Crumbs from the Scone
A recent McDonald’s ad sets a scene many of us see every day, but throws in a twist. Two cultured-looking men are reading at a table in a highbrow coffee house when the first friend—neck wrapped in a scarf—mentions that McDonald’s now sells cappuccino. His goateed compatriot greets the news with an initially dismissive expression, but then smiles broadly and says, “That’s awesome! I can shave this thing off my face!” As the first friend removes his scarf and sweater, they celebrate how they no longer have to call movies “films,” and can now talk about football.
The ad takes pains, though, to soften the stereotype-bashing blow with a concession that these elements aren’t necessarily pretentious affectations:
- Friend #2: “I don’t need these glasses. These are fake.”
- Friend #1: “I do need mine. They’re very real.”
In a post at the MarketingProfs Daily Fix blog, Ted Mininni distills the humorous ad’s multiple messages: “You don’t have to be a snobbish, artsy type—real or affected—to enjoy a good ‘cultured’ brew. You don’t have to spend a lot of money to get great café beverages, either. You can actually be who you are—walk into McDonald’s Café and get a great cup of Joe while being an average Joe.”
The ad becomes Marketing Inspiration by accomplishing all of this and making us laugh—whether at or with the stereotype—in only 30 seconds.
source: marketingprofs enewsletter
Crumbs from the Scone
“Most email marketers do not view soft bounces as being a major cause for concern,” says Dela Quist in the UK DMA Email Marketing Council newsletter, “so rarely, if ever, have any specific strategies been in place for dealing with them.”
According to Quist, this erroneous belief is based on outdated assumptions—namely, that soft bounces are caused by busy servers or full inboxes. The catch: Neither of these is a pressing issue in 2009. “Gmail currently offers 7GB of storage!” Quist says. “I don’t know anyone who has exceeded their Gmail—or for that matter, [their] Yahoo or Hotmail storage limit—and even if there are such people, they are hardly representative of the average consumer.”
Because of this, concludes Quist, a soft bounce is most likely caused by temporary ISP blocking, an action often triggered by:
- A lack of authentication
- A poor IP reputation
- Fluctuations in volume
- Spam complaints
Whatever the reason, it probably isn’t good, but can be addressed in coordination with your ESP.
Heads up! Handle soft bounces with the same attention you give to hard ones. They might not be as harmless as you think: they can, in fact, be a sign of a far more serious situation.
Source: UK DMA.
Crumbs from the Scone
You know you’re on the up-and-up, and that your email messages contain legitimate offers for actual products or services. Unfortunately, though, you’re often sharing inbox space with fraudulent messages that claim to come from popular retailers and banks. Those emails are, in fact, nothing more than phishing scams designed to obtain the personal information crooks need for identity theft. Making everything more complicated, phishers have become more sophisticated over the last few years, swiping graphics taken from actual websites and spoofing URLs that appear legitimate.
Because your more savvy customers will regard any out-of-the-ordinary message with added skepticism, it’s important to avoid anything that might raise a red flag in their minds. Microsoft’s primer on phishing is a great way to identify elements that will make them nervous:
- Requests for the verification of personal information.
- Alerts that an account will be closed unless a customer responds within a certain timeframe.
- Salutations like Dear Valued Customer. “Phishing e-mail messages are usually sent out in bulk and often do not contain [a] first or last name,” notes Microsoft.
- Copy like Click the link below to gain access to your account, particularly if placing the pointer on a link reveals a different address than the one displayed.
Be trustworthy. Learn what puts your customers on guard, and use that information to design emails that heighten their trust.
Source: Microsoft.
Crumbs from the Scone
According to Jorge Aguilar and Andrew Pierce, the Hispanic population in the United States will surpass that of their white non-Hispanic compatriots by 2030. And, argue the pair in an article at MarketingProfs, appealing to this rapidly growing segment is not as simple as hiring a Spanish translator.
“[M]arketers need to incorporate into their perspectives how purchasing decisions are made by Hispanics,” they say. The opinions of family and friends, for instance, weigh heavily in the choices Hispanics make. For this reason, a realtor profiled on HGTV arranged for prospective home buyers to spend an evening entertaining loved ones in a house they were considering. “The family decided to purchase the house after getting positive feedback from the guests,” say Aguilar and Pierce.
They also suggest wooing first-generation customers with brand names they recognize. Colgate-Palmolive imports Suavitel, a fabric softener popular in Latin America; and Blistex has created a lip balm flavored like the ubiquitous soda Jarritos. Once you’ve penetrated the market, meanwhile, they recommend targeting your Hispanic audience with highly tailored messaging. “This likely requires new positioning to differentiate the brand from competitors while earning credibility and relevance,” they note.
One-size-fits-all solutions won’t work for this important segment, claim Aguilar and Pierce. “As the Hispanic population continues to grow larger and more affluent,” they say, “winning marketers will be those who understand brand loyalty cannot be achieved by translating advertisements into Spanish.”
Source: MarketingProfs.
Crumbs from the Scone
You’ve just read the first draft of a press release and you can already see where you want to make a few edits. The lede needs more punch. Your audience might not recognize that industry-specific term. You’ve noticed that your third paragraph fell victim to the passive voice. Once you fix those, you start to see other problems—and pretty soon you’re agonizing over relatively inconsequential issues, like whether to use an em-dash or a semicolon to join a pair of sentences.
According to Dave Fleet, this dogged pursuit of perfection can become counterproductive. “With each subsequent round of editing,” he notes, “the return on your time investment will likely get incrementally smaller. At some point you need to make the call to stop; to accept that it’s just not worth making more edits.”
So how can you tell when enough is enough? Fleet offers this checklist:
- Your copy starts to resemble earlier versions.
- It seems like someone’s been using a thesaurus.
- You’re fine-tuning minor wording deep in the text.
- A rising word count includes new material of questionable relevance.
Whether you’re working alone or with a team, it’s important to recognize when changes are being made for the sake of change. If further edits don’t improve the press release, says Fleet, “It might be time to put the writing to bed and move on.”
Source: Dave Fleet.
Crumbs from the Scone
In a post at the ExactTarget blog, Nate Romance recounts a visit with his tech-savvy mother, a woman who makes frequent online purchases through sites like Craigslist and Amazon. While scanning her email, she became annoyed with a particular message. “If they send me one more stupid email this week,” she said in exasperation, “I’m never going to buy anything from them again.”
According to Romance, his mother shops at this specialty retailer exactly once a year—to buy a birthday gift for his sister. But despite her regular-as-clockwork shopping pattern, she still receives between three and five email messages each week.
The problem, says Romance, is when companies like this place more importance on omnipresence than relevance. “One marketer actually told me that they considered an unopened, unclicked email to be a net positive for their brand,” he says. “Instead of looking at what they are gaining by sending so frequently, this company should probably be looking at what they are losing from this practice.”
He suggests a better practice: “Adjusting frequency based on previous purchase behavior shows that you understand your customers, you respect them, and you’ll be there for them when they’re ready.”
Cool it. Pay close attention to customer preferences. No one benefits from bombarding subscribers with a scattershot email strategy.
Source: ExactTarget.
A recent McDonald’s ad sets a scene many of us see every day, but throws in a twist. Two cultured-looking men are reading at a table in a highbrow coffee house when the first friend—neck wrapped in a scarf—mentions that McDonald’s now sells cappuccino. His goateed compatriot greets the news with an initially dismissive expression, but then smiles broadly and says, “That’s awesome! I can shave this thing off my face!” As the first friend removes his scarf and sweater, they celebrate how they no longer have to call movies “films,” and can now talk about football.
