Törmään vielä liian usein asiakkaiden kanssa keskusteluun siitä onko meillä b2b- tai brändireferenssejä. Eli ymmärrämmekö millaisessa haasteessa ja ympäristössä kyseinen yritys/brändi toimii. Tämä perinteinen lähestymistapa perustuu medialähtöiseen ajatteluun jossa pientä b2b-kohderyhmää ei kannata tavoitella esim. TV:n avulla koska “turhien” osumien määrä on niin suuri. Mielestäni klassinen kahtiajako (b2b ja b2c) voitaisiin uudessa kommunikaatioajattelussa jo unohtaa.

Verkossa jokainen kohtaaminen tapahtuu sinun brändin ja palveluun tulleen henkilön välillä! Eli välissä ei ole enää median tuomia rajoitteita tai haasteita (turhia osumia) vaan jokaisella on syynsä olla vuorovaikutuksessa juuri sinun brändin kanssa. Joten verkossa olisi syytä unohtaa vanha ajattelu ja miettiä miten rakennat vuoropuhelun parhaalla tavalla oman kohderyhmäsi kanssa.

Blogikirjoituksessa Four Ways that B2B Social Media Marketing Builds Brands and Generates Leads Jon Miller tuo mielestäni esille kiinnostavia näkökulmia b2b-yritysten hyödyistä web2.0 sovellusten käytössä.

Jon Millerin mukaan b2b-yrityksetkin hyötyvät sosiaalisen median sovelluksista monella tavalla: tunnettuus paranee, thought leader -aseman saavutettavuus tai SEO-tulokset paranevat.

Mutta vähiten puhuttu näkökulma kirjoituksessa liittyy Net Promoter Score -malliin, jonka taustalla on suosittelun merkitys yritykselle. Ja suosittelua on perinteisesti pidetty b2b-yritysten keskuudessa tärkeimpänä tekijänä kun puhutaan markkinoinnista. Lyhyesti, Net Promoter Score -malli kertoo kuinka vahvoilla yritys tai brändi on suosittelun näkökulmasta. Malli voitaisiin tiivistää kysymykseen “oletko valmis susittelemaan tätä yritystä/brändiä?” Mitä parempi tulos, sitä enemmän yritys/brändi saa suosituksia. Ja tällä hetkellä verkossa positiivinen viesti voi saavuuttaa yhtäkkiä satoja ellei tuhansia henkilöitä, jotka aika usein ovat myös toimialansa edelläkävijöitä.

Unohdetaan siis b2b ja b2c-mallit ja keskitytään rakentamaan innostavaa sisältöä ja vuoropuhelua, joka tekee suosittelusta helppoa. Ja tämähän edistää parhaalla tavalla liiketoimintaa. Sosiaalinen media ja b2b-liiketoiminta sopivat yhteen, kunhan keskitytään oikeisiin asioihin eli kohderyhmää kiinnostaviin sisältöihin.

These are volatile times, the globalization and new media make it increasingly easy for consumers to shift service providers. Customer Service has become the key factor in customer loyalty and the current economical crisis has emphasized this even more.

According to a study performed by Accenture in Belgium 85% of Belgian consumers share bad customer service experiences. 17% uses new media, like social network sites to share their (bad) experiences.
Over the past year, 77% of the people surveyed indicated they had changed service provider after a single bad customer experience.

This again proves that in customer service you need to get it right the first time. So if you’re part of an organization that is struggling with customer loyalty, act now!

Working in Customer Service, and focusing on adopting Customer Centric Thinking 24/7, I’m often surprised to see how badly customers are treated. Call me a grumpy old man but it frustrates me when I see how customers are ignored, not taken for granted, or even bullied.

As Customer Centric Thinking is part of my day-to-day life, I don’t need to think about how I should be acting in any particular customer situation. Therefore I don’t tend to read articles, blogs,etc. that tell people what to do in front of their customer.
However it is even more frustrating for this grumpy old man to know that there are hundreds or thousands of these articles out there on the web and to see that the people who would benefit from these definitely don’t read them.
Therefore I’ve decided to promote some of these articles especially if reading them makes you understand that Customer Centric Thinking is not Rocket Science (despite the fact that this is what I tell my kids when they ask me what I do on the job) but just plain simple Common Sense.

Suzanne Vara (@SuzanneVara) of Kherize5 has posted an excellent article on 15 Customer Service Mistakes to Avoid, listing a series of very recognizable mistakes that happen all too often in customer service. I sincerely hope that reading this list makes you understand that this is all just Common Sense. And that Common Sense is something this world seems to missing more and more (sorry if I’m being grumpy again).

This is a request to start acting now and to adopt Customer Centric Thinking in your daily business activities. Only by making it part of your life, Customer Centric Thinking will become a habit and not a burden. Or as Aristotle has put it:

We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence therefore is not an act, but a habit.

Either marketers are getting smarter or people are getting dumber.

I vote for the latter (as dually self-deprecating as that sounds), and one reason is all the bullshit surrounding hybrid and fully electric cars.

Hybrid cars are pricey and nobody is 100% sold on the financial overage vs. environmental evangelism. So what do the auto-makers work on? Electric vehicles, like the Chevy Volt.

Where do you think electricity comes from, numb nuts?

Sure, it boasts ZERO emissions from it’s electric engine that you charge by simply plugging it into any regular socket in your wall. Great! No more lining up to pump liquid gold into the tank! But wait a minute…  it still has a small gasoline engine inside that kicks in to generate electricity when the battery is low to keep the thing rolling… Huh? So, I still need to feed this “fully electric car” with gas from a pump?

WTF?!

To get around this apparent contradiction, GM says that the gas-powered engine never actually propels the vehicle, but that it just generates power for the battery.

