We're all familiar with the concept of the "three R's" from our childhood days. These concepts now extend into the world of business. There are a few helpful letter shortcuts to help you remember some of the strategies for the highly effective collaboration marketing tool.

The three "A's"

Traditional marketing techniques focus on what's known as the "three I's": Intercept, Inhibit and Isolate. These are effective strategies for getting the attention of a customer and marketing your business, but collaboration marketing tweaks traditional marketing techniques by focusing customer attention in a different way.

The "three I's" of collaboration marketing are actually A's: Attract, Assist and Affiliate. The strategy of the three I's, although effective, is more aggressive and somewhat predatory. Calling collaboration marketing a kinder, gentler marketing isn't exactly accurate, but it's not far off the mark.

The three A's of collaboration marketing suggest a more straightforward strategy where the company becomes indispensable to the customer. Where the customer actually feels he needs your business and services and approaches you for your products and services. Does this sound too good to be true? Well, it's not.

A collaboration marketing strategy seeks to move from the one-to-one strategy of traditional marketing to a new and incorporating strategy of many-to-one marketing. This customer centric strategy focuses on knowing the customer from a variety of different perspectives (hence many), and fosters trust from your customer base. Using collaboration marketing, you can provide customers with particular services that other companies cannot because of your knowledge of the individual needs of your customer base.

ROI: Return on Information:

Return on Information is a collaboration marketing strategy that measures how quickly a vendor can turn around information.

The collaboration marketing expert John Hagel has a great explanation of ROI: "The more quickly a vendor can turn around and deliver tangible value in return for information from a customer, the more quickly and effectively the vendor will be able to build trust and willingness to provide even more information".

The Return on Information principle in collaboration marketing is a self-feeding cycle, once the wheel has been set in motion.

The Three E's

The three E's of collaboration marketing are a set of tools that play to the experience of the customer, thus making them feel important and like they are an important and integral part of your success—to essentially make the customer feel needed. Getting attention from the customer is what the three E's are all about.

- Engage: The key here is to see how well you can impact the customer ' engage their business in exchange for their attention and information.

- Empower: Are you customers more empowered to complete their tasks when using your products and services? Are you making sure that you are helping them reach their strategic goals?

- Expectations: Have you consistently gone beyond and exceeded expectations—both the goals your set for yourself and your customers' expectations?

The three E's are about playing to customer experience, working with the customer, gaining knowledge and information from them which you can use to become a better business by appealing more personally to your customer base.

This litany of literary terms is a helpful shortcut to get you started in understanding the principles of collaboration marketing, and growing the success of your business.