Crumbs from the Scone
Spring is here, and Karen Talavera wants to clean house. “[N]ow is the perfect time for us to critically re-examine our programs, campaign processes, and messages with a fresh, unbiased eye,” she says in an article at the MarketingProfs site. “Time to sweep away the cobwebs of inefficiency or neglect that might have accumulated in less-scrutinized times.”
Talavera identifies five areas for close examination; among them:
Permission. It’s likely that a number of sources contribute subscribers to your list, and that they use varying degrees of permission—pre-checked box, un-checked box, double opt-in or even opt-out. “[P]ut a stake in the ground and make your preferred method the new standard,” she says. For the highest level of customer engagement, she recommends double opt-in and an un-checked box.
Your Message. “When is the last time you gave the messages you send a thorough critique?” she asks, noting that you need to examine both marketing and transactional email. Make sure that the technology works, you’re within the law and your messages reflect your brand.
“Improve what you have already,” Talavera advises. “Start from the ground up, making sure your fundamentals are sound. There’s no point building on a shaky foundation; now … is the time to shore up.”
Get squeaky clean! As budgets and staffs shrink, spring cleaning can vastly increase your effectiveness and efficiency.
Source: MarketingProfs.
Crumbs from the Scone
Think about a product or service that does everything it’s supposed to do, rarely breaks down and comes with a reasonable level of support. For Rohit Bhargava, his cable service, which he bundles with Internet access, falls into this category. Though he wouldn’t call the package price a bargain, it’s not overly expensive; and when he did have a problem, the company quickly resolved the issue. “By every metric you could choose to assign to my experience,” he says at the Influential Marketing Blog, “I’m a satisfied customer.”
You’re waiting for the “but,” though, and here it is: “If something even slightly better came along as another option for me, ” he says, “I would switch without hesitation.” This, he argues, is the line between customer satisfaction and customer loyalty; while satisfied customers will jump ship at the first reasonable opportunity, loyal customers will find reasons to stay, even if you slip up once in a while.
According to Bhargava, achieving this kind of loyalty requires more than good customer service.
Your product or service must deliver on its promise.
Your brand’s personality must give your customers a sense of belonging and participation.
If your customers are merely satisfied, it’s time to work on their loyalty. “The fact is,” says Bhargava, “in today’s market customer satisfaction doesn’t matter as much as customer loyalty.”
Source: Influential Marketing Blog.
Crumbs from the Scone
“For too long, too many marketers have underestimated the value of email’s impact on offline retail,” say Lisa Harmon and Alex Madison in a post at the Email Experience Council blog. If you focus entirely on generating online sales, they argue, you might be missing out on bricks-and-mortar opportunities. They’ve seen retailers use multichannel “noteworthy tactics” like these:
In-store discounts that are unavailable online. The pair cite an email offer from Betsey Johnson touting a special perk for in-store shoppers: a gift card worth at least $25 for those who spend $250 or more.
Images and copy that heighten the appeal of an in-store visit. “Apple reminds subscribers … of their great in-store service by including a picture of a blue-shirted expert alongside store offerings,” they say, “and also by using beautiful store photography to make subscribers eager to experience in-store shopping.”
Personalized invitations. Have your sales associates write personal emails with an invitation to a special in-store event. Nordstrom, for instance, did this when inviting its most loyal customers to a special sneak-peek ahead of an anniversary sale.
Link your 2D and 3D. “Remember that there’s likely much overlap between your most loyal email subscribers and your loyal store visitors,” say Harmon and Madison. If you haven’t leveraged that crossover, try using strategies like these to help make it happen.
Crumbs from the Scone
A lot of CEOs seem to shy away from blogging. And a lot of PR teams keep asking, “Why?” Actually, it’s understandable: the head honcho must always represent the entire company, and that’s a lot of pressure for a writer. The real question should be: How can a CEO blog by day and still sleep at night?
