Kitchen Symphony

Email Reengagement is a major theme of late – requests to update preferences, reevaluate alternate mediums and/ or simply remind the recipient of the importance of the messages.

A couple recent examples received are from P.F. Chang’s and Gardener’s Supply. The P.F. Chang’s example incorporates great language – “You receive a lot of emails… and delete most of them.” This is how they start the message, they continue by asking what would interest you most as a recipient of their emails – their food (in-restaurant or at home recipes), their decor, inspirations or the behind the scenes kitchen symphony that goes into preparing your meal. This email is the opportunity to stay top of mind and suggest possible options that you may have never considered.


My second example is from Gardener’s Supply Company, this email invites recipients to take a quick survey to verify catalog preferences. This invitation is multi-fold; initially providing an opportunity to gather customer/ prospect insight while showing the full array of products available. The second reminds recipients of the available, alternate channels, a third is Gardener’s commitment to the environment, providing catalogues to those interested in receiving them.

Inspired yet… or just wishing for Lettuce Wraps? Take a hard look at your current marketing stream, maybe it’s time to reengage your recipients.

List Revival

Faced with lackluster sales, a multi-channel cataloger offered its catalogue file an incentive to shop. Buyers were offered a coupon for one level, non-buyers were offered a little more of an incentive – they made a huge splash promoting the offer, beginning with a direct mail piece including an access code and expiration date. Recipients went online, entered the code, filled out a couple questions and were emailed the coupon code.

After the coupon was redeemed, shoppers received a series of emails asking for additional preference information, feedback on the purchase channel and product feedback – the typical email included two or three questions.

Overall impact was phenomenal; before the list revival project, their email list was 20% of the catalogue file, they averaged less than 5% open rates and had dismal click-through. Following the project, the cataloger had more than doubled their email list, quadrupled their open rates and had click throughs that were through the roof. The data from the survey series resulted in better segmentation, targeted messaging and a boost in overall sales.

Following the email survey cycle, the cataloguer sent an additional, random survey to 1,000 new customers – findings showed that these new customers felt they were part of the club and received offers that were exactly what they wanted.

Maybe you’re not ready for a total revival, but you could easily begin to survey shoppers and create the necessary dialogue – remember our push for interactive conversations?

Give the People What They Want

I received a great email today from Sticky Fingers, a local BBQ restaurant in South Carolina. Here's the email:

There are three things I like about this email:

1. Sticky Fingers had run a survey a couple of weeks prior. Note the comment from the owners in the bottom right hand corner of the creative. They've actually run this promo before, but now they have the added value that this was in response to feedback they had received in the surveys. What a great way to create a conversation with customers.


2. This is a great way to leverage your email program to drive people in to your brick and mortar location. Note that you have to print the email out and bring it in to the restaurant in order to redeem.


3. I like the way that this email acknowledges the economic crunch that some customers are experiencing, and offers a special discount around that. If you're an online only retailer, you could highlight the value of shopping online, underlining the fact that customers will save money and time shopping online with you.

Try out some of these tips with your next email, and let us know how it goes.

Who are you?

I met Anthony in Miami last week; we are both immigrants and marketers and briefly chatted about how our parents felt when we told them we were going to be when we “grew up” – instead of the engineer, lawyer or doctor they expected. Like me, he probably made assumptions of what others wanted him to become and answered to avoid the uncomfortable response.

If you can reduce the anxiety associated with a question you are more likely to get an honest/ better response the same applies when we survey customers and prospects. The problem doesn't lie with the information collected; it’s the approach. To improve the quality of your responses you need to make the recipient comfortable, make the interaction conversational.

Think of the last time you entered a contest, you were asked to provide your name and answer some personal questions – what was your comfort level in this age of identity theft? How honest were you with your answers?

Eliminate the anxiety by beginning your surveys with a brief description of why you need the information. For your Q&A, begin with some multiple choice or yes/ no questions. After three questions, reduce the respondent’s anxiety by asking for anecdotal feedback (in a text box) – something to express their feelings. After they have done this continue with your survey (more multiple choice and yes/ no). At the end of the survey ask them for their email ID and contact information. We’ve found more positive responses, more completed surveys and more primary email IDs when the demographic and contact info was at the end of the questionnaire.

Asking for the contact information first tends to result in three issues:
1) The reader’s guard goes up and so they provide you with a secondary (or false) email ID.
2) The user assumes a persona, so the questions get answered with information that is not necessarily true.
3) The user feels like they can come back to your questions later so they skip the information.

Your goal is to create an interactive conversation – to do this you have to earn their trust…

Involving your Customers

The best way to enhance your email marketing endeavors is to endear yourself to your customers; do this by connecting and involving them in your communiqués. Today's blog post is about Smiley Guy and how he has engaged his customers and prospects in a dialogue about their brand. SmileMakers offers great prizes for great kids (and have cool site animation) – you should know them, they are the company that provides stickers and fun stuff in doctor’s or dentist’s offices, classrooms, banks, etc.

