> Are there business models out there that beg for Marketers to really re-evaluate the purpose of campaings?

Any business where repeat customers are important, money is spent on getting those customers to repeat, and the ROI of this money is important. I fully realize some folks are not interested in the ROI on Marketing spend, preferring to look at gross sales, but I say to myself, if they are interested (for example) in the ROI of PPC, why not the ROI of customer campaigns?

> Should we all rethink campaings / promotions with online growing more and more as a channel?

That’s what I’m trying to say, apparently not very well! The whole LifeCycle model was developed to address this, the idea of dumping calendar-based communication that is out of synch with the customer in favor of an “engagement-based” communications pipeline and messaging.

I can tell you this, if you wear the mantle of “Interactive” and you walk around talking about how important customer experience and social media are and all that, and you say things like the customer is in control - a lame excuse for not really doing your job properly, in my opinion - then you should be interested in actually measuring the effects of all this properly - does the customer remain engaged over time, what does dis-engagement look like, why does it happen? Otherwise, it’s just a bunch of poppycock.

Put your money where your mouth is, please. If all this customer interactivity is so important, then why don’t you measure it properly?

> What shall we make of customer acquisition? If campaigns are really productive only in that context (and way less in a customer relationship context), what are the best means? Search?

Customer acquisition is just fine, thank you, especially in PPC. That’s the model, that’s the LifeCycle thing. How much did I pay, and what was the yield initially, what was the yield over time? The challenge is, despite the great job people are doing there, and with looking at on-site engagement, and all that, that’s half the LifeCycle model. The model has a back end, it keeps going into when people are customers, and deals with the same kind of metrics - what is the true ROI?

E-mail is a near perfect customer engagement tool. But e-mail is not just a delivery tool, it’s a communications stream. People treat it like every drop is an event unto itself, hence the focus on response, instead of understanding the true dynamics of messaging across the LifeCycle.

Different messages, for different people at different times based on their behavior (engagement).

Quite stimulating posts lately. A few months ago, I was involved in analyzing a web site; I unfortunately did no have access to the CRM data. However, I noticed that only 6% in average (weekly view) of sales came from their campaigns (online). Without being to explicit about the client’s business (they would become very easily identifiable), let’s say that it has a very “self-service” quality: you check schedule, availibility, price and you book.

I thought then “Well, I wouldn’t stop doing campaigns, as long as they were profitable, because I would get then only 94% of my year. That 6% still remains important”. However, as you put it so well, among those 6% of visits that react to campaigns, how many were from current clients who might have bought anyway? I wish I could have had the opportunity to have a look at the CRM data (I spare you the details, internal fights, etc.). I am not so sure that revenues would decrease if they stopped doing campaings, or at least the types of campaigns they’re doing.

So, questions to you:

Are there business models out there that beg for Marketers to really re-evaluate the purpose of campaings?

Should we all rethink campaings/promotions with online growing more and more as a channel?

What shall we make of customer acquisition? If campaigns are really productive only in that context (and way less in a customer relationship context), what are the best means? Search?

Thanks