Communication is at the center of human interaction. Marketers are well aware of the importance of communication and it’s no surprise that customer engagement, customer experience, and lifecycle management are  popular keywords today. We have to communicate well to engage our customers and to deepen relationships over time.

Marketers have plenty of collected data residing behind multiple firewalls. The opportunity remains to put this data to use and drive more effective communications. The trouble is, as we’ve been accumulating customer data, the target just shifted. There are more channels than ever that we can use to communicate with our customers and it’s a big challenge to understand customer preferences by channel.

The essential question remains: How do we communicate effectively with our customers?

If that sounds like a theoretical or just plain dumb question, consider this:

Email is the new postal service. Come rain, shine, or snow, it’s the core communication vehicle for most people. Of course when the “cloud” has a stormy period and outages occur, business grinds to a sudden halt.

Meanwhile, conversations are sparked through LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, SMS, and the occasional comment stream in a corporate blog.

Where conversations start says a lot about where they should best be maintained. I don’t know if this is scientific, but it sure is practical.

LinkedIn messaging is often indicative of newly formed relationships. Sometimes though, we get messages, invitations, and read questions from trusted friends who prefer to communicate within this social network, and it takes effort to move the stream to email.

The same thing happens in Facebook. For those who consider their Facebook page as their entry point to the internet, conversations flourish “on the wall”.

Direct messages in Twitter often deliver the substance that some people think is otherwise lacking in the microblogging format. Information is shared that would (should) never be in the public timeline, making it a great vehicle to collect opinions of high reliability.

Closer and more personal connections tend to share via SMS, and there are folks who leave their favorite IM package open all day in substitute for SMS. Conversations as well as file transfers are facilitated. Skype is becoming more powerful in this area.

The simple act of setting up a meeting these days carries with it an overhead factor that is fueled by channel choice. “Overhead” is defined as the time required to organize call participants, set up conference lines, confirm with everyone, and then remain flexible to accommodate fluid schedules. Think about how much time and effort you have spent to organize your last few conference calls. Not the recurring sales call on Monday morning, the call with the newly formed project team or with a prospective client or partner. I’ll bet 20-30 minutes could be absorbed to organize a one hour call.

Calls and meetings on my own calendar over the past month have been originated and organized via LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, SMS, Skype – yep, everything except Foursquare. Have you noticed the same phenomena in your business day?

Shift your attention back to the original question…how do we communicate effectively with our customers? The old saw of making the “right offer, right person, right channel, right time” has taken on another dimension as channel choice has exploded.

The bad news is that finding the right combination to perfect communication is more complex. The good news is that the opportunity to solidify relationships and build trust when you get the combination right is more potent than ever.

In a world where points matter less and building trust matters more, you must rationalize a way to  engage your customers through the channel of their choice in order to put the magic back in your communications stream.

If you’re of a “certain age” and have teenagers in the house, then you might have caught yourself proclaiming that your young Millennials (Generation Y) are wasting their lives playing Halo, World of Warcraft, or tinkering with their MySpace page. Since adolescents revel in the opportunity to point out hypocrisy in their adult family members, imagine the return volley of comments about how much time we Boomers spend glaring at the television watching yet another sports event without anything more than a trip to the fridge to break the action.

The best life lessons learned from sports are by playing them, but once in a while you can learn by watching.  The other night as I wandered between the NHL and NBA playoffs, the NFL draft, and some meaningless early season MLB, I had a vision. I found an answer for the big question about Social media.

Everyone knows about Social Media, few understand it, and there are proponents and opponents voicing opinion with increasing volume. To some, employing a social media strategy can accelerate achievement of business objectives, to others it is a greater waste of time than one more round of GTA3.  The one unifying question is “how do all these pieces fit together?” Almost every business person I know expresses interest in executing a social media strategy that is right for them.

Well I’ve got an answer and it is heavily basted in sports analogy:

The Play by Play Announcer: Your web site is the necessary foundation for your social media strategy. Present the facts without too much hype and hyperbole

Color Commentary: People blog for different reasons. I think it serves as a platform for opinion and to demonstrate innovative ideas and thought leadership

Player Roster: Being part of LinkedIn is today’s method to assemble your business network and document a circle of influence

Groupies: They hang out by every locker room door and some you’ll talk to while others you avoid. Establishing an authentic presence on Twitter allows you the same liberty

Inner Circle: You’ve got to have real friends you can trust. Approach these for deeper conversations via email, the phone, and in person (yes, in person should be part of your social media strategy!)

