Howard Schneider

"Past performance is no guarantee of future results."

Every investor knows those words. They are the standard caveat in every financial offering, a word to the wise against taking the results of the past—achieved under different circumstances than the present or the unknowable future—too seriously when planning investment strategy. Yet, because historical results are easy to collect, store and access—and because hindsight is always 20/20—people persist in predicting outcomes based on past events.

And that goes for marketing strategy.

Consider the granddaddy of all loyalty paradigms—the frequent-flier programs—in which virtually all of the legacy airlines award status to their "best customers." The usual formula is that a certain number of miles flown earn silver, gold or platinum rank (or something similar), which entitles the elite customer to such benefits as mileage bonuses, favorable...

I’ve been working with email ever since it emerged as a marketing tool. It’s one of the most powerful, cost effective media ever invented. It is the first channel that allows for genuine personalization and interaction. As such, it can be a key channel for building, maintaining and maximizing customer relationships.

And since the beginning, I’ve been saying that never has such a powerful tool been in the hands of so many amateurs. And never has a medium gone so quickly from panacea to pariah.

The fact is, most marketers misuse email in any number of ways. They mail too frequently; they fail to use the capabilities of the medium to create relevant content; most forego even the minimum quality control and pre-send testing every direct marketer should have learned at his mother’s knee, or some other low joint. (Not mine; that’s a paraphrase of Adlai Stevenson.)

Failure to use simple good marketing sense and basic quality control results in such breaches as...

A major airline whose initials are AA sent me their e-newsletter today. Among other things, the newsletter, personalized with my name, told me that “we’ve put this issue together just for you, so whether you’re a novice flyer or a seasoned ‘road warrior,’ you’ll find plenty to pique your interest.”

Aww, you really put this one together just for me? Then why do you address me as if you don’t know whether I’m a novice flyer or a road warrior? I’ve only flown AA three times this year (way down from last year’s travel). My colleague, who has logged nearly two million miles and is a lifetime Platinum AAdvantage member, received the same newsletter with the same language. I guess they put it together just for him, too.

The fact is, thanks to their frequent flyer program, AA knows EXACTLY what kind of flyer I am – at least on their airline. They know when, where and how much I fly. (The only thing they don’t know, contrary to their bizarre and slightly Big Brother-ish ad...

What's your most favored source of consumer insight? Research? Behavior tracking? Predictive modeling? Self-reported profiling? All of the above?

How about Scripture? Ecclesiastes asserts that there is "a time to keep silence and a time to speak." But many marketers just don't know the difference.

Especially since the advent of email, many companies simply can't seem to shut up. Or to be more specific, they don't know when to say what to whom.

Is anybody out there listening?
We don't need any more research to tell us that some consumers will do everything possible to tune our messages out. At the same time, however, we know that when our messages deliver value and relevance, people will listen.

To deliver relevant value to the individual, we must gain a better understanding of how our marketing communications look to the consumer. One of the best ways to get such a picture is touch-point mapping, an approach that has been...