Marketing has reached “crisis point” in Australia with disengagement at an all time high, according to Responsys’ Simon O’Day.

O’Day, Asia Pacific vice president of Responsys, said the engagement crisis point has been reached because marketers have taken their mass media marketing practices and stuck them on to one-on-one communications.

“We are using the same methodologies, the same approaches. What does that look like? That looks like you get a brief, you go forward with that brief. You select your list, your channel, your content you test it and go live,” O’Day said recently at Hardhat Digital’s Real Big Things event.

“Eighty to ninety per cent of marketers are doing this every single day and it is leading us nowhere.

“You can keep segmenting and setting up those campaigns as much as you want, but that is not listening that is shouting.”

Instead, brands need to embrace the idea of planning out lifecycle programs with no start and no end date.

“It is not a campaign like you are used to; it is a whole bunch of live listening events that are just sitting there ready for someone to behave. It’s a whole different way of working.”

Companies need to sit down and work out how a customers move through a business, map it out and develop communications to respond to those situations in a timely manner.

“Timing is critical. Reacting after 24 hours is sometimes the death of these things.”

The tools necessary for creating relationship based digital marketing are there now for marketers, according to O’Day who added: “That’s no excuse any more.”

 Start small, but start now was O’Day’s final message.