Crumbs from the Scone
As a longtime reader of GQ magazine, Dylan Boyd subscribed to The Hound—the magazine’s recently launched email newsletter—with high expectations. “So as I opened the email and took a gander,” he writes at The Email Wars, “I was more than greatly disappointed to get what I would associate with a Sunday newspaper ad circular.”
The short publication included five components:
- A promotion of “suiting events” at several Bloomingdale’s stores.
- A Gillette-sponsored contest for basketball tickets.
- A plug for Phaidon Design Classics, a three-volume set of books sold for $110 by Amazon.com.
- A brief Q&A in which Brett—GQ’s style correspondent—advises a reader to use a hair-sculpting paste made (surprise!) by Gillette.
- An invitation to interact with GQ at Twitter and Facebook.
“What were they thinking?” he asks. “A newsletter is something that shares articles, stories, content, ideas and information that keeps a subscriber in connection with the company that they opted in to.”
To help you ensure your newsletter is a valuable resource for readers, Boyd offers these suggestions:
Don’t treat it like a press release or an offer. “This is a relationship-development channel folks, not a pitch machine,” he says. “Save your targeted offers for another day.”
Create relevant, original content that clearly benefits the customer. “Recycling articles, blog posts and stories,” he notes, “does not deliver on the promise of news.”
Don’t let them down when they open your email up. When developing a cool customer perk like an e-newsletter, make sure it’s packed with relevant info—and not just promos.
Source: The Email Wars
Crumbs from the Scone
The Alamo Drafthouse Cinema of Austin, Texas, encourages its patrons to enjoy dinner and a movie—at the same time. “The theater is laid out like a traditional movie theater,” explains the company’s website, “except every other row of seats has been replaced with a long narrow table for your food and drinks.”
A discreet ordering system keeps distractions to a minimum, as does a policy of warning—and, eventually, ejecting—noisy customers who disrupt the film. In a post at the Church of the Customer Blog, Jackie Huba highlights an Alamo Drafthouse PSA, for which the theater recruited a former Texas governor: Confronted with a rowdy customer, she throws him onto the sidewalk. The PSA reads: “Don’t talk during the movie… or Ann Richards will take your ass out.”
Importantly, the venue stands behind its stern words. After a recent screening of Where the Wild Things Are, Tim League, the theater’s founder, was confronted by a man who became irate when a waiter shushed him. The outraged moviegoer followed League to the parking lot, punched the windshield of League’s car, and promised never to return.
“Fabulous,” responds League at his blog. “You, sir, are exactly the type of patron that I never want to see at an Alamo Drafthouse ever again. People who continue to talk when the movie has started are impolite, self-absorbed losers who were never taught common decency by their parents.”
According to Huba, we need more Tim Leagues—those who choose to protect their best customers from obnoxious behavior, rather than catering to those who ruin the experience for everyone. “The customer is always right,” she notes, “if it’s the right customer.”
Source: Church of the Customer Blog
Crumbs from the Scone
In two short years, Lady GaGa has become an international phenomenon—selling millions of albums, breaking Billboard records and earning Grammys. According to Jackie Huba, she has also demonstrated a natural ability to cultivate evangelistic fans: “While her performance art-style stage shows and bizarre outfits have garnered much buzz, it’s her loyalty marketing that may sustain her for years.”
Here are a few things small businesses could learn from Lady GaGa:
Bring your fans into the fold by giving them a special name. “Gaga doesn’t like the word ‘fan’ so she calls them her ‘Little Monsters,’ named after her album ‘The Fame Monster,'” notes Huba. “She even tattooed ‘Little Monsters’ on her arm and tweeted the pic to fans[,] professing love for them.” The name doesn’t have to be whimsical or bizarre—Maker’s Mark, for instance, uses the straightforward term “Ambassador.”
Make them feel like they’re rock stars, too. During her stage shows, Lady GaGa always places a call to someone in the audience. “She dials the number onstage, the fan screams out, is located and they are put up on a big screen,” says Huba. “While the rest of audience goes bananas, she invites the fan to have a drink with her after the show.” By giving your fans special—and very public—attention, you make them part of the show.
Lady GaGa knows how to build long-term loyalty for her brand—and you, too, can use her tricks to do the same for your own.
