alone, and the importance of making each individual feel just that - cross and up-selling does work when offers are personalised and relevant.
 
Getting it right requires the right people and processes. And that ultimately means having the skills in place that bridge marketing and IT. Why? Because the type of detail of customer information required by marketing departments invariably rests within the realm of technology departments, which historically have held the purse strings for marketing software and systems. That in turn means IT hasn't invested if no benefit to its operations has been made clear, and which is why successful marketing operations need a close ally in the CEO's chair.
 
Without that level of understanding and commitment, marketing will continue on its aimless course, doing the same thing again and again and expecting things to change. Already you can see budgets being trimmed, which will result in lost market share and more hand-wringing and hope that some external factor comes along to improve things.
 
Not only are such actions commercially inept, you could go further and argue that, in a marketing context, the lack of use of the data that big companies hold on us is criminal. You would think a multi-billion turnover airline could offer free sun tan oil and paragliding discounts with your next booking to Spain, where you go every year, as an incentive to maintain your custom. But since they don't, losing that customer, who has every right to be upset at such crass avoidance, should come as no surprise (although it inevitably will).
 
And in that lies the heart of the issue: customers, not products, now drive marketing. With so much choice available and prices increasingly within a tighter band, consumers are not happy being inflicted with the same launch material, at the same time, offering the same product at the same price as 50,000 others.
 
That, as they say, is bass-ackwards. Instead, the consumer's readiness and availability to buy is what should be driving marketing organisations, and that information can only come by applying the right people, process and technology spanning all transactions and touch points. In this model, each customer is allocated an individual marketing campaign, building on current and previous buying activities and habits to sell the right product at the right time, and at the right price. Simple.
 
If it is so simple, why isn't it happening? The answer, perhaps surprisingly, is not a technology one. That side of the equation has now been solved. The problem lies with the remaining 90% involving people and process, and having the wherewithal and creativity to put it all together.
 
But make no mistake, this will happen and, what must sound alarm bells for the majority of commercial organisations, is already happening within a handful of early adopters, predominantly in the US. The process provides more than anything else the competitive advantage in markets where so much else is the same. Credit cards, phone lines, bank accounts and car insurance: all are virtually indistinguishable as commodities, and only inertia and sloth prevents most customers from switching more often or even at all.
 
Imagine what happens when one of them starts communicating directly and personally with a steady stream of relevant offers and service options. Picture a wholly new entrant operating on the Internet stealing a march on the incumbent four or five market leaders. They won't know what hit them. And as they haemorrhage customers you can be sure they'll point to virtually everything else before admitting that they couldn't market sugar to a boiled sweet maker.
 
In the meantime, expect more mass mailings and meaningless messaging. But be consoled by the notion that you will be sold to much more intelligently and with much greater consideration in the not distant future!