Marketing To The Choice Generation

When the 'Choice Generation' is referenced, one naturally gravitates towards putting this group into an age category.  What I understand the 'Choice Generation' to be has much less to do with age & everything to do with their power and right to choose when, where & how we market to them. 

This 'Choice Generation' comes immediately following the 'No Choice Generation' or an era of mail, call or email whomever we'd like, whenever and as often as we'd like.  It appears the pendulum has fully swung back and we are now dealing with the repercussions of these haphazard times. 

Laws have even been designed to facilitate this shift, like the DNC & Can-Spam even before we ever dreamed of this 'Choice Generation.'  Potential laws like the Do Not Mail in 15 states poses a real threat to how we do business & growth in technology with items like TiVo & Satellite radio have also been created out of this dramatic push back from over-marketed consumers.

So, the rules of engagement have changed significantly over the last few years.  How has our marketing changed...  I'm sure we have all made some changes to keep up with email compliance, maybe a few circulation modifications, but not much has been done to really addresses the heart of the matter which is too much push marketing and not enough pull from consumers. And what should all this push-back be telling us? 

I think this should be telling us that we now need permission and guidance on how to communicate with our customers, and that information should come directly from them.   This is a huge paradigm shift from years gone by, but it is the reality of where we are today.  Now allowing customers to choose their communication preferences once they are in the door as our customers is no longer a lofty goal or merely nice thought, it has become, or is at least becoming an imperative to marketing with solid ROI.

What about offering a means to obtain true consumer communication preference management.  Imagine one web page that hosts all of our potential touch-points offering opt in & out functionality & even goes one step further to ask what kind of information or frequency preferences they have?  Not enough segmentation to make our job as marketers ridiculously difficult, but able to gather enough information so we are marketing to people on their own terms.  Makes sense to me when we are talking about reaching the 'Choice Generation.'

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