Will access to all your web traces lead to the marketeers wet dream, increase long tail or just create privacy problems?

One of the most important aspects of the future is to build a relation ship with each customer and thus build a loyalty based on always exceeding expectations and deepened relationship through permissions.
One such interesting initiative is AttenTV that collects the click-stream of people and sells it to marketeers. The purpose is to get an even closer look to the inner being and what they prefer.

This idea is good but could be improved with some small adjustments. First of all just selling the combined click-streams adds little value to the advertiser. First of all it is impossible to build a personally relationship, it just alienates the customer and creates a feeling of safety at the company. The feeling of safety is just imaginary since you will just be looking in the past, not what will happen in the future.

It also misses the notion of the long tail. Analyzing all the click-streams it would be possible to find patterns and based on my own historical click-streams it should be possible to find the strange and not expected conjunctions between different people. Creating such a long-tail of knowledge will enable both the advertiser and the distributor to offer better alternatives and keeping the storage of most popular lower. The biggest value however comes if you are using the click-stream to start building a long-lasting relationship. As additional value you can start advising of alternative services depending on the click-stream.

The biggest value from AttenTV comes from the ability to build long lasting relationships, offer a more complete offering since the long-tail will tell us what customer wants here and now. Finally this will preserve privacy since only companies that you have an established relationship will be able to make use of your click-stream. I would also suppose there will be some kind of reward for participating in this exercise.

An interesting idea with some potential if it is modified a bit.

The boomerang effect

There are several services we all buy that can be easily doubled if the company providing the service dare ask for the return. Stefan Engeseth points it out very clearly in his June issue newsletter. For example if you are going by taxi from A to B it would be smart by the taxi company to ask for the return trip directly. The same applies to restaurants which could offer a discount if the next similar meal is bought directly when the first is bought.

When leaving McDonalds I should be asked if I wanted the same meal the next time and when this time is. Using telecom services like location and SMS it would be easy to help retail to add the boomerang effect to their business. The good thing is that it also helps the company becoming more agile and closer to their customers, almost what Stefan would call ONE.

Use discounts to get the next order (at Arlanda Express you get 50% discount on the return ticket if you buy both at the same time). Use telecom services to confirm, collect permissions, and use telecom services to remind the user when it is getting closer. You can also start collecting information on who is buying what and what products they buy at retail stores. From the permissions and what they actually buy it is possible to create a big tail and good predictions for the future.

Let's through some boomerang!