THIS ARTICLE IS ONLY INTENDED FOR PEOPLE WHO HAVE AT LEAST 2 DAYS OF EXPERIENCE WITH DIALOGUE MARKETING, DATABASE MARKETING OR CUSTOMER LIFECYCLE MARKETiNG MANAGEMENT.
WARNING - THE ARTICLE CONTAINS REFERENCES TO OBSCURE SITUATIONS.

Yesterday was a Yo-Yo day for me. Too many not so pleasant things happened, and an equal amount of very pleasant things happened. Here is my attempt to share with you an experience that started yesterday afternoon and was powerful enough to stay with me for more than 2 hours. It was a good experience. I had intended to visit the Technology for Marketing & Advertising exhibition yesterday. But I didn’t. And I didn’t promise the organizers that I would come yesterday. Mainly because they never asked me which day I would be visiting, if not both days.

Most organisers of events, conferences and exhibitions wouldn’t know whom visited and whom didn’t until days, maybe weeks after the fact. But not this organizer.

Brilliant as they are at direct and interactive marketing (but particularly the former), what did they do?

YES, for crying out loud.

They sent me an email with the information you see below.

The operative sentence is: “It was a shame you couldn’t make it to TFM&A today”.

I am impressed beyond belief. Why, you might ask. And I will tell you why.

First of all, what do you think the objective of that email was? ….. yes, you are right.

They wanted to be sure that I visit the exhibition the next day. And you are also correct in assuming that they want to drive as many relevant people to visit the exhibition - in order to ensure that sponsors and exhibitors get what they paid for; value for money and then some.

Secondly; anybody with a tiny bit of marketing insight who is interested in dialogue marketing and providing a good-to-great customer experience, can dream up all sorts of dialogue and marketing process scenarios. No - seriously - anyone can, it ain’t rocket surgery. But it is darn difficult to put into practice.

Think about the requirements for a moment:
- a vision followed by maticulate planning that includes more than your average “creative thought”, but also involves flow-charts and other boring stuff
- it requires team-work ensuring that everyone involved - from the “concept/content” people and the executing project manager “all the way” to the web-and IT people
- and, perhaps most importantly, it requires a marketing database, or IT system, that can handle the dialogue and interaction processes. And preferably in an automated fashion.

After all, the registration process at the exhibition has to be linked to the database. I mean, otherwise they wouldn’t know that I did not attend today, right. And someone has to pull the segment of people, or - even better - someone pre-created a segment of people whom did not visit today and then the IT system in turn ensured that that segment received the email I showed you parts of above.

The people behind TFM&A have got it right. Now, they haven’t been 100% perfect, but that little email shown above was a stroke of genious. To me.  And then it’s ok, that they sent me a few emails with my badgenumber, eventhough I received my badge by postal mail some weeks ago.

Do you remember that movie “When Harry met Jolanda”, or whatever the name was (:- ). The scene with Goldie Hawn in a restaurant faking IT loudly. And once she is done, an older woman sais to the waiter  “I’ll have whatever she had“? Remember that?

That’s how I feel right now. I’ll have whatever the TFM&A people are having.