Ooooh! I see. Well, shit, that was close! I thought for sure you had pulled one over on me there, GM! I mean, I bought this car so as to alleviate my dependence on carbon-producing fossil fuels… and then you tell me it still needs gas, even though it’s electric… hang on (and here’s where the people-are-dumber part comes in)…

Where does the power that goes into the battery (streaming out of my wall) come from?

Oh, that’s right, FOSSIL FUELS.

So where’s the freaking environmental savings there? What’s worse:

• emissions from burning gasoline,
• or emissions from burning coal and oil to produce electricity?

The Volt marketing message reads: Charge the battery, change the world. Honestly, people, is this what we’re swallowing now? I’m not blaming the marketers at GM – they’re doing exactly what they’re supposed to be doing: convincing the market that their product is going to solve problems and make their consumer’s lives better.

No, I blame you, the consumer for not thinking.

Don't kid yourself - coal powers everything.

88% of all the coal in the United States is used to produce more than 57% of the Country’s electricity. Oil produces a further 40%.

Therefore, 97% of the electricity pumping out of your walls, and into your emission-free-electric-world-saver is produced from burning fossil fuels (unless, of course, you’re one of those lucky folks who have their whole roof covered with solar panels, each corner of your house has a wind turbine swooping away , and instead of a chest freezer in the basement you’ve got yourself a small fusion reactor).

Where the Jeff are the environmental savings there? There go all the carbon-footprint-reduction points you might have scored by upgrading your furnace and A/C for those new ones (at twice the price), and that new on-demand tankless hot water heater (that isn’t really all that great anyway, is it?), and even trading in your filament-based light bulbs for all those CFL bulbs – way to go, champ! Sure, your energy consumption may be down a few percent from last year, but try plugging in your CAR overnight and see what happens to your bills.

And isn’t THAT where the emphasis for supposed environmentally conscious consumers really lies: the dollar saving?

Be honest, it isn’t really about saving the environment, is it? How can it be if you’re only swapping gas for coal as an energy source? It comes down to reducing the “apparent” amount of money you spend month to month.

How do you calculate the MPG of an electric car that runs on coal- and oil-produced energy (and still needs gas anyway)?

I call bullshit.

I hope, but I won’t bet, that people will get smarter and start thinking before lining up for a “green” vehicle.

Looking for a real green vehicle? Try carpooling. Or better yet, get off your ass and engineer a transporter for Pete’s sake!

If people are so smart, why the hell do we still drive cars?

The business value in data quality improvement is an ever recurring topic in the realm of data quality.

In the following I will list the first 55 reasons that comes to my mind for improving data quality related to the single most frequent data quality issue around, which is duplicates (and unresolved hierarchies) in party master data – names and addresses.

It goes like this:

1.  It’s a waste of money sending the same printed material twice or more times to the same individual consumer.

2.  Allowing the same customer enter twice or more times for an introduction offer challenges the return of investment in such campaigns.

3.  When measuring churn and win-back two or more unrelated accounts for the same business hierarchy will produce an incomplete result leading to a wrong decision.

4.  Sending the same promotion eMail twice or more times to the same individual consumer looks like spam even if different eMail addresses are used. Spam has more offending than selling power.

5.  It’s probably a waste of money sending the same printed material with presentation and offerings to a household already having a customer.

6.  Assigning different credit terms for two or more unrelated accounts for the same business hierarchy will make uncontrolled financial risk.

7.  When measuring cross selling results two or more unrelated accounts for the same household will produce an incomplete result leading to a wrong decision.

8.  When measuring life time value two or more unrelated accounts for the same individual consumer will produce a wrong result leading to a wrong decision.

9.  It’s probably a waste of money sending the same printed material twice or more times to the same household.

10.  When measuring life time value two or more unrelated accounts for the same individual being a consumer and a business owner will produce an incomplete result leading to a wrong decision.

11.  When wanting a 1-1 dialogue two or more unrelated accounts for the same individual consumer will not lead to a 1-1 dialogue.

12.  Having companies represented in two or more unrelated accounts for the same company with a different line-of-business assigned will produce an incomplete segmentation.

13.  When trying to point at your best customers being households in order to find similar households two or more unrelated accounts for the same household will produce an incomplete segmentation.

14.  When measuring cross selling results two or more unrelated accounts for the same individual consumer will produce a wrong result leading to a wrong decision.

15.  It’s a waste of money sending printed material with presentation and offerings to an individual consumer already being a customer.

16.  When wanting a 1-1 dialogue two or more unrelated accounts for the same business hierarchy will not lead to a complete 1-1 dialogue.

17.  When measuring life time value two or more unrelated accounts for the same business hierarchy will produce an incomplete result leading to a wrong decision.

18.  Assigning different credit terms for two or more unrelated accounts for the same individual consumer will increase financial risk.

19.  When measuring cross selling results two or more unrelated accounts for the same individual being a consumer and a business owner will produce only an incoherent result leading to a wrong decision.

20.  When wanting a 1-1 dialogue two or more unrelated accounts for the same household will not lead to a true 1-1 dialogue.

21.  Assigning different credit terms for two or more unrelated accounts for the same business entity could increase financial risk.

22.  Having activities related to companies attached to two or more unrelated accounts for the same company will show an incomplete customer history with the risk of taking damaging actions.

23.  It’s a waste of money and credibility sending printed material with presentation and offerings to an individual business decision maker in a business entity already being a customer.

24.  When buying from a supplier having two or more unrelated accounts despite being the same business entity you may miss discount opportunities.

25.  Having companies represented in two or more unrelated accounts for the same company with a different lead source assigned will produce a false measure of marketing and sales performance.

26.  Sending the same promotion eMail or newsletter twice or more times to the same individual business decision maker looks like spam even if different eMail addresses are used. Spam has more offending than selling power.

27.  When measuring  churn and win-back two or more unrelated accounts for the same household will produce an incomplete result leading to a wrong decision.

