• by editor , David Baker , August 2, 2010

As we are flooded with articles about what marketers are tracking at the consumer level, we continue to walk the tightrope of what are relevant experiences and what is "freaky" to the consumer. Where would our world be if we didn't mine behavioral insight? You would visit ESPN's site and see ads for diapers. Nothing ruins my morning sports fix like reminders of changing a baby's diaper. The email you get would be so irrelevant, everything would seem like a get rich-media ORDER NOW message, and sale alerts would have no context to what you've bought.

Targeting online behavior works. The real questions you must ask are: What do you really want to know about your customers, what types of information will you take action on, and what is your threshold to actually build and maintain programs with this source of data? As each new field of information on consumer data becomes available, I feel that many marketers become data hoarders. That will come back to bite the industry. Consumers inherently want to share something about themselves. We've created an industry and value currency exchange where it is the expectation to give some information about yourself in exchange for an online service, membership or content.

Measurement and targeting have a hierarchy, in my opinion. Each stage of the hierarchy is driven by a human behavioral need.

The fundamental stage is best defined as "the exchange." Consumers are more reliant on access than ever, so there is a fair balance of service to sharing information about what and who you are. Remember the first FREE computer? It was littered with ads if you clicked on anything, an annoying experience in many respects. Has it changed that much? You are pummeled with ads on virtually EVERY service you use. At this fundamental level, consumers expect something FREE and will give limited information in exchange.

The second stage is "affiliation and membership." We seek the need to form communities and networks -- around sports, work, religion, common hobbies, interests or as simple as proximity networks (your neighbors). As such, we seek common and efficient means to communicate with larger connected networks. To do so, we flock to online services that allow us to share and stay connected with a much larger mass of people. Today we are forming many more kinds of networks than we did in the past. As businesses, we are the lurkers. We seek to see similarities in these activities, how they are formed and how our influence in these connections affects the community itself. As businesses, we must identify these communities, foster them if possible, allow our brands to be a part of the exchange and support the creation and distribution of content that helps connect and form bonds with these communities. The only way we can do this is by mining behavior  and  intent.  This will be a key area for behavioral marketing in the future.

The third stage is "rewards and esteem." This takes two forms of exchange motivated by two very different attitudes/behaviors. Rewards is the easy one. We provide a great deal of information to our banks, financial institutions, universities, travel clubs, and a myriad of rewards programs. This satisfies our need for "the deal," the "status" and "self-esteem." We have created a class of travelers that thrive in this type of world and will tell virtually anything about themselves to achieve these rewards and status. Businesses don't have as much difficulty getting data from the consumer at this level, but we are challenged with making the information useful to a more predictive buying pattern.

We know that data helps inform our decisions as marketers. We know that targeting experiences, timing, and content to the timing and nature of the value exchange are the keys to making this work over time.