How To (Part II)

I was online last night shopping for a pair of replacement pants – my dry-cleaners ruined my favorite pair of Brooks Brothers… somehow it’s always the nicest ones. Thankfully, my cleaners have an excellent replacement policy and this is only the second garment they’ve damaged in five-plus years.

While there, I saw a portion of their site that coincides with Monday’s How To Post, they included a play-by-play of how to tie various scarf knots. Granted that the style is a little too uber-polished (even for me), but it was a nice way to demonstrate an abstract concept and add value to their site.

In addition to the scarves, Brooks Brothers themed their site for Father’s Day shopping, categorizing gift ideas based on your Dad’s style – Classic Dad, Active Dad, Casual Dad or Executive Dad. These are just a couple great ideas to help make your retail site a little something more.

Self-Service Proof

Yesterday’s post included a mention of the results from a recent survey of North American consumers. Some of the highlights from this third annual, NCR Corporation, analysis show that consumers want companies to offer more self-service options – regardless of industry.

According to the finding:

• 56% of respondents say their likelihood to use self-service has increased over the past year.
• 86% of U.S. and Canadian consumers are more likely to do business with companies that offer self-service – via the Internet, mobile device, kiosk or ATM (an increase of 11% over those who gave the same response in last year’s study.)

So how are you addressing your customer/ prospect’s need for self-service? Maybe it’s time to improve or ramp-up initiatives – your consumers demand it and have become dependent on the speed, convenience, privacy and ease of use associated with self-service channels.

Want more info; send us a note for the full findings of the North American study whitepaper – or visit the Self-Service Universe site. Additional research is being conducted in Europe, Australia, China and Japan.

Email on the Go

Do you know how many of your recipients are viewing emails on a mobile device, the number is increasing. According to a recent survey, over 20% of the US will own a cell phone with email integration (some 4 billion) by the end of 2008.

To stay current with your recipients, modify your communiqués to make them mobile friendly:
1) Survey recipients to determine their message type preferences (HTML or text/ mobile friendly)
2) Use multi-part (HTML and text) as your lowest common denominator, this could cover you until able to survey recipients
3) Consider restating your main offer or subject line as the first line of the email’s body (before the “If you can’t see this click here.”) By doing this, your recipients will get the gist of your message without needing to see the associated image.

The Yogi and I are attending Self Service Universe this week in Orlando, so we’ll be sure to report any new developments in the field. Until then, we’ll check your notes on our smart phones... that's right, the Yogi is becoming a mad texter!