28.  Having activities related to influencers attached to two or more unrelated business contact records for the same person will show an incomplete business partner history with the risk of retaking already made actions.

29.  When buying from a supplier having two or more unrelated accounts despite they are belonging the same business hierarchy you could miss discount opportunities.

30.  Having activities related to households attached to two or more unrelated accounts for the same household will show an incomplete customer history with the risk of taking insufficient  actions.

31.  When trying to point at your best customers being individual consumers in order to find similar individuals two or more unrelated accounts for the same individual consumer will produce a wrong segmentation.

32.  Having companies represented in two or more unrelated accounts for the same company with a different address assigned will produce an incomplete segmentation.

33.  When measuring life time value two or more unrelated accounts for the same business entity will produce a false result leading to a wrong decision.

34.  Having activities related to decision makers in companies attached to two or more unrelated contacts for the same person will show an incomplete customer contact history with the risk of not taking appropriate actions.

35.  When wanting a 1-1 dialogue two or more unrelated accounts for the same business entity will not lead to a real 1-1 dialogue.

36.  When trying to point at your best customers being companies in order to find similar companies two or more unrelated accounts for the same company will produce a false segmentation.

37.  Maintaining data related to two or more unrelated accounts for the same real world entity will probably be more costly than necessary when exploiting external reference data.

38.  It’s probably a waste of money sending printed material with presentation and offerings to a business entity already being a customer at a higher or lower hierarchy level.

39.  Having individual consumers represented in two or more unrelated accounts for the same individual consumer with a different lead source assigned will produce a wrong measure of marketing and sales performance.

40.  Allowing the same customer re-enter for an offer already turned down (e.g. credit services) will create unnecessary double validation work.

41.  When measuring churn and win-back two or more unrelated accounts for the same business entity will produce a false result leading to a wrong decision.

42.  When wanting a 1-1 dialogue two ore more unrelated accounts for the same individual being a consumer and a business owner will not lead to a sensible 1-1 dialogue.

43.  When measuring cross selling results two or more unrelated accounts for the same business entity will produce a false result leading to a wrong decision.

44.  Having activities related to individual consumers attached to two or more unrelated accounts for the same individual consumer will show an incomplete customer history with the risk of taking wrong actions.

45.  When measuring life time value two or more unrelated accounts for the same household will produce an incomplete result leading to a wrong decision.

46.  Having activities related to customers attached to two or more unrelated accounts for the same real world entity may lead to that different sales representatives are working against each other.

47.  Allowing sales representatives creating new accounts for already existing customers may create time consuming commission disputes.

48.  Having households represented in two or more unrelated accounts for the same household with a different lead source assigned will produce an incomplete measure of marketing and sales performance.

49.  Maintaining data related to two or more unrelated accounts for the same real world entity will consume more manual work than necessary.

50.  When measuring churn and win-back two or more unrelated accounts for the same individual consumer will produce a wrong result leading to a wrong decision.

51.  When buying from a supplier having two or more unrelated accounts despite being the same business entity you may have multiple unnecessary inventory costs.

52.  It’s a waste of money and credibility sending the same printed material twice or more times to the same individual business decision maker.

53.  When measuring churn and win-back two or more unrelated accounts for the same individual being a consumer and a business owner will produce only an incoherent result leading to a wrong decision.

54.  Assigning different credit terms for two or more unrelated accounts for the same household may increase financial risk.

55.  When measuring cross selling results two or more unrelated accounts for the same business hierarchy will produce an incomplete result leading to a wrong decision.

Part One: Research

Social media has made a big splash in the marketing pool in the last two years as businesses big and small are jumping into the online chaos in droves. Companies are using social media for a variety of reasons: brand awareness, brand management, recruiting, customer service, and consumer insight to name a few.

According to Business.com’s 2009 Business Social Media Benchmarking Study, the top social media sites that businesses participate in are: Facebook (80%), Twitter (56%), LinkedIn (39%), LinkedIn Companies (38%), and YouTube (35%).

In an attempt to keep up with the ever-changing networking sites and tools and its flighty audience that bounces from one new platform to the next, businesses will have to assess whether or not they belong on social media networks and even more importantly what social media networks will work best for them. Whether you’re interested in business to customer (B2C) or business to business (B2B) networking, social media may have the perfect platform for you.

According to a 2009 Reuters study on social media use for business professionals, “webinars and podcasts are top social media resources for business professionals, used by 69% of those who turn to social media channels for business information.

Facebook is the dominant social network on which consumer-focused companies maintain one or more profiles, cited by 83% of respondents versus 45% for Twitter. Business-to-business (B2B) companies, however, maintain a presence on both platforms with 77% maintaining a profile on Facebook and 73% on Twitter.

Current trends to restrict access to social networks like Facebook or Twitter at work need to be re-thought in light of the business value in such activity. Among respondents using social media for business purposes in their day-to-day jobs, 62% visit company or brand profiles on social networking sites and 55% search for business information on these sites.

Consultants and marketing communications professionals are the most active users of social media as a resource for business information, particularly in micro (<10 employees) and small businesses (10-99 employees).

Both companies and employees are scaling a massive learning curve with social media. The average company in this study was planning, developing or running seven different social media initiatives; 65% of respondents staffing those initiatives, and 71% of companies themselves, have less than two years of experience with social media for business. Building brand awareness and brand reputation are two of the top social media success metrics, but nearly two-thirds of companies focused on these metrics have little to no insight into performance via standard or easily accessible reports.”

If you’re trying to decide if it’s right for your business then it is imperative that you do the research necessary to make an informed and effective marketing decision. Your first step should be researching what your competitors are doing with social media, what platforms they use, assessing what platforms are working best/worst for them, and what kind of following they have. Secondly, look at where your target audience is online. Creating a Facebook fan page may seem like a good idea and easy to do, but if your audience doesn’t use Facebook or if they use another network more often, your strategy might be more effective if you considered other networking sites.

