Brands and Social Media and customer loyalty…

I know you are busy preparing for New Year celebrations. So instead of writing a post, I decided to list my points – to generate discussions:

1. The most important thing [the ultimate goal] for brands is to develop loyal customers.
2. Brands are using discounts, promotions, etc. hoping to build a loyal customer base – wrong!
3. Brands are using social media to give even more discounts, offers hoping to build loyal customer base – wrong!
4. Brands should know more about me as their customer to come up with personalized interactions/offers/services that are relevant to me – learning from my overall behaviors across all channels I engage in: in-store, on-line, social networking, etc..
5. in 2010 brands will realize that their goal of having millions of fans on Facebook [example] will not get them closer to meeting their ultimate goal [see #1].
6. Brands who will invest their time and money in learning all of the aspects of customers behaviors across all channels using sophisticated data mining technologies will come up with a set of highly personalized, very relevant offers/services/overall experiences for each customer – consistent across all interaction channels – win!