Relationship Marketing

Relationship marketing is often used interchangeably with other terms, such as one-to-one marketing, behavioral marketing, database marketing, and customer relationship marketing, all of which mean more or less the same thing. The strategy is at the heart of a new digital marketing paradigm that emerged during the 1990s with the rapid growth and commercialization of the Internet. Among its early and influential proponents were Don Peppers and Martha Rogers, whose 1993 book, The One to One Future spawned a series of handbooks, seminars, articles, and conferences and quickly became a valued resource for online marketers. Relationship marketing is based on the principle of developing unique, long-term relationships with individual customers to create personalized marketing and sales appeals based on their individual preferences and behaviors. It has become a core strategy for marketers targeting teenagers, not only on the Web, but also through cell phones, video games, and other digital media.

Online marketers employ a variety of techniques to get to know each customer as intimately as possible. One method is the use of incentives, such as games, surveys, discounts, and prizes, to get individuals to supply personal information about themselves. For example, a survey can collect name, address, and email address, along with information about income level, attitudes, fears, and behaviors. While this is also a common direct marketing practice in “offline” media, such forms of data collection can become more intrusive in online and other interactive media, where the response time is quick and the incentives (e.g., free email, discounts, and other kinds of instant gratifications) can be hard to resist. Another method is the covert tracking of online behavior. Unlike TV ratings, which generally use anonymous aggregate numbers to reveal the viewing behavior of key demographic groups, online usage data can track how individuals respond to and interact with advertising. A burgeoning industry has developed to provide an array of personalization technologies, including cookies, which have been integrated into the basic design of interactive marketing. Through these various techniques, marketers compile a detailed profile of each customer, including not only demographic data but also his or her response to and interaction with advertising messages. The information can then be used to create and refine online ads and buying opportunities especially tailored [Page 717]to the psychographic and behavioral patterns of the individual. In some cases, the profiles are also sold to third parties.

In 1998, in response to a lobbying effort by children's advocacy and privacy groups, Congress passed the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act, which restricts the collection of personal information by Web operators from children under the age of 13. As a result, many online children's marketers were forced to curtail the growing practice of database marketing targeted at individual children. However, no government protections have been established for adolescents. Consequently, most of the websites aimed at teenagers make extensive use of data collection, profiling, and targeted advertising.