You can find out where and what your customers are saying by using free tracking tools. Technorati, Google Blog Search, Twitter Search, and Facebook Search are just a few options that will allow you track relevant business and industry terms on specific social networks. Simply using a search engine like Google or Bing to look up your business’s keywords may provide you with an idea of which social networks to investigate further.

Once you know what your potential or current customers are saying and where they’re saying it in the social media sphere, you’ll have an idea of where you should implement your company’s social media strategy. This research process takes a little time, but it will save you time and money in the long run by knowing if social media is right for your business right now. And if it is, the research you did will show you what social media sites and tools you’ll need to use to make the most out of social media marketing plan.

 

Biz Stone (left) and Evan Williams

A thought which was and is always surrounding my educated reasoning.

TechCrunch posted photos from the new Twitter HQ via Twitter’s Flickr account and employees tweets, and I had again this internal process of questioning and reasoning the moves of Twitter as product and company (Vision, Mission, Objectives). I may not be versed enough into internals of Twitter as product and company, and TechCrunch & others tend sometimes to make more up and want the re-tweet (clicks) at any cost than to inform and give insight. So I am sorry in advance when I make here a call and it turns out, in hindsight, that it wasn’t or isn’t or couldn’t be so. You shall forgive me reader.

Out of the occasional Fail Whale in the past grew the demand for a distributed service of Twitter from the userland. Like Yammer! does. A Twitter like service for companies to host in their environment for internal communication. A self hosted/maintained and safe internal economy. While I was working at IBM, they adopted Twitter as service quiet fast on their BlueGroups Community and Services platform. It didn’t grow beyond early adopters like Twitter itself and I left in September 2008, thus can’t report any progress on that.

It is interesting to observe where they (Twitter) are going, now that the Twitter team is beyond (a critical) product phase (scaling./stability) where they had the growth problem. They work hard under the hood of the product in the past, and the founders have stated that. Because it was ruining the experience…  Thus, the blog posts about Twitter should opening up its product and building a protocol out of it like e-mail (IMAP, POP3) are on the low tide, now that they can have a nice and smooth product experience. Especially that they are showing progress on the front-page; lists, re-tweet, geolocation, display of new tweets on front-page while logged in as user.

Question time: What would have been the (i) advantage or (ii) disadvantage of a Twitter protocol?

• (i) Distributed services & self hosted equals reliability
• (ii) Community around the development of the protocol equals lots of management because of the noise, would have slowed down the progress eventually
• (ii) Time consuming, maybe waste – switching from platform&service to protocol instead of working on the scalability and stability of the platform&service. And the scalability of the eventual protocol would not have been solved (maybe). And then there would have been the lack of features. Incoherent experience possibly because of different service providers. Changing the strategy because pundits scream for it would have cost Twitter lots of credit points.
• (i) They could have had revenue early by having a licensing model/fees of the protocol. But diminishing returns over time. Would be hard to justify to ask the license holder for $10k more each year after 4 years just because inflation and shareholder pressure to increase revenue. Being a public traded company or being venture backed have a bittersweet taste.
  • (ii) Innovation couldn’t then come from inside or from the outside though users, as a protocol has to be a standard, and updating a standard because of every new feature every 3-6 months – impossible. The innovation process would have had to be transported to the license holder building on to (like now API, experience would then again be different to each other), and growth just by growing the amount of licenses is a limited income source. Clearly they had to have to care about their investors interest too.
• (i) Being the sole and proprietary provider of a popular service with a diverse user base offers (almost) better revenue models and projections of revenue over time.
• (i) Being a monopolist is great and has many advantages than being a price taker.

It might be a bit harder to formulate a coherent B2B revenue stream without tapping into the traditional, automatic ads market. Sourced by meta data, context, user, following list, geolocation. And when they are on the same wave as I am, and know that advertising is a declining model for customer acquisition and a volatile model for revenue – they might not put ads at all into the product I love (and want) for its simplicity and non-intrusiveness.

Here is the take-away.

The ordinary user and the ordinary tech columnist aren’t business (or economists) people in flesh and blood. That is why they read the news or write the news but don’t make the news.

Update 28th of November: The 140-Characters Netscape good perspective on how things might play out in the future.

DollsBags.com is #3 of 37,168 Websites for E-Commerce Innovation, According to the AboutUs.org Website.

Doll Petrelli, DollsBags, LLC. Pres. “I speak for everyone at DollsBags.com when I say that we are all very excited about being #3 in the list of several thousand e-commerce sites dedicated to website innovation as listed on AboutUs.org (11/18/09 Ecommerce Innovation on the Go!).  Here at DollsBags.com we have always tried to innovate with new ideas and functionality while keeping ‘ease of use’ in mind when it comes to our website design, check-out process and site functionality.  We routinely survey our customers about their shopping experience with us in order to gain valuable feedback.  After all, a website feature, for instance, that may make sense to one of our DollsBags developers, may not be quite as intuitive to the customer and ultimately it is the customer’s experience that maters most.”

From AboutUs.org, “Human innovation has defined the past decade, and more importantly has helped shape how humans do business today! Innovations in technology gave business a new dimension – E-commerce. The AboutUs list on E-commerce features a variety of companies that can help you spearhead your business into the 21st century. It includes websites offering E-commerce hosting solutions, sites of leading E-commerce businesses and sites offering to help optimize your E-commerce operations. Also listed are websites offering customized E-commerce solutions to suit individual needs and ones simply offering generalized E-commerce softwares…”

About DollsBags.com
DollsBags.com is an online retailer of fine designer accessories. We specialize in a variety of products such as: designer handbags, tote bags, laptop bags, diaper bags, wristlets, evening bags, western bags, and many other essentials. You’ll find our prices to be very competitive and we even offer a price match guarantee. Every item shown on our website is in stock at one of our two distribution centers and ships as soon as you place your order. Our customer service department is second to none and we have knowledgeable Sales Associates to answer your questions via online chat and through our customer service number. DollsBags offers a 100% Satisfaction Guarantee and No Minimum Purchase Free Shipping in the USA! Thank you for shopping with us.

