Musings Of A Marketer

It is recognized - not unjustly - that emails have won the bigger share of direct mailing from physical mails. Naturally, the advantages of Internet over physical communication are obvious and very strong. However, how fair is it to put an end to simple old-fashioned way - sending out mails by post?

There are a number of reasons for companies to still consider using this way of communication:

• The numerous spam messages that people receive over email has made them very cautious about the time they spend reading (or even opening) the messages that come unsolicited. Unlike emails, people still like receiving physical mails. Most of the mails have the chance to be open - the rest is for the sender to make them read mails to the end - and, naturally, act upon reading. This probably depends also on the country - my statement is valid for Russia, but not sure about, say, the U.S. (there are 100 commercial mails per month sent in Russia, versus 20 mails per day in the USA)
• With physical mail you have a chance to write more. A long but well written mail means you have something to say, while the most perfectly composed commercial email which is too long - will most probably not be read to the end.
• You have more tools to make your mail stand out: with emails you have a chance to appeal to 1 or 2 feelings out of 5 (hearing and sight), while with physical mails people can touch, smell or even taste. Pictures, enclosures, attached samples make their work on calling the readers to action soonest
• You can play with the quality of the paper, thus communicating the image of the quality of the actual product/service that is in the offer
• Physical mail is not necessarily about the paper and the text. You can send out catalogues, samples, souvenirs, books, toys etc.

You just have to be as creative and targeted as you possibly can. You can turn this old-fashioned way into something really innovative and fun for your audience…

It is well understood that the beginning of a direct mail is very important - that is where the first glance of a reader falls, that is where he/she decides whether he/she is going to read on or not.

As important is the body of the mail - that is where the reader will decide whether he/she likes the tone of communication, the appropriateness of the offer, and the value of it, of course.

Where in this grade of importance lies the ending of the mail differs from time to time, but the actual vitality of it is unarguable - sometimes it is the most important, sometimes all parts are equally vital. Depending on the creativity, the author can even make any part, or any phrase the most selling and vital.

Here below are some tips for improving the P.S. of a direct mail to make it work for you (from Ray Jutkins):

1. Be either “hard” or “soft” but never be vague. You either suggest that the readers “think” or “do”. You’ll have to choose one of the ways depending on the situation at hand
2. Remind the reader of a special offer, or a gift for responding
3. Stress the guarantee policies, to make the reader feel safe about placing an order
4. Talk about what they’ll earn, or win, or save by doin business with you
5. Repeat the service/product benefits. Choose no more than 2 or 3 bullets with key advantages
6. Repeat your contacts: your phone number, fax, email, postal address etc. Push the customer who has finished reading, to do his/her emotional purchase right away
7. Make a specific limited offer. Deadlines do draw attention and call to quick action. An offer can be limited by quantity or time. Time would be preferable, since it is more transparent for an outsider, and thus, easier to follow
8. Use testimonials in the end. References from person with whom the readers can indentify themselves will increase the attractiveness of the offer immensely
9. Summarize the message in one paragraph. Bring out the most valuable positions in the offer to this ending paragraph. Remember to KISS the reader (”Keep it Short and Simple”)
10. Repeat your call to action one last time in the end. Make this final push that will make the reader reach for the phone

It’s always been a matter of interest and excitement for me to follow the offline businesses applying online techniques to promotion.

Here is one pretty example: the well-known Italian brand (dealing with pasta, of course) Barilla introduced a website - called DiscoverBarilla where a visitor can fill up his/her friend’s name and have a postcard with Italian landscapes sent to a postal address.

Different destinations of Italy are represented in the cards and each destination has a specific pasta recipe on it.

This idea brings you away from viewing the communication as delivering pure commercial message. This is interactive communication from a friend who, in the first place, cares to say hi to you, and the shares a story of Italy… And all that is done through a brand. Guess that might work better than an ordinary monologue you hear every day through TV, radio, print, billboards and even online.

Could it be pure online? It could – we know numerous free and paid services for e-cards delivery. I am certain, however, that a chance to feel the real card, touch and smell the piece of Italy your friend shares with you, has to add to the response that the brand aims at.

One could even think of using certain scents on the postcards that would add to warmth and romance of the Italian atmosphere.

