The Engaged Customer: The New Rules of Internet Direct Marketing to Create Profitable Customer Relationships

While researching background materials for some clients’ Internet marketing projects last summer, I discovered The Eng@ged Customer. Hans Peter Brondmo’s work addresses the burgeoning cyberspace marketing industry in depth and focuses on three key marketing strategies: 

1. Engage your customer in meaningful dialogue. 
2. Know your customer. 
3. Carefully plan. 

Brondmo defines e-mail as “the strategic marketing tool that the leading customer-focused organizations will use to establish profitable relationships based on ongoing communication with their most valuable customers when selling online and, in many cases, offline.” 
The book is written in a simple and straightforward manner. At times, it feels a little like a textbook; however, Brondmo categorizes information well and in a manner that is easy to read and easy to apply. 

With the current economic crunch the mode of retention versus acquisition has never rung more true and the book is timely, considering it was published in 2000. His philosophy concerning e-mail could be applied to many businesses, especially healthcare:
. . .As the world of e-commerce rapidly matures, you are realizing that if you want to survive online, you are going to have to shift much of your focus from acquiring new customers to retaining them. How? By engaging customers in a dialogue and by building lasting, service-oriented relationships. And e-mail is the most effective means to that end. 
The Internet and its sister application, e-mail, offer the ability to strongly relate to one’s customer. Brondmo ascribes to four long-standing principles that are irrefutable: 

1. Recognize and greet every customer by name. 
2. Communicate with each one as an individual. 
3. Reward the best customers. 
4. Provide great service to everyone. 

At first blush, many might think Brondmo is suggesting the purveyance of “spam.” Instead, he is referring to specifically targeting correspondence to one’s public and doing it with their permission. And where direct mail has made people feel like the target and the victim, his tactics suggest that with the advent of e-mail consumers can be in more control of the medium.
Defining the term used in his title, Brondmo defines engagement as a meaningful dialogue and describes his rules of engagement: 

1. Data drives relevance; relevance drives engagement. 
2. Relationships are at the core of sustainable commerce. 
3. Building trust is an imperative. 
4. The marketing function moves from “telling and selling” to “listening and learning.” 
5. Always ask permission before initiating a dialogue. 

Just as we are seeing a shift in healthcare (as well as other industries) from being product driven to customer driven, Brondmo suggests that e-mail marketing is the ticket. According to him, “E-mail is the most powerful direct marketing tool that has ever existed”—one that is, at the same time, proactive and outbound, timely, personal, cost effective and measurable. 
In putting together a plan, Brondmo reminds readers they must make a good first impression in their interactions via e-mail and be able to integrate both Web and non-Web objectives in their planning. He offers an excellent format in terms of defining business goals and objectives with the inclusion of e-mail. 

Additionally, he offers some general budgeting guidelines and suggestions for those who write and those who managing writing for the Web.  Brondmo spends a chapter on the role of customized communication—something e-mail might actually be able to pull off in a more meaningful way than any other tactics have previously and closes the book with some predictions for the future grounded in current technology.

Cydney Koukol is a consultant for Corporate Health Group. In this capacity she provides account coordination for clients; market evaluation and planning for advertising and public relations strategies; presentations; copywriting, public relations and market research. A writer and marketing strategist located in Omaha, she may be reached via email.

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