User Experience and Web Designer – £45K to work in an exciting client side environment.

Do you have really strong interface design skills with an appreciation for form, structure and rich content? Are you an evangelist for the implementation of best practise user experience? This company is buzzing with excitement and success to date, and is looking for an additional member to help take this product and new streams of work to the next level. You will be a creative designer with Photoshop, Illustrator and be able to produce lo-fi sketches, wireframes and full blown designs and assets. You will be excited to help shape brand values and work as a design consultant to external agencies where necessary.

This is a cool product suite – B2B but mainly B2C, you will largely work with retailers improving customer engagement. I loved the company, they are honest, friendly, smart and fun. I need you to have a few years experience working in the digital arena for a web company or agency, producing large content driven websites. I want you to demonstrate that you can turn complex information into beautiful and usable design.

Holler me at my new business, or check out the embryonic stages of our website at www.wearefutureheads.co.uk – your feedback would be welcome.

Be Kaler Blake

0207 420 3539

be@wearefutureheads.co.uk

I can’t wait for Iron Man 2 to come out! Have I mentioned that I’m a comic-geek? In fact, I get stoked whenever I hear about another super hero movie coming out. And if it’s anywhere as cool as the first one, well…. ssshhhhyaww!

Being born in the early-70’s primed me to be one of those uber-excited chumps who salivates at seeing a preview for an upcoming superhero movie, courtesy of Mr. Stan Lee and his Marvel Universe (have I mentioned that I’m a big nerd?).

Billy Van as Grizelda the Ghastly Gourmet - my fave charater from Frightenstein

In an earlier life I was an extra on a number of TV shows, movies and commercials, and also helped the agency that represented me by working in their office assisting with casting. I got to meet a couple really big stars (Adam Sandler, Tim Allen, and the immortal Billy Van [RIP]) and some then-not-so-big stars (Jim J Bullock, Monika Schnarre, & James Marsden on the set of Boogie’s Diner to name a few) and got to understand the importance of continuity – ensuring that people, props, environment and storyline are consistent from shot to shot, and from camera setup to camera setup (i.e. Same amount of milk in the glass in the right hand from cut to cut – you get the idea).

Which brings me back to Iron Man.

WARNING! If you haven’t seen the movie, well, I don’t give a shit. It was really good and you’ve had plenty of time to see it before now, so tough noogie.

Near the beginning of the movie, Tony Stark (Iron Man) is injured in a terrorist explosion and wakes to find himself a hostage in a cave with a big glowing, humming, metal thing implanted in his chest attached to a car battery. The nuclear physicist/doctor/surgeon who put it in (also a hostage), tells him that it’s an electromagnet that is preventing the shrapnel in his body from entering his heart and killing him. Ok, sure, whatever, it’s a comic book story and that’s totally acceptable in my books and besides, the glowing chest thing is part of Iron Man’s identity, part of his brand, part of his story and reason for becoming Iron Man.

See? There it is! It's the only thing keeping him alive! And it was built and installed in a cave!

Trouble is that was the ONLY time in the movie that shrapnel-part was mentioned. Later on, Stark upgrades this unit a couple times and even unplugs it at one point, but in doing so the only side-effect is a slowing heart rate (or so the audio illustrated)… no excruciating pain from little bits of metal being pumped around his veins or anything! And sure, he could have probably had all the pieces removed, but again, that wasn’t covered, and if he DID get them removed, why does he still need the chest thing at all?

That’s an inconsistent message and at the end of the movie, it stuck in my mind as something I didn’t quite like. It felt like they threw in the whole shrapnel thing to explain away why he has this thing in his chest, and then forgot they said it.

Now you might be thinking that this is a bit trivial and nit-picky and one of those things that the serious comic-book-geeks would get their mom’s on the phone to rant about and get the support they need to make a posting on the Marvel Complaint Board or some damn thing, but my point is this: if the thing in his chest was put there for a reason shouldn’t that reason be consistent throughout the story?

And that got me thinking about marketing messages and advertising. Notice anything lately that has struck you as being inconsistent with a brand or incongruous with what their brand stands for or that just plumb didn’t make sense?

Take Bell’s new-ish (ok, 2007-ish, but it still sucks) advertising and branding: wtf is with the words ending in er? It doesn’t make sense. It’s not tied into ANYTHING. So what’s the point? Where’s the link? Why do I have to think about the point or the link? And where the hell is this going? As with Iron Man’s chest thing, it looks like Bell just wanted to get a new something out there and forgot to explain it to the rest of us.

Compare that to Harley Davidson. They’ve been making bikes for over 100 years and they haven’t tried to tell anybody anything different or obfuscate their core message one bit. They create loud-ass, kick-ass, time-tested, well-built bikes and their evangelical tribe is fiercely loyal. Sure, they’ve dabbled into other verticals (take Buell, for example), but even then they still maintain a consistent and familial message, voice and theme.

"Honey! How much room do we have on the line?!"

If there’s a reason for saying what you’ve said in an ad, great, but please don’t make me try and figure it out. And if you’re going to create a string of ads leveraging this same concept, even better! Repetition works, David. Repetition works, David. But again, please make it tie in somehow to your product/brand/solution/company/industry/tag/washing instructions, anything!

Look at your website, your ads, collateral, sales tool-kits, slide decks and anything else with your logo/brand on it and ask yourself this question: Does it all go together? Is there a consistent message or theme? And if there isn’t, where and when did the train leave the tracks, and how much damage did it cause?

