I recently wrote an article on B2C digital marketing for B2B magazine (strange, I know).  You can find it here, and the original unedited version (IMO: better?) is included below.  Enjoy :-)

Consumers crave intelligent marketing, and they love it when we get it right.  That coupon arriving just when I was considering my purchase options?  Brilliant!   Your letter to me about how your particular product suits my needs?  Right on target.  But where were you when I was at the mall last week?  And why didn’t you stop me from buying that other product that isn’t as good as yours?

Indeed, consumers don’t simply want to be understood; they want marketers to be at their beck and call: I’m ready to entertain offers—right now.

As marketers, we lament the opportunities lost when we don’t understand consumers’ particular needs or their particular position within the purchase cycle.  If only we could gain direct access to “consumer context”—the when, where, and what of consideration—we could perfectly position our offers, perfectly time our campaigns, and provide the response mechanism most preferred by each consumer.  The result would be higher ROI for brands and more intelligent marketing for consumers—lower costs and greater surpluses for all.

Sounds like a dream, yes?  Well, it’s one that might be right around the corner.  In the digital environment, information about consumer context is increasingly available.  Many consumers are already quite willing to tell us about themselves:  They tag their information on Flickr and Technorati, post personal details to Blogger and Twitter, allow TripAdvisor and Yelp to track their preferences, and let Loopt and Whrrl stalk their physical movements the globe.  Even in the offline world, consumers answer the question “May I help you?” both politely and honestly.

For some brands, gathering consumer context is already easy: American Express, Amazon, Apple, and Wegmans Foods Markets, all have trusted access to my own consumer context nearly every day. These firms benefit from my greater attention and consideration of their offers, and I benefit from their greater relevance to me.  Keeping these brands in the know is easy: they all track my purchases and interactions across all channels.

For most consumers, and most brands, updating consumer context is too hard.   While the social media revolution was sparked by online junkies (like me) who tweet, tag, scrobble, and upload the details of their personal lives online, it’s still simply too difficult or time-consuming for the average consumer to make this type of “about me” information available on a daily basis.  And that may be a good thing—for now—because while consumers experiment with how to efficiently provide details of their context, most marketers still have a long way to go when it comes to grokking this information.

Brands need to be available when a consumer’s context puts them in a position to buy, regardless of the time, place, or channel—traveling in a cab, standing in a store, or up late surfing on the couch.  Right now.

Without information about consumer context, ubiquity then quickly becomes the most important attribute for brands: the ability to be everywhere a customer might want them, at the moment they want, with the offer they desire.  Ubiquity used to be easy: ABC, NBC, CBS.  Nowadays, however, it means establishing a presence in thousands of locales throughout the digital landscape.

Marketers need to manage more channels, understand how brands function in each, and manage the whole environment in real time.  Start now, because it’s only getting worse: channels are proliferating fast, and the sooner that marketers understand them, the easier it will be to digest what’s coming next.  Companies and marketers not engaging in the digital marketing landscape—lacking ubiquity to the consumer—do so at their own peril.  And participation in these channels is also the key to understanding how your brand can capture and capitalize consumer context. The race is on.

With ubiquity comes one more marketing imperative: ambiance.  Since brand participation in these new marketing channels is spotty and inconsistent, it’s critical that brands remind their customers of their presence.  Use each channel to inform consumers that your available everywhere: confirm to the customer that you have a mobile website; invite them to participate online; educate them that your call center is still open 24/7.  Consumers do what’s easy and present within their context, so make sure your brand is available in all the new marketing channels (ubiquity)—and that the customer knows it (ambiance).

A new search engine, Cuil (pronounced “Cool”), was launched on Monday.  It was  developed by some folks from google and was introduced with great press and fanfare. So far, the responses have been mixed and the search results spotty.

Silicon Ally Insider called it the worst launch ever. That seems harsh. There are a number of interesting things about Cuil. I like the contextual nature of the results, although it doesn’t provide as much of an immediate a snapshot of what’s available. I also like that they don’t store my search data. But there are issues…start by searching Cuil and you don’t get anything about the site. It still seems very beta to me.