Well done, Barilla! Still some way to go, though:

• The site is made in flash, and way too heavy. Even with broadband connection you need some time for download, there’s no way to change between flash and html
• The service is only active in the US, but I am guessing it wouldn’t be so bad to bring it over to other parts. At least, I would appreciate…

What happens when you start marketing before you are ready? Do you know a great way to throw your marketing money away without any effort?

I have changed an Internet provider recently at home. I am not loyal to anyone here, so I don’t have a problem switching to the one with a better offer. Akado approached me with a decent offer: higher speed, lower price - just what I needed. After 2 weeks of happiness, the connection was down. For several days the customer service kept promising to fix it (always tomorrow, of course) until finally they confessed that they didn’t know when they could actually fix it. So, after a week offline, I changed back to the previous provider.

Conclusion: why keeping extensive efforts on acquiring new customers when you have no power to deal with the existing ones?

P.S. When the connection was down I received an invitation to join Akado in my mailbox. How careless (or should I say, stupid) would you be to do that? Do they keep any track of who they contact?

These guys are advertising very aggressively: TV, radio, outdoor, print… But try to search in the forums - most of the feedback on Akado from the existing clientelle is negative - why not spend some money on winning their credit back?

Among other things, I have been busy last week completing the content-filling and adaptation / localization process for a website. This is an international company, they have sites for at least 10 countries already, and now they are opening in Russia, too.

So, what is the main lesson one will learn when creating a site (be it from the scratch or just an adaptation – believe me – no difference)? The lesson is that you will never finish with it…

No matter how carefully you check it, serious bugs, or as a best case scenario, stupid mistypes – they are always there. Check it… Double check it… Wouldn’t help…

But this is not something that has to stop you from going online. That is where you need this small lable BETA. Tell your visitors that you are ready to go, but still looking for bugs, and encourage them to help you with it. Leave the contact form and the contact details as visible as possible, let people talk to you, and start collecting wonderful ideas from smart and experienced net-surfers, let alone their comments about the bugs and mistakes you might have missed…

I was posting about the problems one is likely to face when trying to contact for a prospective partner. A couple of months ago I was approached by Jon Lunetta of MyWaves Inc. He was exploring opportunities for connecting to Russian mobile service providers to arrange partnership programmes for their clients, with MyWaves’ technology platform. Since our TeriMobile company was already preparing for a shutdown, I compiled a small list of the industry players who had been most active by that time.

Just now, after 3 months, or maybe even more, Jon has come online again. None of the list would care to give any reply. I mean, hey, this guy is trying to get you in touch from over the ocean - how serious do you think he may be? I believe, pretty serious. If you are not interested - just be polite and say smth like “No, Thanks”. How hard can it be to type these two words? With the speed that mobile marketing industry is developing here (sloooow), I don’t think you have 5000 unread mails in your inbox…

A very interesting idea started up by Starbucks recently.

It is about crowdsourcing - the company has introduced a MyStarbucksIdea.com  website where you can register to share your ideas about just how the company could improve. The visitors can view the ideas by recent, popular and top all-time (which must be the same as popular I guess).

The registered users are encouraged to share their ideas and vote for already posted ones. Behind this are the Starbucks’ employees who are specialists in various fields, and they will respond to the advice - not directly to users but by acting, hopefully.

There’s also a blog page - called Ideas In Action - where the company will most probably describe the way they are acting on the advice received from the community. So far there are just a couple of posts - one welcoming by Howard Schultz, and one from Chris Bruzzo, where he wow-thanks the community participants and encourages them to keep on sharing.

This is a great way to get even deeper into communications with the customer community and have a better knowledge of their preferences. Crowdsourcing is a win-win for the parties, and Starbucks should keep their efforts on this site - more and better communication and, more importantly, show action to the community who take their time to share their knowledge…

Andy Beal, co-author of Radically Transparent Monitoring and Managing Reputations Online book was a guest writer at Mashable, with a summary of 10 factors to save your online reputation.

An interesting posting, worth reading. Very briefly, it goes like this:

1. Know your Achilles heel. Being aware of your weak points will help you be better prepared for attacks on you, if not save your brand completely and unaffectedly.