Memories may be short for most things, but if you’re hoping for loyalty and return business from your customers, bank on that memory extending past the last 6-12 months worth of ad messaging (or in HD’s case, decades).

The last thing a company needs is a customer coming back to them with an invoice in their hand saying, “Remember when I bought this you said…”.

***

To completely discredit this post, I plan on seeing Iron Man 2 opening night. I’ll be standing next to the guy whose shirt says: “I’m with stupid”

Long live Stan Lee.

Who says email is dead?

I recently received this email from the Wall Street Journal for their new Mobile Reader App.  I found it a little ironic that they chose email as the channel to send me the offer…

For a media outlet that made waves in the email community for publishing a report that email was dead, they sure nailed a direct response email offer.  They did a particularly good job conveying the offer to make it easy for readers to say “Yes.”  They created a sense of urgency to encourage response and gave readers a sense of exclusivity which strengthens their relationship with their reader base.

The email stands on its own with images blocked, so they passed the first #emailsnob test. The subject line for the email is “The NEW WSJ Mobile Reader – Exclusive Offer – Save Over 50%.” I liked that they peaked interest in the email right away with the subject line (new reader) made me feel valued (exclusive offer) and showed me a value based incentive (save 50%). When we open the email, right at the top the offer is conveyed in a pre-header text “Get the WSJ Mobile Reader application for just $1 per week!”  Rather than repeat the subject line, they change it up a little, expanding on and reinforcing the offer and its value. Plus, to make it easy for the subscriber, the pre-header text is clickable to the order form. The order form is clear, concise and repeats the offer at the top, but does not attempt to sell me again (#emailsnob test 2 – don’t sell me again on the order form).

The only piece of information not in the images blocked view I would have liked to have seen was which phones would be able to run the app.   However, enabling images in the email shows an image of both an iPhone and a Blackberry Storm. Also, if you click through to the landing page it specifically mentions that the app works with Blackberries or iPhones. The only other criticism I could possibly find with this email was the fact that they used a “do not reply” address.  Personally, I am inclined to give them a pass for this.  They clearly communicated how to contact them and offered a variety of communication channels to do so.

All in all, a solid performance – if they segmented their list to those that specifically have iPhone or Blackberry mobile devices, like me, demonstrating good targeting practices rather than a batch & blast strategy, I would even go so far to say this was a masterful execution.

WSJ, if you would be willing to share the results of this campaign, I would love to write a follow up. I would imagine that some testing was involved in the creation of this campaign, as it is almost too perfect to not have been.

I give this email FIVE stars; great job WSJ! What do you think?

Quiero empezar este primer análisis, con un texto breve, enviado por mi amigo Ignacio de la Torre, profesor en el Instituto de Empresa y amigo desde hace muchos años.
www.ignaciodelatorre.com
Licenciado en Derecho y económicas, Master INSEAD y Doctor en Historia. Desde 2002 Profesor en el IE Busines School, y desde 2007, director académico de los masters de finanzas del IE; trabajó como Analista de Corporate Finance y Analista Bursatil en Deustche Bank y como Executive Director en UBS Investment Bank / UBS WARBURG. Es socio fundador y consejero de varias empresas .com; además tiene numerosas publicaciones sobre economía.

Como no puede ser de otra manera, aprovecho para darle las gracias por su implicación y amistad y paso a repetir su texto:

“El lanzamiento de los programas de finanzas en el IE

El Instituto de Empresa (IE Business School) lleva impartiendo programas de finanzas desde su fundación, en 1974. No obstante, siempre ha sido una escuela más reconocida por su MBA.

Los años cambiaron el panorama empresarial, y pronto se comprobó cómo una formación especializada era cada vez más demandada por la empresa del siglo XXI.
Si el valor profesional de un individuo depende de leyes de oferta y demanda, ¿no tenía sentido que en un entorno de especialización alguien con un título en finanzas tuviera una demanda del sector?

Y en otro orden de cosas, si la oferta de MBA era tan abundante, ¿no tenía sentido que alguien con un título de master en finanzas se beneficiara de la menor competencia?

Con esa filosofía el IE decidió potenciar sus master de finazas hacia 2006. El reto era enorme, ya que en EEUU existían programas con mucha solera en el mundo financiero (como el master in finance de Boston College), y en Europa, el Master in Finance de la London Business School se había situado como el más importante. La ambición del IE era posicionar sus master de finanzas entre los mejores del mundo, y para eso tomó varias decisiones estratégicas:

Primero, separó en diferentes masters a la gente con y sin experiencia. A los primeros se les ofreció el Master in Finance. A los segundos el Master in Advanced Finance. Cada programa permitía al empleador segmentar mucho más al alumnado, de forma que maximizaba la posibilidad de recibir ofertas de trabajo acordes a la experiencia previa.

Segundo, los programas fueron diseñados por banqueros, no por catedráticos. De esta forma se consiguió responder a lo que de verdad demandaba el mundo laboral, introduciendo asignaturas de vanguardia como Financiación Islámica.

Tercero, el profesorado de los programas fue nutrido en un 80% por profesores asociados, directivos que trabajan día a día en el mercado financiero, y cuya labor profesional permitía acercar los programas a la praxis de las finanzas, como oposición de conceptos más teóricos.

A estos factores cardinales, hay que sumar un importante esfuerzo comercial destinado a captar estudiantes con perfiles muy brillantes a lo largo y ancho del mundo. Además, una persona se dedicó a establecer relaciones con las firmas de inversión más reputadas, con el objetivo de dar a conocer estos programas y así maximizar las oportunidades de que los graduados recibieran excelentes ofertas laborales.
En el plano de marketing, se empleó agresivamente Internet como herramienta de comunicación, se grabaron videos promocionales en You Tube, y se dispusieron de archivos MP3 que explicaban los programas en detalle, de forma que cualquier interesado podía escuchar su descripción cómodamente.

