Live From DMI Co-op: Future Holds No Way to Identify E-Visitors

Within three years, legislation will ensure that there will be no way to identify a visitor to the Web, Rodney Joffee, president of Whitehat.com Inc, told a crowd at the opening session yesterday at the Direct Media Mailers Co-op held in White Plains, NY.

Joffee was at the conference offering predictions on how the Internet would affect direct marketers in the near future.

His most startling prediction involved privacy. He said that within the next three years the use of cookies and tracking devices will become obsolete as politicians pass legislation that blocks the use of such technology. “I’m telling you now that if your business is based on cookies and tracking, your s— out of luck,” Joffee said. “As a user I may allow you to set a cookie on my computer, but you will have to convince me that there’s value there.”

Joffee also predicted that the notion of the Internet as a place will disappear. “Customers may never see your Web site directly,” he said.

Consumers will no longer browse from site to site or log onto a specific site to shop, he continued. Those tasks will be replaced by personal agents or programs that will conduct searches for specific items or services, he said. The agents will compile the information–ranked perhaps by price or shipping charges–for the shopper to easily browse and select. “This will have an enormous impact on marketers,” Rodney Joffee said. “What would happen if the customer prospect never came to a Web site and sat down with a search engine and said, ‘Find me.'”

“All the more reason to establish a relationship with your customers,” said Ruth Stevens, chief marketing officer at IPNetwork.com, New York, who joined Joffee onstage to react to his predictions. “The human instinct is to support the notion of loyalty. That’s on our side, but it’s also ours to lose.”

Joffee said that the numerous electronic devices now in use to shop, call and browse will be integrated and that marketers will need to ensure that data that looks good, say, on a Web site, appears just as professional and operable on a smaller, hand-held device. “Prepare now,” he cautioned. A consumer’s “persona will follow them wherever they go and will not be specific to a machine or device.”

Stevens said a that perennial problem already exists in tracking the value of marketing investments in a multi-channel environment, and this could be compounded by the use of integrated electronic devices. “As ROI direct marketers, we need to know if any of our marketing investments have paid off,” Stevens said.

Also in the near future is a working closed-loop system, which would include contacts for every stage of the marketing and buying process, from order entry to fulfillment operations. “This is about making our entire marketing chain more efficient, with better value to the customer and better profitably to ourselves,” Stevens said.

How accurate are Joffee’s predictions? Here’s a sampling he offered four years ago.

* Request a domain name “now” or lose it.

* The printed catalog will be extinct within five years. Printers like RR Donnelley and Alden Press would be out of business or involved in something else.

* In DR ads, 800 numbers would be replaced by URL’s.

* The publishing industry will be the first to be turned upside down as books, magazines and newspapers will be published, sold and delivered at practically no cost.

* When a prospect visits an Internet catalog, they will be greeted by name and be presented with a personalized catalog.

* Marketers will be able to track consumers’ movements.

* Marketers will photograph a new product at 4 pm, create copy and price tests and by 9 am the next morning know the results.