So back to the email… their subject line states A special thank you for all your input in 2007. The email starts with your SmileMakers loyalty points and offers a 20% off $100 coupon, but to get the coupon, you have to take the survey.

The email acknowledges that SmileMakers is working diligently to implement some of the suggestions received and then asks for more input in 2008. The focus of this survey is to ask teachers about their preference for personalized bookmarks, personalized posters and personalized award certificates. The questions in the survey are very simple:

1. Would you buy the product?
2. How many would you buy?
3. How long would you be willing to wait?
4. Do you currently buy this product from someone else?
5. If you did buy the product – how much did you spend, when did you last purchase and how long did you have to wait?

This is absolutely brilliant; simple, direct questions to engage readers! I’m sure the feedback will be instrumental in helping the Smiley Guy define future offers.

A good lesson to us email marketers – start by engaging the readers (listing points), keep them involved in the process (surveys) and leverage their feedback to improve your product mix and improve your campaigns.

Survey Insight

Seems like customer insight is a big trend in ’08; so far I’ve received surveys from one of my magazines, a car rental company, an online retailer and the folks who made my coffee maker. Be it my marketer’s curiosity, brand loyalty or being in need of a blog post – I took the four surveys, all were sent via email and none offered an incentive.

Overall the rental car company had the best format; it was a six question ranking survey regarding my most recent experience. I received the survey about six hours after I turned in the car and was given the opportunity to add comments for each of the multiple choice questions. In all it took less than five minutes to complete.

I thought the survey about my coffee maker was the worst; I bought it back in June (received survey yesterday.) The survey asked all kinds of questions about when I use it, the number of cups I drink and what type of coffee maker I had before this one – all good. However, there was also a set of five (LONG) statements that repeated for various scenarios, I was asked to respond on a sliding scale that ranged from strongly disagree to strongly agree (which made me strongly disagreeable.) I won’t even discuss the typo, poor phrasing, formatting or use of a serif font; but this hideous survey lost me about three questions into the 15-plus minutes needed to complete.

The other two surveys fell somewhere in between, the magazine survey was too long (approx 25 minutes) and was obviously trying to gather info on what to attract/ charge potential advertisers. The retailer was a product ranking opportunity that allowed comments, it was very easy to complete asked for me to rank (in stars) my purchase in five categories and then provided an open-ended response – this one took about five minutes to complete.

So lessons to be learned here:
1) Keep the survey short
2) Send it quickly (be relevant)
3) Don’t complicate the answers
4) Allow text input
5) Remember the aesthetics – especially when you have picky people responding (like me).

Sundeep’s eBucket List

Thought I’d end up the series with my eBucket List; for 2008, I want to focus on the people behind the email, so here are my suggestions:

Train your people: The best investment you can make in your email program is to train your touch points in the collection process. Start with the people who talk to customers and prospects, ask them to list three to five reasons why people ought to sign up for your email program. Put this list together and make everyone aware of it. Listen to what is being said to prospects on the phone and (if you can) ask the customer/ prospect what they thought about the solicitation for email. Your team needs to understand why you need email, you need to continue to give them updates, listen to their concerns and make it consistent across channels.

Keep Asking: You never know enough! Create various conversation zones with your customers. Start with the sign up process; ask them for more than their email id. Insert a link in every email, soliciting feedback from your subscribers about your company, your service and give them a comment field. Make sure you act upon this feedback because you want to make sure that the customers aren’t ignored. Plan a quarterly email asking them about the style of your communiqués – ask them for direct feedback on ways you can improve your email program. In fact, why not ask them what they would like to see in print. In addition to asking, leverage their actual behavior; compare it with what they said they wanted and use this click data to further improve your email program.

Speed & Service: Email is fast and people love great service. As a customer service representative many years ago, I enjoyed anticipating events and freaking people out by showing up with what they needed almost immediately. Email allows you to get into the inbox almost immediately, use it to make sure you are providing a service. Take every single customer service communiqué within your organization and see how you can improve it through your email program.

The future of email marketing lies in a marketer’s ability to create an interactive conversation with their clients and prospects. Leverage your knowledge about the customer, make your people part of your process and excel at service – it is as simple as that!

Talk to Me

Wonder what your customers and prospects are thinking? There are research firms out there that will charge you thousands of dollars to research this for you – but there is also a free way to gather the same information. Add a feedback link to your emails, ask recipients three questions:
1) Rank your product (one to five)
2) Rank your service (one to five)
3) Give feedback (open ended response)

Then all you have to do is compile the responses, over time you’ll gather valuable feedback without that research firm. You’ll also engage your recipients and further the relationship.