Tras estos pasos el IE consiguió duplicar los alumnos matriculados en finanzas, pasando de 30 a 60.

El caos financiero ha puesto de manifiesto la debilidad de Londres y Nueva York como sedes financieras, y la solvencia de la regulación bancaria española. Es la gran oportunidad para que Madrid compita, a través del IE, con las más grandes en formación financiera.”

Conclusión personal: como podemos comprobar y es por todos sabidos, el IE (Instituo de Empresa) es una de las mejores entidades del MUNDO en formación de postgrado, han sabido utilizar y poner en práctica, sus conocimienos de marketing y posicionar sus master y especializaciones entre las más valoradas del globo, esto junto con la sabida experiencia y capacidad de los docentes y profesionales que trabajan en el, hace que para cualquier persona que se precie y tenga aspiraciones y ansías de mejora, le interese participar en uno de sus cursos, dado que aportará formación e información para mejorar la carrera profesional, capacidad para competir en un mundo cada vez más selectivo y competitivo, acceso a entidades y compañías interesadas en adquirir TALENTO, esa palabra tan usada hoy y que solo algunos directivos que saben lo que es el managment buscan y utilizan gracias a las redes de antiguos alumnos y contactos de l IE existen.

Por lo tanto los cursos, masters y demás formación ofrecida por el IE es ALTAMENTE RECOMENDABLE.

información: www.ie.edu
¿Quieres contactar con ellos? pincha aquí

SITUATION

A successful commercial printing firm, seeking to leverage its capacity in a volatile business climate, had identified a unique approach to Web-based print-on-demand products for a range of consumer markets.  

After conducting informal concept testing, funding development of a portfolio of branded e-commerce Web sites, hiring initial sales leadership and launching pilot marketing and sales efforts, revenues failed to materialize as expected and the firm recognized a gap in their go-to-market planning expertise for Web-based and B2C ventures.

ACTION PLAN

Within the context of an overall strategic planning project at the firm, our founding partner was retained to provide go-to-market analysis and recommendations for the four complementary e-commerce brands.  Adopted recommendations included:

• Phasing brand launches to ensure management focus, product/market learning, and expedited product adaptation to in-market feedback;
• Rebranding as-needed to ensure full ownership of URLs and online identity;
• Strategic price differentiation within the portfolio to capture available premium margins in select target markets while ensuring competitive value propositions across the board;
• Sales team structure, performance requirements and compensation changes to support recruiting and management of channel-specific sales experts;
• A full spectrum of online promotion and SEO/viral marketing initiatives; and
• Enhanced social community functionalities in select brands to generate and facilitate viral marketing within highly social target audiences.

RESULTS

With a clear go-to-market strategy in place, the executive team was able to sequence and provide resources for priority rollout initiatives while maintaining focus on and involvement with overall enterprise strategies.

Personal selling is one of the most important aspects of almost any business career – because you’re always selling, not just to customers, but to your boss, your peers and colleagues, even your friends. Persuading others, pitching your case – call it what you want, but understanding how to get someone else to do what you want them to do is one of the most basic skills of being human.

In terms of dealing directly with customers, my favorite advice would come from Dale Carnegie’s classic book, “How to Win Friends and Influence People. You can read all of the current how-to books you want but you won’t find better, more concise advice. Remember people’s names. Ask about their feelings. Try to understand them and their own points of view. These are the building blocks not just for great salesmanship, but also for lasting friendships.

What if you lose a client? What this question really emphasizes is how important it is to make sure that we do it right the first time, because once we lose a customer, as is clearly the case here, we may never get a chance to be able to talk to that customer again. We know that, so what do we do now?

Whether this is a business-to-business (B2B) or business-to-customer (B2C) setting doesn’t really matter. If it is a B2C setting then it’s going to be very hard to go to a particular customer and make everything alright. If it’s a B2B setting, then it’s worth investing some effort into going back to the customer and educating him about the new things we have, making it clear what we can offer him now and also emphasizing what’s in it for him by at least reconsidering doing business with us. In the meantime, what we want to do is make sure that we are doing everything as well as we can and hope that word of mouth will reach that customer and he might give us another try.

What else can we try? Possibly a loyalty program if it’s appropriate for your business environment. You will know. With all of the changes, mostly negative, taking place in the world of customer loyalty programming – growth in private-label credit cards, finding the right mix of hard and soft benefits, building an extensive (and often expensive) multi-channel communication program, fixing value of loyalty rewards in customers’ minds, dealing with difficulty in redeeming rewards, changes in qualification for rewards, ability to reward best customers, and on and on – I’m more inclined than ever to believe that the best loyalty programs are no loyalty programs at all. Not that suppliers aren’t, and shouldn’t be, focused on creating the highest levels of customer advocacy behavior possible, it’s just that loyalty programs may not be the best vehicle for achieving that goal. In fact, because these programs are typically built to drive more frequent purchasing, rather than create a stronger and deeper emotional and relationship bond with the supplier on an individual customer basis, they can even be counterproductive as a strategic device. Loyalty programs ought not be used as a crutch or surrogate for creating stronger connections with customers, and they too often are just that.

Although there are successful loyalty programs, to be sure, the most effective ways of creating the highest customer lifetime value are a) effective, continuously improved customer-related processes, including messaging and experience management, b) leveraging methods for assuring stakeholder engagement, continuity and productivity, especially among customer-touching employees, c) creating a customer-driven culture, building customer centricity into the DNA of the organization, and d) having a customer information system and database that is as detailed, real-time and actionable as possible, down to the specific customer and experience (i.e., divisible) level.

Keep up the relations and hold on to those valued clients for which you’ve invested so much blood, sweat, and yes sometimes tears!  That’s it till next time.

