[caption id="attachment_1041" align="alignnone" width="160" caption="Don mashing-up marketing as we watch"][/caption] Don Peppers is in Sydney next week, featured at a number of public and private events and I am sure he will focus on his consistent themes; customer loyalty, return on customer, trust-based relationships ... hardly stuff that is irrelevant, even in this new connected world? These are the the essence of Don's (and Martha Rogers') original insights, those that led to the coining of '1to1 Marketing'. Still fresh today. For me, 1to1 concepts are best examined through their implementation methodology; IDIC. I would like to revisit with social media and our current projects in mind... I: Identify customers. This was the heresy of relationship marketing, (nailed to a door somewhere on Madison Ave in my imagination); the idea that you should know each and every customer you are marketing to. Not as a generation, not as a demographic, but as a person. The contrast with mass marketing to strangers was - and still is - dramatic. With scalable identity management available through computers, we can start treating our customers as unique, real people, increase our relevance, stop squandering their dwindling attention with irrelevant offers and increase our chance of having a relationship which could lead to profitable, mutual loyalty. This 'knowing who you are in a relationship with' is very important to customers. After all, they flock to social media primarily to connect with people they know really well or want to; family, colleagues and friends (the million follower stunts notwithstanding). In the early days of twitter for example, this need was explicitly met with tweet-ups! Meetup.com is still going strong. So in social media marketing, why is this 'Identity' requirement so often ignored? Just because customers know each other on Facebook does not mean marketers suddenly know them by osmosis through a page, a channel, or a hash tag. The hard work of getting to know your customers remains. I have been to numerous social media marketing conferences where the subject of presentation has been the CPM achieved. Media buyers must squirm, nothing to buy. But after that short pleasure wears off I wonder; why no mention of what comes after awareness? Often the same presentation stresses the need to be personal, conversational, authentic, human, open - all good trust words that are meaningless unless we are sincere about also determining the identity of our customers, so we can remember them, work at a marketing relationship... Surely customers will not allow us to reduce these most personal of channels ('friending' is now a verb!) to just another venue for the 30 second spot? 'It matters less how much we know about our customers and more how much we know about each customer' is the lesson from 1to1 marketing that Amazon, Tesco, Woolworths and other good database marketers the world over have learned to their profit. So what comes after Identify? D: Differentiate customers. First on their current and potential value to you (this is not a charity), then on the basis of their needs that you can or cannot satisfy. CRM data - transactional, behavioural data - is still best at inferring and predicting value. But the social, conversational platforms are great places to listen to customers tell you what they want from you. Directly and honestly. Why guess when you can know? Ties back to the need to know which customer is telling you which truth though, so Identity is important. I: Interact with customers. Lots of choices, lots of places, all now interactive and customer controlled, if not produced. The need for engagement has increased as customer distrust of one way communications increases. C: Customise. Your conversations, just like we do naturally when conversing with others. Customise products and services as you listen and remember what the customers that you know; tell you, vote on, rate, review and video what they want you to do to earn their endorsement and loyalty. We think these concepts still have legs, even as we run social media projects that for example, involve teenagers designing their favourite fast food. Relevance, empathy, respect, trust are social media marketing concepts. While he is here, Don will be helping a mate of ours, Wayne Kingston, open the Peppers & Rogers Group Australia consulting practice. We wish the new 'PRG' every success. To finish off with Don's credentials; he is on twitter @DonPeppers, writes great blogs, http://bit.ly/C7KcM and  http://bit.ly/5Ph7b , posts on a video blog http://bit.ly/Y5Xqh and writes books http://bit.ly/NkrmX ; he is a walking mash-up! See you at Don's ADMA or American Chamber of Commerce sessions...