Your Agent: Few of us can do it all. We need a few Subject Matter Experts (SME’s) around to fill in our gaps and to add bandwidth. Find someone who really knows how to coordinate your social media efforts from a technology standpoint

Fans: Filling the seats is a requirement for success. Building a Facebook presence can be your biggest funnel to gain fans and you can connect further with them via the other channels depending on how relationships develop.

Sponsors: Someone has to pay the bills. We often call these folks “clients” or “customers”! The objectives of a social media strategy should include serious business objectives and revenue goals. Your valued customers/clients should be treated in a special way. Newsletters and more personalized digital correspondence works well to create deeper links

I’m interested to have your feedback on fitting the pieces of the social media puzzle together. Are you ready to play ball?

One test of social media effectiveness is whether people are listening to each other and relationships are being built. Some of the social networks I participate in are prone to shouting, with little evidence of people listening. Probably because of LinkedIn’s professional networking positioning, people tend to not only listen, but respond, contribute, and share.

I recently asked a question on LinkedIn about how people prefer to communicate. Since most of us (Boomers) have grown up with Outlook as our mail client, we rely on email as our primary communications channel for business. With the introduction of social networks and micro-blogging sites, we have more options these days, and I now receive a stream of messages from within the framework of LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter.

It’s all good, but I question the efficiency of having to keep up with multiple communications streams and constantly evaluate which ones are contributing to real business as opposed to sopping up precious time only to be rationalized as building my personal brand. I also wondered if members of Generation Y would choose differently than other demographics. So I asked:

“Which channel is your preferred one for regular communication? How do you decide when to message from email, LinkedIn, or Facebook? Why aren’t more of us using Twitter to stay in touch in “real time”? Please address as much or as little of this as you can. Your responses are highly valuable.”

I received a healthy dose of responses and any shortfall in numbers was overcome by the passion of the replies. I categorized responses in 7 categories: Face to Face, Phone, Email, LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter & Skype. Percentages reported are based on the number of responders to the total who indicated they regularly used the channel.

Predictably, Email won out with 75% indicating it was a principle communications tool. More interesting was that Facebook (37.5%), the Phone (37.5%), and LinkedIn (33.3%) ran almost a dead heat as a second priority. Face to Face meetings pulled a 20.8% figure but the low number could have been influenced by the way the question was written.

In the case of this modest survey, the qualitative remarks were the highlight.

The pros and cons of Email were noted: “Email is preferred for in-depth dialogues and information sharing experiences”, though “In an email, I can’t read inflections or any other visible signs. Also, I don’t know how long they have been polishing their answer to me – 5 seconds or 15 minutes. Finally, email is to easy to ignore by the receivers”.

Other channels had their lovers and haters:

Social Networks:

• “Social networking sites are good for mass, impersonal communications”
• “I prefer Twitter (and LinkedIn) for 1:many”

LinkedIn:

• “Linkedin … never lose a message, easy to find responses”
• “Due to the time constraints I primarily try to stick within the LinkedIn network”

Skype:

• “Used more than any other form of communication for voice, IM, and text”
• “Skype video conferencing for more in-depth communication”

Twitter:

• “Public and direct messaging through Twitter opens up totally new channels of communication and new ways to network”
• “Twitter is for twits, twerps, twots and who dunits”
• “As for Twitter, I generally think it’s impractical for most business use”

Facebook:

• “Facebook is extremely productive for groups – both public and private”
• “I personally see Facebook as a recreational tool, not a productivity tool”

Amidst the passion, I was reminded that relationships trump any favored technology ” Virtual communication … is not a substitute for the value of in-person or live voice-to-voice intimacy. When you really need to “talk”, make a date, Skype, meet in person, or speak by phone.”

And, even though F2F meetings didn’t pull big numbers, I couldn’t help but weight this vote with a healthy dose of common sense: “There is, and always will be, only one preferred method of communications. Eye ball to eye ball. Mano to mano. Look ‘em straight in the eye and make ‘em an offer they can’t refuse.”

No, Al Pacino is not in my network.

The response continued: “So, meet me at the bar, at the race track, on the golf course or over a hot game of poker. Look me in the eye and tell me what’s really happening. But be careful. I’ll know instantly if you’re full of @#it.”

With that sobering instruction, I was ready to call the Queen of Networking, Andrea Nierenberg to brush up my people skills.

One of the responders emphasized that synthesizing options would yield the best results: “With all of these … ways to communicate, it really comes down to finding about 3 tools to serve your purposes, personal, business, a cross-over or hybrid of both, and being able to cover all that from a mobile perspective is really the best marriage of tech and social media….relevant is the keyword”

Relevancy and suitability to task, these seem to be the umbrella learnings of the day, summed up with this practical advise “Of course as in anything in life, it all depends on the situation. Face to face is ideal and so is the telephone to really hear and connect. I use all forms as part of the communication.”