Enter Tom Glocer, CEO of Thomson Reuters. Glocer is the head of a vast team of top-notch writers, yet he still produces an engaging blog without fear. His secret? He never talks business.
“We are all subject to a lot of official communications these days from companies,” Glocer says at Tom Glocer’s Blog. “All too often, these are ghost-written passages concocted by overeager PR machines.” Well, that doesn’t happen in this blog. Glocer alone writes it, and he only writes about “what interests me.”
Is it working? Well, a recent two-part report on father/daughter bonding, including his account of their Night at the Museum together, has so far garnered close to 1,000 pageviews. Not bad.
“I imagine much of my audience will be internal at Thomson Reuters,” he notes in his intro. But that’s OK, too. He’s letting the blog determine its audience. “My real aim is to engage in an electronic dialog with whomever [sic] wants to comment on a post or otherwise share their views,” he concludes.
It’s OK to be you, even at the top. Engaging blogs like this one help prove the point that above all, blogging works best when it’s personal and individual.
Source: Tom Glocer’s Blog.
Crumbs from the Scone
“Evangelism” is the catchword of the day. Companies are diligently turning their customer-service reps into “evangelists.” How precious. But is there something behind this movement? Is evangelism actually taking CRM to a new level? Ben McConnell thinks so, and he cites an example at the Church of the Customer Blog. “It’s one thing for your company to say, in blog posts and email newsletters, that it loves customers,” says McConnell. “It’s another thing to go out and do the hard work of brand grassroots-building, and demonstrate it face-to-face.”
That’s what he says Betsy Weber, chief evangelist at Michigan software company TechSmith, does daily. “[Betsy is] building a passionate fan base for TechSmith by meeting customers and being the warm, caring person she is naturally,” he notes. He cites some of her evangelical numbers. Over the past six years, Betsy has:
- Met 7,000 customers in person
- Attended 30 conferences per year
- Picked up 3,000 followers on Twitter
Have her efforts paid off? Apparently so. “TechSmith has done well in that time: double-digit revenue growth every year,” McConnell says.
The message for marketers? Be a good listener. The old model of talking the talk (hawking your products to a mass market) has shifted to walking the walk (letting your customers have their say, and adjusting your offerings accordingly).
Walk that extra CRM mile. These days, engaging with customers across a range of media is a real key to keeping them loyal.
Source: Church of the Customer Blog
Crumbs from the Scone
Not long ago, Avinash Kaushik posed this question via Twitter: “Inspire me: If there is one web analytics question you want answered what would it be? What’s your juiciest/mundane, daily, challenge?” The tweet generated a huge response, and in a post at his Occam’s Razor blog he answers a number of queries that range from the serious to the lighthearted:
How do you convince people to look beyond page impressions for usable measurable metrics? In essence, replies Kaushik, you must demonstrate why the aggregate metric cannot measure or reflect customer behavior. He advises the gradual integration of analysis based on metrics like visitor loyalty and length of visits. For instance, report the number of impressions, but note that visitors from Source X had more impressions.
I want analytics data justifying the removal of main navigation:-) Kaushik offers a facetious commendation on the reader’s bravery before responding with a serious response that applies to any concept, however solid or foolhardy: “You have only one option,” he says. “Test!”
According to Kaushik, your focus should be on the three basic outcomes a website can deliver: increasing revenue; reducing costs; and improving customer loyalty and satisfaction. “When in doubt ask yourself if what you are doing falls into one of those three buckets,” he says. “If it does, keep going. If not then I suggest you revisit what you are doing.”
Source: Occam’s Razor.
Spring is here, and Karen Talavera wants to clean house. “[N]ow is the perfect time for us to critically re-examine our programs, campaign processes, and messages with a fresh, unbiased eye,” she says in an article at the MarketingProfs site. “Time to sweep away the cobwebs of inefficiency or neglect that might have accumulated in less-scrutinized times.”
