What if they come to you?

So much time is spent on perfecting campaigns for customer and prospects. We focus on the list, the subject lines, the copy & the image, the call to action, some of us even focus on the landing pages. All this with the idea to gradually coax the recipient into responding to your offer. Sometimes, the recipient might just call you up or walk into your store or branch. What are your chances of the person serving the recipient knowing about the offer?

Here are a few things you could (gradually) do to make the 'people channels' part of your program.

1. The easiest thing to do is to make a simple mistake in the copy, targeting your own people. The first person to find the error should get rewarded with a free lunch or a bread or as I have seen in some instances - recognition. This makes your team look for offers and give you advice. Now target the prospect list with the regular email (without the mistake).

2. As the team gets more involved, solicit their advice. Take a copy of your email & pass it around to them. Ask for subject lines suggestions. I know of a few companies that have a betting pool for what subject line will work best - the goal is three fold - split tests with customers, employee involvement, and it gets everyones head in the game.

3. Call up or visit your team to inquire about the effectiveness of your email. Ask them what people are saying or to look out for what people are saying about your campaign. Provide them with your contact information as well so they can reach out to you themselves with suggestions. Try to work this into a process, where every one of your campaigns collects employee and recipient feedback.

4. Put out a special email to your team, explaining the offer to them. Give them options for each segment and if you have a decent database you can even personalize the offers for each recipient if your people were to look it up. This way, there is unison in your messaging and the offers are consistent, yet personalized.

In a subsequent post we will talk about how Casino's, Banks, and some companies with loyalty programs are leveraging their campaigns to make their 'people' more powerful in making targeted offers and in collecting valuable customer information. All this towards building an effective contact management system.

Make it Conversational

For a little down-time while at the sales conference, we took a brief trip to the mall next to our hotel; we made purchases at five merchants – cupcakes, shoes, jeans, handbags and goggles. We were genuinely impressed; every single one of these merchants had a sign-up sheet for email. Three of these merchants even had really cute sign-up cards – cards that gave you great reasons to sign up.

The employees we interacted with asked us for an email id. Crisp, clear and directly – their point of service systems even had a field for the collection. Despite these items there was a serious problem, each seemed like a cold exchange.

I believe these merchants missed out on a valuable opportunity to interact with us. After having received our email id, they should have tried to sell the program to us. It would have been easy for them to create a sense of expectation. Those few moments could have resulted in us treating their communiqués a little differently, creating higher open rates and better overall conversion. Their email marketing managers would have been thrilled.

A suggestion to email marketing managers, train the store/ branch employee – provide them with conversational scripts that will request the id and give them ways to plug your program (after the sale.) More importantly, ask those employees to share their thoughts back with you – issues, remarks and ideas. Keep these employees in the loop, have a call with store/ branch managers, you will do a better job creating a program and maybe raise your click-throughs and conversions.

The Tax-Free Sale

States have Back to School sales on certain items – these tax-free sales are very popular as people. Families put together lists of items they need and wait for the day; they visit the store during the sale and all are happy – the customer and the retailers. Retailers are happy because in addition to the merchandise on sale, they are also able to move full price items, plus even some taxable items. Because of the amount of ‘money’ they have saved in taxes – the buyers are happy to purchase the additional items.

Unfortunately, this tax-free sale concept has been totally abused, and is being used as an ultimate weapon to close new deals. I have been offered tax-free incentives to purchase furniture, a car, a vacation and even clothing. The retailer is simply paying for the taxes themselves diluting the true magic these words originally had.

My daughter, who is 11, kept rolling her eyes every time a salesperson told us about their Tax-Free offer. She got me thinking about this and was the motivation for this post (Thanks Shivani!)

Many times as marketers we try to reuse something that works well, running the risk of trivializing the offer. Anticipation or creating a genuine sense of expectation is much more effective in helping create superb offers. Get your openers, clickers and buyers to yearn for that special offer is a great way to personalize and create that special sale. Here are three examples that stand out in the year ahead:

First Look: 70–90% OFF
A major retailer segmented its list into buyers and non-buyers. Non-buyers were further segmented into clickers, openers and non-openers. These people were targeted with the email being trickled over a few hours – buyers got it first, non-openers last. Each group was asked to update their preferences; all responders were told to look for the next season clearance event and learned that the more attention they paid to the emails the earlier their notifications.

The Employee Discount
An apparel retailer offered employee discounts to some of their best customers as a thank you for their purchases over the year (2006.) Additionally each CSR was given ONE coupon to share with ONE customer. Come 2007, these buyers were aware of this closed door special sale and looked forward to this event. In 2007, each buyer was also given ONE coupon to share with their friends/ family. It was very effective, for not only did it create revenue but it created a special bond with the receivers of the offer over the entire year. This segment of customers had a much higher attention rate.