My thanks goes out to all the people in my LinkedIn network who responded to the question. I’ll never stop learning and hope you won’t either.

The Direct Marketing Association, known as The DMA, is the leading trade association of “business and nonprofit organizations using and supporting multichannel direct marketing tools and techniques”. Even in the digital age, Direct Marketing (DM) remains a huge business. As you can read from their site, expenditures by U.S. companies totalled $173.2 Billion during 2007, equivalent to 10.2% of total U.S. GDP.  To say that the DMA is a powerful organization is an understatement, but is the DMA introducing policies that could create long term damage to its brand?

Among the year-round slate of conferences, seminars, and educational events, the crown jewel of the DMA is their Annual Conference & Exhibition, known this year as DMA09. I have facilitated DMA sponsored seminars in the U.S. and Brazil and have attended the Annual Conference on many occasions, presenting on a few. It has always been competitive to be accepted as a speaker at a DMA event and the influencers of selection can be reduced to Brand (the power of your company’s brand in the market), Client (the interest the market has in a campaign run by your client), or Money (to what extent you sponsor or exhibit at the event). In 2009, it seems that Money has become a more influential filter for speaker selection as the DMA instituted speaker proposal fees ranging from $59 for council members to $199 for non-members.

The new policy sparked controversy. Robert Rosenthal kicked off heated conversations in Facebook and LinkedIn groups where he wrote:

“The Direct Marketing Association is circulating its call for DMA09 presenters. This year there’s a new twist…the DMA will charge a processing fee for proposal submissions in 2009 to cover the administrative costs associated with managing the RFP process….have they gone too far with this policy? The implications are serious as long term damage to their organization is not out of the question.”

The posts which followed were passionate and largely in opposition to the new policy. This excerpt sums up the opposing argument succinctly:

“Speaking at DMA events is a marketing and networking opportunity. It has brought me can’t-put-a-price-on-it credibility….I’d also like to think that the benefits flow both ways. Surely by traveling and speaking at our own expense, and by sharing what would otherwise remain proprietary information, we render a valuable service to the DMA and its members. Must we now pay, not only to be of service, but to think up and suggest ways to do so?”

Ultimately, the DMA’s Bill Carls, Senior Digital Marketing Associate, posted a response directly from the Office of DMA’s President.

“….We believe most people understand the inherent value of taking a leadership position in the direct marketing community by sharing thought leadership at the global event for integrated marketing. For them, the investment of a small processing fee upfront should not be a real deterrent, even in these increasingly challenging times.”

Weighing the stream of comments from both social networks, it is clear to me that the DMA elected a policy that is contrary to the interests of its members. Except for a few outliers, the majority of entrepreneurial and business-owning DMA members vigorously objected to the new fees.

Capitalism has an interesting personality – the market unceasingly evolves to fill gaps as historical models decay and no longer provide value. Through its new policy, the DMA may be unwittingly contributing to the disintermediation of the conference business.

There are alternatives to incurring big fees and travel expenses to attend a conference when the highest element of value is often distilled to networking. As we all know, networking has gone viral – just witness the conversations on this subject in Facebook and LinkedIn. The DMA is not alone as SourceMedia, IIR, and others are adopting their own “pay to speak” business models.

I was taught at an early age that as soon as you think you are invaluable, you are at your most vulnerable. Conference organizers in the traditional model should take note.  There are several avenues through which disintermediation could take place and I will cover a few in the very near future.

The creators of television and cable reality shows could be sued for practicing deceptive bait and switch tactics. The genre which includes The Apprentice, The Girls Next Door, Miami Ink, and The Hills are touted to chronicle people interacting in real-life situations. I’m sorry but what is portrayed is much closer to pure entertainment than reality. I’ve never seen meetings run as they are in The Apprentice and pray that my daughter doesn’t consider the escapades in The Hills to approximate reality.

On the other hand, social networks like Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, and micro-blogging site Twitter are growing at exorbitant rates while continuing to suffer from criticism by mainstream business as time-wasting black holes exposing people to career risk with unproven business return. Facebook has doubled its traffic in the past 18 months and had over 70 Million  unique visitors in February 2009.

Twitter has been growing at triple digit rates but it’s nearly 8 Million unique visitors in February trailed LinkedIn and were only roughly 10% of Facebook traffic. Despite its meager proportions to big brother Facebook and in the face of market skepticism, it’s still my opinion that Twitter is the New (and true) Reality Show.