Thought leaders in this category include Coastal Federal Credit Union; their eNewsletters ask financial related questions that may not exactly apply to their offerings. For instance, one of their questions was:

How much does the average family of four spend on beverages when dining out, in the average year?

The goal here was to not only engage but to also make the recipient aware of how their dollars were spent – the clever packaging gives CFCU an advantage and keeps their readers engaged.

Make it Work!

I am a HUGE (repeat HUGE) Project Runway fan – I will watch the same episodes a couple times; I have re-watched past seasons… it’s on in the background while I’m at home… HUGE fan. I think Heidi is a genius, Nina Garcia and Michael Kors crack me up and then there is my heart Tim Gunn – I would love to have a shopping day with Tim (please note I am not as desperate as those on his Guide to Style show). Again, huge fan; but I’ll spare you from going on...

Sew get to the Point!
I realize that this blog isn’t about the shows on Bravo! but, there are great ideas that we as eMarketers can apply. During the episodes there is a single line quiz, where viewers are asked to text message their vote; the results are then shared during a subsequent commercial break. I think this is an awesome way to spark interaction and can be applied to your eMarketing as well. The survey could be hosted on your website or blog and could be completely anonymous – ask visitors for ideas to your upcoming campaigns, images for your catalog cover or what their 2008 resolution will be.

The guys at Bravo! take things a step further by allowing online votes (in addition to the single line survey), blogs from the cast, guest blogs from past contestants, interviews and photo repositories. The point is that viewers get to interact! It’s an awesome way to engage. Auf wiedersehen!

Turning Customers into Raving Fans

Last week, I had to call a plumber to fix a leak in my bathroom. As anyone who has ever had to have any plumbing work done knows, this is not something you look forward to. For this particular job, I decided to call Gene Love Plumbing, because of an interesting thing I once saw them do. They used to put some of there plumbers out on a major thoroughfare and wave good morning to everyone on their way to work.

So I called them up, and they sent someone over within an hour. I have to say, that this was by far the best customer service I have ever received from any service company ever. Consider the following:

• The plumber introduced himself at the door by giving me is business card first and shaking my hand.



• While he was writing up the estimate for the work, he presented me with a preferred customer program, which would give me free inspections, priority service, and a 15% discount on all work, including the work I was getting done that day.



• A couple of hours after he left, I received a follow up call from the company, asking how the job went and making sure I was satisfied.



• In a couple of days, I received a card thanking me for my business and including a survey card to mail back in.

Gene Love Plumbing's stated goal is to turn customers into raving fans, and they've certainly succeeded in my case.

What does this have to do with eCommerce? One of the chief ways you can set yourself apart from competitors is by providing superior customer service. Certainly, it can be more difficult to provide a personal touch when you're talking about business that is done electronically, but here are some suggestions:

- Include a hand written note thanking the customer for their business with each order shipped.

- Provide a follow up call to see how the customer is enjoying their purchase.

- Send a follow up email thanking the customer for their business, and including an invitation to write a review or to take a brief survey.

If you can leave that extra impression on your customers that shows how much you value their business, then you can turn them into raving fans as well.

What the heck is M 2.0?

If you were to open a business, you need to let people know that you are in business. In the “good ole days” all you did was call the phone company and you were in the book. Some people went the extra mile and registered with the Better Business Bureau, hosted a grand opening or did a little advertising. These still apply but given the challenges and opportunities today, it’s fascinating what David can accomplish with all the Goliaths out there.

Here are a few (Web 2.0) things to consider to enhance your presence:
1. Your website – This is your imprint for the online world and an absolute to let people find you. Keep it simple and current, and try to engage people – but don't stop there.

2. Your email list – Ask people to sign up, ask them for preferences, communicate with them on a regular basis. Overstock.com, Paul Fredrick Menstyle and King Arthur Flour are three companies that do an outstanding job in getting people to sign up.

3. Your blog – Keep this current; incorporate customer feedback, product information, testimonials, email campaign information and editorials – all written with a passion to keep users engaged. The Craving Anthropologie blog is a masterpiece; Stave Puzzles and Duncraft also have great special interest blogs. An up-and-comer in this space is the blog of 1154 LILL Studio’s.

4. Your MySpace & Facebook Page – Set up an online profile about your company, feature key people within your company. If you are a financial institution – feature your reps, if you are a consumer products company – feature some of the personas that you market to, if you are a B2B company – feature the difference you are making in society, if you are selling a city – market it and so on. This is how the new generation will find you, and we better learn to be connected.

5. Twitter – Remember the Dell Dude? People enjoyed looking for him – now people track their favorites on Twitter – just remember to keep it brief.

6. Flickr a little – Why not put images up so people can find them, if people can see a delicious desert on Facebook with a note that it was put together with the finest ingredients from King Arthur Flour – odds are they will visit the site to learn a little more.