The 10% CD!
When interest rates were less than 5%, a financial institution offered a 10% CD – only 500 were available. It was a phenomenal event, more than a quarter of their list inquired about the CD, filled out preferences and more than 500 CDs were given away in less than 45 minutes! Oh, and talk about paying attention – the email-only offer was launched at 8.00 am EST.

The lesson from today’s post is that we shouldn’t ride the Tax-Free sale offer or the same offer to extinction. Another key learning is that the best thing to do is to remind people about an event and start a build-up leading up to the special event.

Hope your 2007 was great, best wishes for 2008.

Making F2F Work

How successful is your viral campaign? Each week, we put out premium real estate encouraging our email readers to share our campaigns with their friends; often including financial incentives, point rewards, special shipping, exclusive/ sneak preview offers or games to get you to share the word. Yet, if you look at the performance of the Forward to a Friend link over the past ten years, you’ll see a dramatic decline in its utility.

As marketers, we’re challenged to engage readers in a dialogue and make them part of your family – do this by asking for their opinions instead of asking them to forward. While you’re at it, be creative, ask them a question or ask them to share their favorite moment – then when you have this information, ask them if they would like to share this with others.

Here’s an example from King Arthur Flour, this employee-owned company puts out awesome offers and stay ahead by listening to their customers. Here they are engaging their customers in a giveaway, dubbed their Sweetstakes. This contest is still going strong, follow this link to walk through the email, see how they are getting feedback and then asking the reader to share with others. Who knows you may win $1,000 after meeting the Bakers at King Arthur Flour.


More on King Arthur Flour
King Arthur Flour and The Baker's Catalogue is 100% employee-owned and committed to quality. They are the winner of the 2006 Outstanding Vermont Business Award, 2006 Best Place to Work in Vermont and Business Ethics Magazine’s Social Legacy Award recipient.

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.

Too social?

Ever get the impression that there are too many social networking sites out there; or are you like most of us and create multiple – maybe a MySpace and a Facebook account so that you’re completely up to speed with everyone/ everything.

Maybe the first step toward linking the social networking sites lies in Meebo, it’s a web-based instant messaging program that lets you communicate with people over various IM services…

This service has also ventured into a mini-blog arena, with their Meebo Rooms, this feature allows users to participate in multimedia chats. Their chat rooms have everything from sports to comics and supports video and photo uploads. The rooms can be embedded into a website or blog, creating additional traffic and readership.

This may be the future of social sites; I’d love to link my MySpace with Facebook, one less site to check.

To make it Viral, make it Fun

Every marketer wants a campaign to grow it's own legs and get passed around by consumers to other prospects, and in today's interactive world, Viral marketing is much, much easier. The key to making a campaign viral is to make it fun. Most successful viral marketing campaigns usually involve a funny picture or video or perhaps a game, making it interactive.

Here are some famous viral marketing campaigns that you may have seen:

Mini Cooper

Burger King

Equifax

Note that these each feature a capability to tell a friend about the fun, usually with a simple text based email. You could leverage this email or even the game itself to provide a special offer to users once they've viewed the video or played the game.

Again, the key is making it fun. If a company that is a credit reporting bureau can come up with a fun game to share, then no doubt your company can too.

List Revival

List Revival
A multi-channel cataloger offered its house-file an incentive to come shop – web, call center, or store. Buyers were given a smaller offer, non-buyers were offered a little more. Everybody won something, a few won a lot, a handful really made out. You had to tell them a little bit about yourself, and of course, all offers were e-mailed to you.

The sequence of events that led to this were quite interesting. You got a direct mail piece at home or a phone call. They provided you with an access code with a timed incentive to respond. You went online – input your offer code & were e-mailed a confirmation link.

This confirmation link asked you to provide preferences – seven basic questions & a big thank you with a coupon you could redeem immediately. You wonder why the cataloger went back and forth with the prospect or customer.

This was a result of a few control group tests. Let me offer a colloquial example. If I was to meet you and ask you your name, where you are from, what you like, & your ‘best’ e-mail id – you are more likely to respond correctly if I was to engage you in a dialog versus having you answer all questions all at once. People are human, not robots.

The impact this had was phenomenal. Pre ‘list revival’ the catalogers e-mail list was 20% of the house-file, they averaged less than 5% open rates, with an even more dismal click-through. Post ‘list revival’ the cataloger had more than doubled the e-mail list. Also their open rates quadrupled & click through’s improved.

The result of all of this was better segmentation, targeted messaging, & a boost in overall sales. More importantly, a random survey of more than 1000 new customers revealed that they felt they were part of the ‘club.’ The offers they had received were exactly what they wanted!