Why Most Online Strategies (and Insights) Are Wrong

I had the privilege of working briefly with Don Peppers and Dr. Martha Rogers – two true innovators in the world of customer strategy who together developed and evangelized the principles of 1 to1 marketing beginning with a watershed article in the Harvard Business Review more than 15 years ago.

I was at a conference and had the chance to watch Don Peppers explain the concept of “differential customer value” to a crowded ballroom of more than 400 conference attendees. When he reached the key slide about “shifting the customer value curve,” every person in the room started scribbling furiously to capture their epiphany on paper (I think I even saw the catering staff that were refreshing coffee and snacks at the time taking notes on the back of napkins).

The epiphany came about when the attendees realized that their company, like most companies, ignored the fact that different customers represent dramatically different relative values to their organization. The aftershock, of course, came when they realized that this meant that their current strategies were diverting critical resources away from highly profitable customers that would drive growth and instead perpetuating a distribution of customers that skewed towards low-value, marginal customers.

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