The veracity of the conversations that take place in Twitter and the way it has been adopted by Millennials (Generation Y) and others is undeniable. Maybe it is the “reality” of having only 140 charachters at your disposal that forces “tweeps” to craft their message in a more meaningful and concise way. If you are a direct marketing copywriter and are still trying to adapt your writing style to the web, a crash course in Twitter will train your brain to make the message punchy and attention grabbing.

Business is taking notice as well.

In Brazil, one of the best known TV hosts, Marcelo Tas, has engaged in “sponsored tweeting” with Telefónica paying the tab. “This idea of compensating influentials to talk about your brand is probably going to grow” says Andrew Frank, an analyst at Gartner.

Blackbottom, a Utah based apparel company posted this Tweet to promote a special on cycling jerseys and shorts. Using hashtags and cross-referencing with their own email subscriber list, the company is taking baby steps towards the Twitter version of direct marketing. I have seen this with other companies, notably Athlinks, a company that aggregates race results for all sorts of endurance events, and expect to see more examples in the near future.

The New York Times documented the success of “Wine guy” Gary Vaynerchuk, a well known Web 2.0 guy who started the Wine Library and began online sales in 1997 when he was still in college. Since then he has steadily advanced his Internet-based marketing skills. His sites include winelibrary.com, where his daily webcast, “The Thunder Show,” has won a wide following, and garyvaynerchuk.com.

Last December, seeking to enhance sales, he offered free shipping and promoted it three ways. As a result, he said, a direct marketing mailing cost $15,000 and brought in 200 new customers; a billboard ad cost $7,500 and won 300 new customers; and tweeting the promotion on Twitter attracted 1,800 new customers.

This is just the kind of evidence that we all need to justify social media tools for business purposes, but there is more than pure ROI to be gained from micro-blogging. I’ve been able to conduct and take part in mini-surveys, have contributed to executive search, learned of breaking news before it hit the AP wire, found a triathlon coach in Vermont, and the best pizza in Buffalo, NY.

Twitter is a thought aggregator that can be a highly valuable research and networking tool. It’s becoming so popular that someone even cooked up a fake loyalty marketing program just for fun.

I’m not a Twitter apologist, and have to note that part of the evidence for it being a true Reality Show is the emergence of spam, scams, and random human drama appearing in the public timeline. Just as offline people offer to solve all your problems in a book for $19.95, deliver you the miracle diet while you still eat fast food 3x/day or find you a cheap Rolex, Twitter is not immune.

Twitter complies with the truism that your benefit is in direct relationship to your investment. At a very rapid pace, expect to see more companies listening about and promoting their brand as well as testing direct product promotions.

Follow me and join in the conversation!

There is a growing debate concerning the social media space. While the cognoscenti are touting their use of Twitter, Digg, Friend Feed and other social media tools, there are strong voices of skepticism labeling those medium as unproven business tools at best, time-wasting black holes at worst. The schism could be no more than manifestation of a marketing generation gap. Still, when I hear more than one of my respected peers with 30 years in Direct Marketing raise the question, I have to pause and consider both sides of the story.

A blog post from Response Agency framed the debate: “… Some marketers seem compelled to jump on every new high tech toy, and they insist that you be so compelled as well. Your company, they say, must send text messages, must be on Facebook and LinkedIn, and now must be on Twitter……Fine, except I have yet to see evidence that any of these toys produce sales at all, much less in a cost-effective manner. Meanwhile, I see plenty of evidence that they consume valuable time — lots of it. Time that you could have spent working. Maybe even accomplishing something productive.”

My response was to comment “The opportunity to waste time in unprofitable pursuits is always present.  Since I approach these venues with my business hat on, I invest my time to build my network and to increase my visibility and personal brand. It is working……with Twitter I have encountered some strong people and valuable resources. Don’t give up on the digital just yet!”

My friend softened a bit in his reply: “If there is evidence that the social media are an effective business-building tool as measured at the cash register, I’m interested……Either way, I suspect you would agree with my two, earlier key objections: (1) That the social media are yet unproven as a selling tool; and (2) that there is great potential to waste time on them.”

If traditional Direct Marketers were to emulate Alan Greenspan, they would exclaim that the market regards the potential of Social Media with “Irrational Exuberance“.  Just as I was beginning to consider the naysayers with more sincerity, I sat in on a “Twebinar“today hosted by Chris Brogan (@chrisbrogan) and Awareness Networks (@bostonmike). The presentation can be found at the Awareness Inc. site and the results will blow you away.

Among many other examples, I learned that Marriott Hotels generated over $4 Million in room reservations via a link from Bill Marriott’s blog. Now that is called ROI in any language. The debate will continue for a while, but CMO’s are already considering Social Media as an increasingly valid element of their marketing mix. Be watchful, listen and learn. Everyone else is!

