Marketing Technology Blog

One of the most effective techniques to move Random Strangers to Raving Fans is to use a “drip campaign”.  In this process you identify a select group of people who fit a particular demographic, or better yet, share a common interest and send them messages.  These messages can be email, voice mail, direct mail, or face to face.

A truely effective campaign provides information relevant to your target customer, comes in regular, but not annoying intervals, and moves the prospect toward a purchase decision.

Sometimes, however, over eager business owners or marketers try to accelerate the process, by sending too much information, too soon, or too often.  The result? Exactly the opposite response, as your prospect not only fails to buy, they tell you to go away, permanently!

As an email marketer, I am usually pretty patient, but recently, Ratepoint wore out their welcome.  How? Well it started innocently enough, with a postcard, an email and an offer for a free trial.  Then there was the phone call during which I asked a few questions. Before the conversation ended I told them I was unlikely to use their product because I was a reseller for Constant Contact and their was no compelling reason for me to change.

Instead of taking the polite no, they moved me into an entirely different group and I became a prospect.   There were more postcards,  more email and more phone calls.  As their sales people became increasingly annoying, demanding to know why I hadn’t activated my trial,  I found it harder and harder to remain polite.  (Lets face it, I am from NY and on a good day it is hard for me to remain polite)

If I would have ever considered trying their product, I am unlikely to now.  The lesson?  Too much marketing is not a good thing.  If someone indicates they are not a prospect, let them opt out, and move on.   Water may erode mountains, one drip at a time, but it won’t move someone to buy.

In a recent post, Seth Godin asked an important question I think every business owner needs to answer : Why You?  Why Now?

Lets face in most product categories, but certainly in internet services we have choices.    When it comes to Email providers, web hosts, and customer relationship management software , the smart business owner should ask a potential resource: With so many choices, why should I choose you?

When I started my business I gravitated toward the lowest price, most business owners do.  But after a few interactions with low cost providers, typically when something went wrong, I learned my time had value. So now, when I evaluate online tools and resources, I have several criteria which are more important than price.

1. Does the product fill my requirement. While there are a number of CRM tools available today, I use AddressTwo, because it was designed by someone who ran a business like mine.  The headings, fields, dashboard organization and make sense for me.
2. Can I figure out how it works without reading a long instruction piece, or having someone walk me through it.  I don’t have time for long demos in the middle of the day.  And although I can read ( quite well actually) I don’t want to take the time to wade through the instructions.  Software as a service, should be self serve. The user interface should be intuitive.  I will be willing to invest time for advanced features,  but give me the basics.  My favorite example of simple user interface:  Constant Contact. (I am all about the local, and I hate the fact that I can’t endorse any our of Indianapolis based eMail companies, but I haven’t found anything as easy to use)
3. People Powered Technical Support. When I am considering signing up for an on-line tool, one of the first things I do, before giving them my credit card, is call their support line.   I want to know how many sequences of 2,3,2,1,1,1,1,1 # I must hit run through before I get a live person. And when I do, are they working off a script, with a specific set of questions, or are they capable of listening to mine?   Call Formspring technical support of Provim and you will see what I mean.   Real people, with the ability to understand your questions.  While GoDaddy has gotten better, the wait is still too long, and the amount of information you have to have just to get a question answered is often unreasonable.

These are my “why you, why  now” criteria. Maybe I am not your target customer. If I am not, feel free to ignore my opinions.  But don’t assume you know the decision criteria for your customers. Take time to ask your customers why they chose you, and improve your delivery on those aspects and price will become almost irrelevant.

Twenty five years ago, companies which gave failed to live up to a customers expectation would often receive an angry letter from the customer.   Their customer service department could ignore the letter, and that would be the end of the story.

The customer might tell a few friends, but for the most part large companies, like airlines could get away with delivering poor service. As consumers we had little power to hold them accountable.

But with the advent of social networks, discussion boards, twitter and YouTube the tables have turned.  The video below is one of my favorite examples of a consumer exercising his  power.  United Airlines damaged musician Dave Carroll’s guitar.  After nine months of seeking compensation, he gave up.  He wrote a song and created a video which has been viewed in excess of  73 million times.   With 41,000 ratings and 25,000 comments he has been able to reach more than a few friends, demonstrating the shift in the balance of power to the consumer.

This is a public relations nightmare for the airline, with no way to stop it.  In addition to the video, I found more than 70,000  articles listings and links in blog posts and news sites including the  Huffington Post to the NY Times,

So what should  United Airlines do?  How does a large company use social media to respond?   Once the video was released the $1,200 which would have made the problem go away six months ago, was not enough.  As Mr Carroll explains :. I’ve been done “being angry” for quite some time and, if anything, I should thank United. They’ve given me a creative outlet that has brought people together from around the world.

By the way, only moderatly successful as a musician, the song has turned Mr. Carroll into an overnight success, with a promising career talking to groups about customer service

Reading Doug’s post the made me think about all the applications upon which I have come to depend as a part of how I run my business and my life.  Several, Tungle and Dropbox, Doug already mentioned.  But here is a list of a few others I could not imagine life without:

WebNotes -  This is an invaluable part of my web research.  Whether I am trying to find information for a client project, inspiration for a blog post, or track results of a PR campaign, WebNotes allows me to capture and organize information with post-it-notes and highlighters.  And the best part is the report generation tool.  When teamed with an automated Google Alert, we look like we spent hours searching the web and preparing  the summary report!

AddressTwo – More than an address book, this is a true CRM tool.   I have used a number of data bases over the years to manage my contacts, Access ( I built my own, boy was that geeky),  ACT and Outlook and I find this one fits me perfectly.   Web based, I can share my contacts with my entire team.  We can manage contacts and projects with the built in task list.  Also, I am slowly migrating from ConstantContact to the AddressTwo email tool.  Although it is a little limited from a design and reporting structure, I love the ability to query the data base, identify just the right group, and deliver the appropriate message.

I also love the ability to email Addy with names of people I want to include in my data base or  introduce to each other and she takes care of it.  ( Yes I know she isn’t really a person, but sometimes she accomplishes more for me than a real employee, so it is hard not to think of her as a person)

Audacity - People who know me well find it incredibly funny that I earn my living as a writer, because I am not a writer.  I am a talker! As a talker, I was intrigued by the idea of adding podcasts to my blog and Audacity has made that possible.  With very little time invested, I have moved from novice to editing pro.   I can not edit out even the slightest um, er or phone call interruption.   (Though sometimes I leave them in, just because they add character).

I love the fact the weekly podcasts reduce the amount of writing I have to do, but there are other benefits as well.  The programs give me an excuse to invite a friend in for a recording session and a visit.  Now that I have learned to manage to technology, recording takes only a few minutes, then we have time to catch up and talk about other stuff!

These three applications were new for me in 2009. It is amazing how quickly new technology becomes a part of your life.  I can’t wait to see what I discover next year!