7. YouTube is cool – This weekend, we enjoyed watching two hours worth of clips with the kids – all different kinds of videos. A couple of months ago Britton’s of Columbia posted a video on how to tie a bow tie; the Masai shoe is so aptly displayed in a video from Herrington Catalog (part of their site). Of course you may have already heard the story of BlendTec. The point is that we should look for ways to engage the user through infomercials, as well as testimonial videos – linking all of it back.

8. Surveys are vital – we always want to know what our customers are thinking and how we can help them even more. Design Toscano does a great job in engaging their users for feedback. The key point is that you should always look for reasons to ask questions and try to leverage this information for future communiqués.

9. Podcasts are effective too – Why not record customer testimonials and play them on your site. Same thing for a bank – have someone provide a daily update on the rates and the market performance, trends, etc. Set these up on your site so people can come and be entertained as well as engaged.

10. Mashups are good way to integrate – think of it as a site cocktail, for instance you can combine mapping sites (Google or Yahoo!) and overlay apartment listings or traffic information. There are a couple sites that make it possible – visit Popfly or Yahoo! Pipes

So how do you use these Web 2.0 techniques? Yogis define M2.0 as new era marketing, in a recent seminar on M2.0 in Woodstock, VT, Reagan Taylor defined M2.0 as a strategy and tactics that leverage Web 2.0 technologies. The beauty of M2.0 according to Taylor is that all of this can be done on a minimum budget. Look for future seminars on M2.0 – we’re planning on in Atlanta soon.

Best Practices for Survey

Are you not getting the response you would like on your surveys? Here are a couple of best practices to keep in mind for your surveys:

• Keep it short - Ask no more than 5 questions. Longer surveys tend to have a high abandonment rate.
• Ask relevant questions - Many times you'll see a survey with questions that just don't apply to the customer. Try to target customers with questions they have some experience with. For instance, if they bought a shirt from you, don't ask them to rate your pants selection.
• Target your audience - Sometimes we think a random selection of customers is good. But asking customers who are frequent buyers and who love your product or service will yield better results, and more enthusiastic feedback.

Timing is Everything

I'm an eMusic subscriber, and I last Monday sent in a question to their customer service group. On Friday, I received a survey asking how their customer service department did in responding. Since no one had responded to my question as of yet, I ranked them pretty poorly. An hour or so later, I did receive the response from Customer Service about my question.

Now, I'm not sure if my question got answered because of how poorly I scored them on the survey; but if I had received that survey after having received my answer I would have scored them better.

It struck me that this was a case of bad timing for eMusic. When it comes to a customer survey like this, you should make sure that you send the survey after you respond to the customer's needs. But you want to make sure that you look at the timing of your other emails as well.

Are you sending a promotional email to customers who just purchased the product you're promoting? Probably not the best time to hit them with an offer. Maybe offer those customers something different. What about if a customer has come to the point in their purchase history where they need to replenish a product? Are you sending them a reminder?

Timing is everything.

Tell us what you think

In the past we've asked for some feedback from folks on what topics they would like to see covered here on the blog, but everyone has been a little shy. We want this blog to have as much benefit as possible to you dear reader, so please take a minute to fill out this anonymous survey, and let us know what you think.

We appreciate your time, and thanks for reading!

And they'll tell two friends...

I recently received an email from a retailer who I had purchased some clothes from, inviting me to write a review on the products I had purchased. I was looking forward to giving my honest feedback on the product to other shoppers like me. I was disappointed when, after clicking the link, I was taking to a standard third party survey about my purchase.

There is certainly nothing wrong with surveying your customers to collect feedback about your items and customer experience. But don't pull a bait and switch on your customers. Be upfront with them on what type of feedback you're asking for, and then deliver on that promise. If you're going to give them a survey, tell them it's a survey. If you're asking them to write a review, let them write a review.

Incidental, asking for customers to write a review on your products can not only help to provide other customers with buying points from real life customers, but can also help build a sense of community. Amazon has done a great job with this, allowing customers to write reviews of the items they've purchased. This works well for them because of the vast amounts of products they sell.

Outside of reviews, you could ask for testimonials from customers, thus allowing you to pick and choose what types of reviews you wish to publish. This way, you can still leverage the customer feedback for increased sales, but also make sure that you highlight the positive points of your product.

Service In Action - December 2006

In case you missed this month's Service In Action call, here is the presentation that was reviewed. To find out when next month's call is, visit www.serviceinaction.com

Seek, Ask, & Serve

Find people fast, know what they want, & serve them quickly. Search, survey, & e-mail - three things that really matter to marketers! Each one is very widely used, but most people run each program in isolation – negating the impact to be marginal.

Ultimate Nirvana is the synchronization of all three tasks – the case studies will show you how to dramatically improve the impact of your marketing through simple pairing.

Over the next two weeks, I will share a case study every other day on what people have done to reach a higher level.