Emerging from my social media ghetto I have been working with some lovely folk on direct marketing and CRM; big grown-up data driven marketing. And it has prompted me to have a think about how the idea of direct marketing will change as the continuing growth and evolution of the social web means that

• Consumers are increasingly having direct relationships with brands (not mediated by a media channel) thereby pushing DM much higher up the marketing agenda
• Consumers are having more and stronger relationships with each other, in which brands might be included if they have something relevant to offer thereby making the value to the specific consumer of what brands offer more important than the amount of consumers they offer it to: quality over quantity (but no, this time it really matters)
• The variegated nature of communications in this socialised environment will mean that ‘Direct’ will become a far more nuanced term; what is an email open rate compared to a re-tweet, a friend message or a nudge? How will we measure and value these different responses? How will we encourage consumers to participate in them?
• What will be the regulatory framework that evolves to manage all of this? One of the drivers of regulation will be consumer demand for transparency no doubt, but what about their demands for control? At the moment we can opt-in, and in more sophisticated systems check our own details and update them. If you’re a bricks and mortar business with a legacy enterprise customer database go freak yourself and check out what I can do to update any aspect of my Google, or any other online network profile. Take note; that will quickly become the default for what consumers expect to be able to do to any of their customer profiles. And what customers expect can often become what legislators mandate.

So how to prepare?

I’m going to start by thinking about CRM as a much looser idea more fitting with the ambiguity of the social environment: CRM = Audience Dialogue Participation

• Customers are now audience members; audience could include customers, resellers, reviewers, staff, media, legislators etc. And they could all be more than one of these at the same time.
• Relationship becomes dialogue; this audience is not someone you send emails to but someone you have a dialogue with; a dialogue that could include a passing friendly nod through to a deep conversation over a shared passion.
• Management evolves into participation; if this is a dialogue then the brand isn’t in control and they are not ‘managing’ anything; rather they are a participant.

So I’m going to take these three principles and look at DM programs with a social skew; strategy, objectives, tactics and measurements. How could they be loosened up?