There is a growing debate concerning the social media space. While the cognoscenti are touting their use of Twitter, Digg, Friend Feed and other social media tools, there are strong voices of skepticism labeling those medium as unproven business tools at best, time-wasting black holes at worst. The schism could be no more than manifestation of a marketing generation gap. Still, when I hear more than one of my respected peers with 30 years in Direct Marketing raise the question, I have to pause and consider both sides of the story.

A blog post from Response Agency framed the debate: “… Some marketers seem compelled to jump on every new high tech toy, and they insist that you be so compelled as well. Your company, they say, must send text messages, must be on Facebook and LinkedIn, and now must be on Twitter……Fine, except I have yet to see evidence that any of these toys produce sales at all, much less in a cost-effective manner. Meanwhile, I see plenty of evidence that they consume valuable time — lots of it. Time that you could have spent working. Maybe even accomplishing something productive.”

My response was to comment “The opportunity to waste time in unprofitable pursuits is always present.  Since I approach these venues with my business hat on, I invest my time to build my network and to increase my visibility and personal brand. It is working……with Twitter I have encountered some strong people and valuable resources. Don’t give up on the digital just yet!”

My friend softened a bit in his reply: “If there is evidence that the social media are an effective business-building tool as measured at the cash register, I’m interested……Either way, I suspect you would agree with my two, earlier key objections: (1) That the social media are yet unproven as a selling tool; and (2) that there is great potential to waste time on them.”

If traditional Direct Marketers were to emulate Alan Greenspan, they would exclaim that the market regards the potential of Social Media with “Irrational Exuberance“.  Just as I was beginning to consider the naysayers with more sincerity, I sat in on a “Twebinar“today hosted by Chris Brogan (@chrisbrogan) and Awareness Networks (@bostonmike). The presentation can be found at the Awareness Inc. site and the results will blow you away.

Among many other examples, I learned that Marriott Hotels generated over $4 Million in room reservations via a link from Bill Marriott’s blog. Now that is called ROI in any language. The debate will continue for a while, but CMO’s are already considering Social Media as an increasingly valid element of their marketing mix. Be watchful, listen and learn. Everyone else is!

Designing strategic marketing plans, I take comfort in using a proven planning methodology as I am assured of covering every aspect needed to create and launch an effective Customer Strategy. In other words, I am always sure to thoroughly vet client project objectives, customer needs and behaviors, the proposed value proposition to engage the group, and so on.

One key part of the planning process is to establish the communication strategy. What messages should be sent via which channel and how often are the starting points in an evolving plan. It was not so long ago when clients and their advisors rushed to email as the silver bullet for efficient and low cost communications within a Loyalty Marketing program.

Innovative at the time, it now seems old hat. Messages could be sent to broader groups at higher frequency at minimal cost using the digital channel. The money to be saved on printed catalogs and other correspondence was enough to have all the financial interests of the business salivating.

What I learned over time is that email is a wonderful means of communication for some, but not all Loyalty program members, and that there was still a place for print materials to accompany digital communications. The clients who insisted on the low cost channel despite encouragement to remain inclusive usually suffered over time and returned to a multi-channel approach.

We are witnessing another threshold being crossed as Web 2.0 has made available several new means of communications, many of which are worthy of trial but none of which are likely to shape up as the werewolf-killing silver bullet.

The sprawling growth of social networks has enabled people to talk beyond SMS and within networks including Facebook, LinkedIn, Digg, FriendFeed, and lots more. Twitter has small volume to date compared with Facebook traffic, but usage is growing and the cognoscenti are exchanging some seriously valuable information, not just what they ate at lunch.

Reflecting on my own introduction into the social networking world, I see a myriad of possibilities. The vast majority of members in long standing Frequent Flyer, hotel, and retailing sponsored Loyalty programs are most accessible by email. To generalize, Boomers are likely to respond to direct and email with a growing percentage paying attention to Facebook and other social networks.

If you are targeting Generation Y in your Customer Strategy, the see-saw swings the other way and it is likely that you would consider SMS, Facebook, and Twitter as tools to create an online brand presence and to open up real time feedback networks.

Long standing Loyalty Marketers have used the term “Dialogue” to describe their interest in establishing two-way communication between company and consumer. In some ways, nothing has fundamentally changed, only that we have more channel choice in today’s world. We have to recognize that not every consumer wants to talk with us in the same way or through the same channel.

How we create our online presence within Social Networks and select channels appropriate to the audience will have strong influence on our ability to build brand loyalty in the future.