When The Consumer Changes The Way She Buys, Should You Change The Way You Sell?

By Dereck Lackey

 eMarketer writes “ Are Impersonal Messages Hurting Your Online Messages”, exhibiting some research that reveal online tactics that marketers are using. According to another chart in the article only 13% of the marketers who use email marketing elected to send emails based on individual customer preferences with real time monitoring.

 As marketers in The Google Age, we have to wake up.

The consumer really has changed the way she buys.

One of the reasons, as a consumer, I am so willing to give up my personal information online is so marketers who are irrelevant to me will stop barraging me with messages. No offense to anyone out there, but I am not the least bit interested in feminine hygiene products, yet watching TV of flipping through magazines, I am constantly assaulted by those ads. I am trusting some universal laws when I say that marketers must now change the way they sell. We know that marketers are at least dollar-smart, so it is feasible that they will segment and personalize more as the data becomes easier to collect and the cost of delivering messages online remains negligible. But the cost of free media space is you must personalize the message. You are talking to me – an individual – not a demographic target group. Change your context – change your actions.

 But, damn it’s slow in coming.

 There is no place for impersonal messages online. Marketers – please use your traditional media for that crap so we can continue to ignore it.

 But if you are going to send me a commercial message, you must first know who I am and what my interests are. You must then speak to those interests in a way that enrolls me in whatever your selling. I may buy it if it is the right product at the right time.

And if you cannot bother to do that, then at least allow me to win something. Remember – the only time I respond to a commercial message is when I see what is in it for me. If you cannot see your way to address that in your online communications, at least let me enter to win something.