A new global media report by Deloitte (Oct 2010) has revealed that online advertising is losing sway against more traditional advertising and appears to have only a minor influence on buying behavior.

A few questions arise based on this finding: Is it possible that online advertising can have less impact than traditional advertising? Surely above-the-line advertising has lost its affect on the market through overexposure? Isn’t online advertising is naturally more targeted than traditional marketing? Striata takes a closer look at email and online advertising – the majority of which doesn’t seem to be targeted at all.

Striata explains that email can suffer from the same problem. If you are including marketing material in your operational communications or sending purely marketing related messages to your customer base and not segmenting and targeting this base accordingly – you are wasting your time!

“You have to employ a new strategy for digital advertising if you expect your customers to interact with your brand. Print and digital marketing are far removed from one another, yet the same traditional strategy is applied by many marketers”.

According to Striata; companies should create a Customer Lifecycle Management strategy that maps the lifecycle of their customer’s interactions – from on-boarding, management and retention through to the sometimes unavoidable possibility of them leaving.

“Each of these customer phases and the additional interactions they have with your company during this time provides you with vital trigger points, which will enable you to interact further with them, via email, SMS and social media. Every company representative that interacts with your customers has a responsibility to gather additional information from them”.

This can happen after the fact by way of a text message sent to a customer asking them to rate your company’s service, following an interaction with your call center, or during the interaction such as asking a customer to participate in a poll or survey from within their monthly eStatement.

The feedback you receive from these interactions goes a long way. Not only will you get to know them better, but it will also give you more insight into their requirements from your brand. Customers expect you to know them and by doing so, prefer that you communicate with them with this knowledge in mind. When you have enough knowledge about your customers, segment your base and start to target your communications.

“Over and above this; if you are not communicating effectively and regularly with your customers, you are not top of mind. In the myriad of email and mobile communications we receive on a daily basis; where does that leave your brand?”

In short, eMarketing experts, such as Striata, can provide you with the ability to segment and target your customer database, enabling you to create intelligent, customized communications that address the needs and interests of individual customers. This in turn builds and maintains good customer relations, which encourages repeat purchases, retention and profitable customers.