July 22, 2009

Marketers: Stop The Abuse! Adopt Preference Management

Consumers Are Losing Trust And Patience With Marketers

This is the third document in the "Customer Contact Strategy" series.

by Dave Frankland

with Carlton A. Doty, Emily Murphy

Executive Summary (This is a document excerpt)

Preference and relevance are tired and overused marketing terms. But despite the lip service marketers give them, we don't see an awful lot of focus on them. To get a complete picture of the state of preference management in practice and the similarities or differences in how marketers and consumers view preference management, Forrester surveyed consumers and marketers in Q3 and Q4 2008, respectively. What did we find? Marketers are neglecting customer communications preferences — and they do so at their peril. Many fail to capture preferences, ignore them when they do, and say that they send too many marketing messages. Unfortunately, consumers agree. Marketers who don't allow customers to decide how they can contact them not only risk being ignored but also invite a social backlash as consumers berate them in the groundswell of Social Computing.

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