Here’s what some of the folks at Catalyst have to say about it.

“The appearance of the Cuil search results is more refined, but I’m used to (and like) the dump that Google provides.” — Pete

“I wasn’t a big fan of the results page when it did show up… out of the three columns does it go down the first and then to the top of the second in order of best results?” – Dan

“I’ll stick with Google…” — John J.

“It’s got some merit, it just needs some more refinement.  It almost feels like it got announced before these guys were ready.”  — Justin

“I like the pictures associated with the websites.  The visuals are great! I also like the “explore by category” section on the upper right hand corner of the page.  It’s good that they offer up other ways to search for what I am looking for. — Julie

“I like the interface – simple and clean.  I like that the results include an image of the site if available.  The interface somehow reminds me of an iPhone which I’m sure is no accident.” — Rich 

The big question on everyone’s mind is how are they going to make money?

The process of putting your life online, in aggregate, has been called “lifestreaming,” so it’s inevitable that brands (having personalities all their own) would join in: Here’s a good introductory article on lifestreaming for brands.

An Excerpt: “It’s fairly obvious why companies want to get their brand out into social media sites like Flickr, Facebook, Twitter and then wrap it up into feeds. It’s to get their brand out beyond their website, to engage users and entice them into discussions about their products.”

While this article implies that lifestreaming for brands is particularly focused on lifestyle products, we’ve already recommended it to some of our non-profit clients.  For organizations who wish to build a feeling of “membership,” a lifestream can be just the thing to keep people involved but do so at little or no cost.

Kodak, one of our largest customers, is ahead of the curve here.   You can view (and subscribe!) to the Kodak stream here.  (BTW, kudos to Kodak for using off the shelf tools like FriendFeed, Twitter, and Flickr… they are doing it right!)

Please note: This post was originally written using the term “brandstream,” but I have since learned that that term was trademarked by Fricken Company in 1998.  Kudos to them for identifying such an important trend so early on!   Fricken does business as “Brandstream Inc.” and was founded by Scott Bedbury, the author of A New Brand World.

Found this excellent review of mobile trends in the US and UK.   Visit Mobile Life 2008 and download the full report (pdf).

I’m proud to announce the new ParagonSports.com is live.  If you live in the NYC area, chances are you’ve heard of Paragon Sports.  If you’re not in the area (just like me) their newly redesigned site (designed by Catalyst) has 30,000 of their products and major brands available.

The NEW ParagonSports.com

Going to the physical store is a great experience… it’s like visiting a niche specialty shop for running, or camping, or baseball, or rock climbing or… well you get the idea.  They have a ton of brands and a ton of lines in those brands.  That same breadth is available online too!  If you don’t believe me, just check out their brands page; the list is huge.

As you can imagine, that’s a lot of products to organize and wade through to find the right one.  They were available on the previous site (see screenshot below), but we really wanted to make it quick and easy to find the right one.   We also wanted to pull the feel of the store and what it all represents into the design and interface of the online store.

We also had to do quite a bit of research, as we questioned what someone in downtown Manhattan might need a kayak for.  It all made sense after some user research discovering the enthusiasts who walk the walk and appreciate Paragon’s authenticity… or the aspirationals only talk the talk, but they do it with style… or some of the other types of shoppers like jumpers or NBLBs (Need-Based Loyal Buyers).  I could go on and on about this… let me know if you want to hear more!

So, all in all, it’s a new navigation, a new page structure and user interface, new content, a new back-end to support it all and a brand focused visual design to bring it all together.  The products have been reorganized into the way you would shop and how you think about the products.  As you drill into major categories, the guided navigation gives you relative and appropriate attributes to help filter and narrow your search.  And, it’s all wrapped in a new look and feel that really targets in on the urban living sports enthusiast (and yeah, I love that phrase)!

