• by Darryl Bolduc , September 16, 2011

Why is this concept so foreign --- advertising becoming more like customer relationship management? We see it at Moxie, and we see it across client work. Digital media is so data intensive that a natural correlation between the digital customer experience and traditional lifecycle marketing strategies is beginning to take shape in a very exciting way.

Email marketers have known of this potential for years; they've taken the lead from CRM systems, lists and strategies that drive loyalty, retention and reengagement. Email media is seeing a resurgence as budgets rebound, while digital media is benefiting from traditional marketers familiar with these data intensive environments.

This crossover is evident by the trend in online display to use more behavioral and transactional advertising strategies. As budgets, staff and processes shift from traditional to digital, a natural evolution of direct marketing is building within all digitally addressable channels and the potential for messaging, creative, and brand alignment is enormous.

We've got an amazing story being built for some of our most technically and digitally aware clients -- a CRM discipline (specifically micro targeting and dynamic segmentation) is being applied through online display. It's starting with simple separation of prospecting versus participant marketing activities. Following closely behind is retargeting and reengagement based on interest, shopper or performance-based data, which builds on that simple separation segmentation.

This is a big change in the way online display operates, adding to complexities that already make online display tedious, like sizes, tagging and inventory management. You better have a good handle on process, because a true integration between all digitally addressable mediums is quickly becoming a reality, online display is just where we're starting.

We cannot talk about online behavioral advertising without a reference to its similarity to how CRM systems have had to comply with do-not-solicit or CAN-SPAM compliance requests. Continuously grabbing the headlines as a result of consumer awareness to this advanced targeting capability, legislators and advertisers are aware but seem to struggle with a concept that is no different than the standard letter included in a dynamic email message in the Johnson Box.

This is a place where CRM and email marketers are very comfortable, have relied on list scrub services and opt-out processes as a necessity of existence for years. In various ways, it helps many advertisers become more centralized in consumer relevancy and compliance.

Compliance complexities aside, this landscape is evolving quickly. Vendors, tech departments, agencies and advertisers are all collaborating to deliver on the digital CRM promise -- a relevant and coordinated sequence of communications from a brand you can trust and be engaged with no matter what digital medium is used. Data, process and infrastructure have never been more important.

What does this mean for the direct marketing community?

It's very good news, because right behind online display is site-side advertising, mobile browsing and app adoption; tablet use is changing an already complicated mobile environment. Furtehr, addressable OOH and God save us, addressable TV makes the thought of coordinated digital CRM so impactful. We expect this trend to continue, embracing it will expand and deepen agencies and marketers' capabilities to advertise to prospective customers on behalf of our clients, as well as speak relevantly via cross-digital media to our client's customer base.