Das Basis-Paket ebay  der IT-Recht Kanzlei regelt den Verkauf von Händlern an Privatkunden (B2C) bzw. Verbraucher im Sinne des Fernabsatzgesetzes und umfasst AGB & Widerrufsbelehrung.

Vorteile

• Passgenau: AGB & Widerrufsbelehrung für im B2C-Bereich aktive Händler auf ebay.
• Sicher: Von spezialisierten Rechtsanwälten für die spezifischen Anforderungen des B2C- Handels auf eBay entworfen
• Schnell: sofort als Download verfügbar.
• Einfach umzusetzen: Im Lieferumfang enthalten sind Handlungsanleitungen und Kommentierungen
• Aktuell: Neuester Rechtsstand

Produktübersicht

Das Basis-Paket ebay enthält  tagesaktuelle Standard-AGB und zwei Widerrufsbelehrungen der IT-Recht Kanzlei, die speziell auf den gewerblichen eBay-Handel an Endkunden bzw. Verbraucher zugeschnitten sind.

Weitere Produktinformationen zum Basis-Paket eBay der IT-Recht Kanzlei sowie den Leistungs- & Lieferumfang finden interessierte Händler im IT-Recht Shop

Die Yatego AGB Basic der Münchner IT-Recht Kanzlei eignen sich für Händler, die über die Shopping-Mall Yatego an Verbraucher im Sinne des Fernabsatzgesetzes, also private Endkunden (B2C) verkaufen.

Vorteile

• Sicher: Für die Anforderungen des B2C-Handels auf Yatego konzipiert..
• Genau Richtig: Für Yatego Händler im B2C Bereich
• Aktuell: Neuester Rechtsstand
• Direkt verfügbar: Bezahlen. Downloaden.
• Leicht Anpassbar: Kommentierungen und Handlungsanleitungen erleichtern eine einfache indiviuelle Anpassung.

Produktübersicht

Die Yatego AGB Basic sind Standard-AGB der Münchner IT-Recht Kanzlei für Händler der Yatego Shopping-Mall, die im B2C Segment Ihre Waren an private Endkunden und somit Verbraucher im Sinne des Fernabsatzgesetzes verkaufen.

Weitere Produktinformationen zu den Yatego AGB Basic der IT-Recht Kanzlei sowie den Leistungs- & Lieferumfang finden interessierte Händler im IT-Recht Shop

Die eBay AGB Pro der IT-Recht Kanzlei regeln den Verkauf von Händlern an gewerbliche Endkunden (B2B) und Privatkunden (B2C) bzw. Verbraucher im Sinne des Fernabsatzgesetzes.

Vorteile

• Passgenau: Für im B2B & B2C-Bereich aktive Händler auf eBay.
• Sicher: Von spezialisierten Rechtsanwälten für die spezifischen Anforderungen des B2B & B2C- Handels auf eBay entworfen
• Schnell: sofort als Download verfügbar.
• Einfach umzusetzen: Im Lieferumfang enthalten sind Handlungsanleitungen und Kommentierungen
• Aktuell: Neuester Rechtsstand

Produktübersicht

Die eBay AGB Pro sind tagesaktuelle Standard-AGB der IT-Recht Kanzlei, die speziell auf den Handel mit gewerblichen Endkunden und Privatpersonen bzw. Verbraucher im Sinne des Fernabsatzgesetzes auf eBay zugeschnitten sind.

Weitere Produktinformationen zu den eBay AGB Pro der IT-Recht Kanzlei sowie den Leistungs- & Lieferumfang finden interessierte Händler im IT-Recht Shop

Die AGB Amazon Basic der IT-Recht Kanzlei für Händler, die über den Amazon-Marktplatz an Verbraucher im Sinne des Fernabsatzgesetzes (Privatkunden/ B2C) verkaufen.

Vorteile

• Speziell: Für Amazon-Händler im B2C Bereich
• Sicher: Von spezialisierten Rechtsanwälten für die Anforderungen des B2C- Handels auf Amazon entwickelt.
• Schnell: Sofort nach Zahlungseingang verfügbar.
• Einfache Anwendung: Im Lieferumfang enthalten sind Handlungsanleitungen und Kommentierungen
• Aktuell: Immer neuester Rechtsstand

Produktübersicht

Die AGB Amazon Basic sind Standard-AGB der IT-Recht Kanzlei, die dem neusten  Rechtsstand entsprechen und die für  Amazon-Händler, die an private Endkunden (Verbraucher im Sinne des Fernabsatzgesetzes, B2C) verkaufen, zugeschnitten sind.

Weitere Produktinformationen zu den AGB Amazon Basic der IT-Recht Kanzlei sowie den Leistungs- & Lieferumfang finden interessierte Händler im IT-Recht Shop

Nouveau dossier sur l’habillement et le web par JDN. A découvrir sans plus attendre…

Gehen Sie auf Nummer sicher: Die Widerrufsbelehrung(en) für eBay-Händler der IT-Recht Kanzlei München trägt zu einem rechtssicheren Vertreiben von Waren über die eBay-Plattform bei.

Vorteile

• Schnell: Direkt nach Zahlungseingang verfügbar !
• Schutz: Reduziert das Abmahnrisiko bei eBay!
• Praxisbewährt: Bereits hundertfach im Einsatz und noch nie abgemahnt!
• Einfach umzusetzen: Im Lieferumfang enthalten sind Handlungsanleitungen und Kommentierungen
• Aktuell: Neuester Rechtsstand     

Produktübersicht

Die Widerrufsbelehrung berücksichtigt die aktuellen gesetzlichen Anforderungen beim Verkauf über eBay und setzt sich aus 2 Teilen zusammen, einer Online-Version und einer Offline-Version.

Weitere Produktinformationen zur eBay Widerrufsbelehrung der IT-Recht Kanzlei sowie den Leistungs- & Lieferumfang finden interessierte Händler im IT-Recht Shop