The Previous ParagonSports.com Site

For years, I’ve talked about the importance of scannability in any online presentation. (My coworkers are definitely sick of hearing me talk about scannability AND exploration.)

I’ve written and edited my share of thousand-word articles, don’t get me wrong. But the more I watched Web traffic reports and usability testing, the more I evangelized scannability (and specifically, short bulleted lists).

Michael Agger has a piece in Slate that cleverly summarizes the arguments for and the importance of scannability. (Although in general I have negative feelings about overuse of the sentence fragment and … within a paragraph. So I take exception to that suggestion.)

He also makes an excellent point about reading speed and font. (Although, again, I prefer to stick with Arial because it scores best across both online and offline platforms.)

Anyway, it’s definitely worth a read: “Lazy Bastards: How we read online”

I’ve written before (on my other blog, etailology) about the power of “service communications” in the etail and direct marketing landscape. To put it simply, people pay more attention to shipping confirmations, bills, and other administrative communications than they do “marketing messages.”  So… the real trick is ensuring that service communications do all of the following:

• communicate critical service information
• demonstrate your value proposition and your latest offers
• show your desire to continue and expand the customer relationship
• embody and express your brand difference

These opportunities are routinely overlooked.  We haven’t all gotten 300-page phone bills, but most of us have faced over-complex, poorly organized, and often-wrong billing statements.  (I once got a letter from Citibank telling me that my HELOC application had been turned down because I was a foreign-national, even as my all-American self received a box of checks for the same account!)   Colleen Jones at the UXMatters blog has an excellent overview of dos and don’ts for billing statement design.   It’s worth a look.

If billing statements don’t excite you, what about shipping notifications?  Nothing gets me more excited than a UPS tracking number.  I read those emails!  And even post-purchase follow-ups and surveys get my attention far quicker than a standard “acquisition” communication.  (My Saab dealer sends three post-service messages asking for feedback… and the next order.)

The point is this: direct marketing is the process of translating a moment of consumer attention into a lifetime of Brand Membership.  Service communications represent moments where consumer attention is extremely focused on your brand.  Do more than get it right … make it exceptional!

Jakob Nielsen has posted two articles of note to direct marketers:

1. Why Web 2.0 Can Be Dangerous. Nielsen is right on the money here — literally — for once taking the economically prudent path of ROI and aligning it with the user-centered path of UI. This post is not to be missed. (Though, in truth, the Web 2.0 things your company does should represent the bleeding edge of a cutting edge of a comprehensive strategy. If they are, more power to you. Ignore him.)
2. 10 High-Profit Redesign Priorities. As a corollary to his rant against Web 2.0, Nielsen also points out the highest ROI revisions you can make to your site. I couldn’t agree more. (This is exactly the sort of detail I dig into at my other blog, etailology.com)

Both are loaded with great information … even if they are a bit preachy.  :-)

That’s what I learned at the DMA in Chicago last month.

The whole idea of the Web site as a static environment…one that delivers information in an organized way and enables visitors to find information due to its “structure”…is a thing of the past. We no longer make our Web site available to our customers and prospects. We create an environment that is customized entirely based on their needs. So when a prospect searches for refrigerators and then clicks on Sears, the site is designed to provide information on refrigerators…not the Sears home page. After all, they’ve already told us what they want, right? Why make them tell us again?But that’s just the beginning. As data is gathered based on customer behaviors and inquiries, our ability to deliver an increasingly customized experience on our Web sites has grown substantially. Current customers are recognized upon entry…specific cross-sell offers are presented, based on their current product ownership…special offers are presented on products that have been of interest in the past…the entire experience is unique. In one test that was referenced, targeted vs. random content drove a 71% lift in site effectiveness.So don’t even bother “building” a Web site…think of it as a sales presentation, one that is fully customized to the audience and everchanging as we learn more. And what do we know about effective selling? Spend your time talking about the client…not yourself.Web sites may be dead. Branded, relevant, customized experiences, delivered online (as we have done in the offline arena for years) will carry the day. It’s the start of something truly different. DM 2.0.