Source: Church of the Customer Blog.
Crumbs from the Scone
“I receive email for very different reasons than others in my life,” writes Kara Trivunovic at the Email Experience Council blog. “I subscribe to just about any email I can, because I like to see what people are doing. More specifically, how marketers are targeting their customers, leveraging data, addressing rendering challenges and motivating recipients to open, among many other things.”
The typical subscriber, however, doesn’t share the professional curiosity of an email marketer. To gain a recipient’s in-the-trenches perspective, Trivunovic decided to quiz her husband on his email likes and dislikes. She offers these guidelines for marketers based on what she learned:
Ongoing campaigns must deliver on subscriber expectations. “My hubby tells me that [he often] subscribes for something specific, but if the subsequent emails don’t grab him right away, he unsubscribes.”
Overly restrictive terms and conditions kill interest. That tantalizing offer becomes much less appealing when reams of fine print make it virtually unattainable. “[N]othing drives him more crazy than [receiving] a great subject line and headline about getting free nights at a great hotel,” she notes, “only to open the message to find that there isn’t a snowball’s chance he can go.”
If images don’t render, recipients might blame the sender, not the ISP. When AOL blocks images from Mandalay Bay, Trivunovic’s husband assumes the hotel—and not the ISP—is at fault.
Ask away. Don’t forget to ask real people what they think about your emails. Although the information you gain will be anecdotal, you might still catch something your testing has missed.
Source: Email Experience Council
Crumbs from the Scone
Just because something is currently labeled a best-practice doesn’t mean it’s written in stone, says DJ Waldow in an article at MarketingProfs. “[W]e can find and spit back best-practices for most email-marketing-related questions; however, I nearly always find marketers who ‘break the rules’ with tremendous success,” he explains.
Here are a couple of commonly held best-practices, and the reason they might not be the best thing for your campaigns, according to Waldow:
“Don’t use ALL CAPS in your subject line.” Overstock.com breaks this rule on a consistent basis, and for a good reason: It works for the company’s audience. “I had the chance to meet a member of the Overstock email-marketing team,” reports Waldow, “and he informed me that they have done (and continue to do) extensive subject-line testing.” Contrary to conventional wisdom, those emails that use all capital letters significantly outperform those that do not, he says.
“Don’t use one large image, especially if there isn’t alt text.” Despite the omnipresence of image blocking, Apple’s email messages unapologetically defy these edicts. “So, what gives?” asks Waldow. “How does Apple get away with that?” In a conversation with the men responsible for the company’s email marketing campaign, he discovered some tweaks were planned, but that the campaigns worked because customers’ high level of trust of Apple emails meant subscribers were more likely to auto-enable images.
There are exceptions to every rule. Best-practices exist to guide your campaigns—not to dictate what they must or must not do. The best solution for finding what works for your subscribers is still to test, test and test again.
Source: MarketingProfs.
Crumbs from the Scone
You have a great product or service, and you do your best to create an exceptional customer experience. Despite your efforts, though, you encounter difficult customers with more frequency than you’d expect. What gives? In a post at the Conversation Agent blog, Valeria Maltoni suggests 10 reasons this might be happening. Here are a few:
Your customers resent that you’re the only game in town, or one of their limited options. “You may feel you have a captive audience,” she says, “but realize that it takes a special effort not to be arrogant in those [sic] circumstance, and your customers don’t like the treatment.”
You’re telling your customers which questions to ask. You steer the conversation in a certain direction, but it isn’t where the customer wants to go. “If you were in court,” she says, “they might say you were leading the witness. Allow customers to say what they want to say. Maybe ask clarifying questions.”
You don’t follow up on feedback. If you acknowledge a customer’s feedback but seem to sit on the information, it’s going to create friction.
No matter what you do, you’ll always have to deal with difficult customers. “It’s not personal,” says Maltoni, “let’s face it, there may not be a way of pleasing them. Does that mean you should stop trying?”
Source: Conversation Agent.
As a longtime reader of GQ magazine, Dylan Boyd subscribed to The Hound—the magazine’s recently launched email newsletter—with high expectations. “So as I opened the email and took a gander,” he writes at The Email Wars, “I was more than greatly disappointed to get what I would associate with a Sunday newspaper ad circular.”
