But that doesn’t mean traditional channels are finished, says Stephan Merz.

When I attended the Digital Marketing Days event in New York, mid-June, most presentations seemed to be centred around online networking, blogs and social media networks such as Facebook, Twitter and the like. 

Some still consider the channels a passing trend and only watch them passively, other companies are starting to test them (I had launched a Twitter account for d2m a week before the event!) and a growing number of players are integrating social media into their overall marketing strategy. The German car manufacturer Volkswagen is not advertising the new Polo GTI model via traditional media but is promoting it solely on Facebook. There will not even be a micro-site on the Volkswagen website! 

Still need further proof? Simon Burrell, a long-term industry colleague who has spent most of his career in the publishing sector, tells me his new website (www.omotg.com) has now launched – an up-market network made by and for the global business traveller. He is just one of many changing their career direction from ‘traditional to virtual’ or ‘paper to web’.

So will all business soon be about social media and will traditional suppliers then be completely redundant? Not really . . . 

The new channels are perfect for staying in touch and communicating with clients, prospects, partners and suppliers alike  – depending on the industry one is active in. They will also be useful to promote special offers or last minute deals and will also give companies feedback on their offer from a user’s standpoint. 

But a company with 10,000 followers or friends will not necessarily be profitable. Neither can a company fulfil an order to a Twitter account, nor will an invoice be addressed to the client’s Facebook page. In the end, profitability comes from the generation of real-world leads and their conversion into paying customers. And for this purpose, a company needs correct address details and further information on these people or businesses. Only this will enable a proper segmentation of these customers and prospects for continuous targeted communication with them. 

This information needs to be captured accurately, maintained and updated regularly. But addresses are a dynamic species. In Germany alone last year, many addresses became out of date because of around eight million movers, 840,000 deaths, name changes based on 370,000 marriages and 190,000 divorces. In addition there are thousands of street names, postcodes and city names changed annually. 

This shows the continued importance of traditional data and the indispensability of data cleaning services. Postal addresses and basic data will still be essential for communication with customers along their different lifecycles. Social media will have to be integrated into overall communications strategies, but will not completely replace traditional channels straight away. Furthermore, companies need to prove that social media are worth their investment and make their contribution to the companies’ success measurable. In a year or two we will have a clearer picture.

Stephan Merz is founder/owner of d2m direct marketing merz and c2m creative marketing merz and is the German partner in the Lists4Europe network. Email: s.merz@d-2m.de