2. Assume that everything will make its way to the web. In our world of gtechnologies you can never be sure that anything you express aloud (by voice or in writing)will remain within yourself. So, you should always be careful about what you are saying or writing - always assume it will go public.

3. Create positive online impression. Good intuitive interface, with necessary content meeting expectations of your company, is a way to make a first impression on the audience online.

4. Choose your blog voice carefully. Note, that your corporate blog is not your personal blog. Let a team of employees manage it and fill it with content - their ideas, opinions and communications with the customers and perspectives. Corporate should be corporate (but do not make it completely impersonal).

5. Hang out at the right social network. Do not be driven by statistics to the most popular networks. Rather, find a network with more likely the audience that you target, the audience that talks, or is willing to talk, about you. The best way to target is creating your own network (will take time and efforts to promote, but in the end it will be your audience… and there are open source systems providing tools for creating networks from scratch).

6 . Send bloggers love letters, rather than PR pitches. Keep talking to the most influential bloggers on a constant basis. Agree with them, argue with them, comment on their posts. The more you talk to them, the more they are willing to talk to you. Next time they find fault with you, they might choose to talk to you first before publishing harsh criticism out loud.

7. Build your Google reputation now, not later. It will be much harder to improve your bad reputation than to creat one positive from the start. Once search engine spiders have indexed a negative article about you, it will be there, and who knows how fast you will be able to take it down and bring one positive up instead.

8. Monitor online reputation as often as email. Back to No.7 - do not let them have you caught on smth bad. As soon as smth appears on the web you have to be sure that you will respond promptly to reduce the impact.

9. Face the attackers. Ostriches are not a good example to follow - do not hide your head in the sand whenever you see an attack on your from a blogger. You might choose to wait a couple of days until the problem just goes away, resolves itself. But this is not necessarily going to happen. One of the attacking bloggers could be a Times journalist in the end, and you might become a hot news that very evening. Just face the problem, do something. Admit your fault if necessary, apologise, and take action to prevent further distress.

10. Three words to remember. SINCERITY, TRANSPARENCY, CONSISTENCY. I’ll just quote here:

Sincerity means wanting to hear from your customers and the desire to truly provide a positive experience with your company. Transparency involves tearing down the walls of corporate rhetoric and PR spin–the more you share with your customers the more you’ll win their trust. Consistency is a vital component for any reputation management efforts. Your customers will forgive your isolated failure, but if you’re not consistently living-up to your brand promise, they’ll find a company that does.

Great stuff from Andy Beal. If you liked it, you might wish to read his book - see the link up here in the beginning of the post.

Here is another reason to pay attention to the Russian Internet space.

Gazprom Media (part of the Gazprom) has acquired the Russian copy of YouTube - the video sharing site Rutube.ru. The site was started right after the older brother was bought by Google. The Russian site has not received the same amount of money, but the specialists all agree that it was still overestimated ($ 15 mln). This sum is probably nothing for Gazprom, but the deal means a lot not only to RuTube guys, but also to the industry. I don’t know the official statistics, but it seemed to me that the site had been dying out lately, even before YouTube launched their Russian interface. Now the competition will become even tougher on them, and Gazprom’s investements might give them a chance to fight.

I disagree with the analysts who expect RuTube to become just an Internet platform for their more traditional media channels (the holding is strongly represented in TV, radio and print media). The guys there are not stupid, even if they do not have that huge experience in the net. Moreover, none of the RuTube staff are leaving - everybody, including the tops are staying with the company. It looks more like RuTube won a good round of funding, so I believe, content-wise there are not going to be any significant strategic changes.

As for the industry impact, Russian Internet is heating up. We remember the last year’s big news when russian holding SUP bought Livejournal  - the social network most popular with the Russian audience. I also wrote just yesterday about another social networking site - Hi5 - launching their Russian interface, and I believe, more news will be coming from the country.

While MySpace are still looking for their staff, another network - Hi5 - are welcoming the Russian audience with the newly introduced interface in Russian. But even these guys have been late, the Russian extention Hi5.ru being already booked by cybersquatters.

The company quotes the E-marketer’s article expecting Russia to be the 2nd biggest Internet population in Europe, following Germany. Add to this all the Russian-speaking population in the countries of former Soviet Union, and the attractiveness of the audience becomes quite obvious.

Good move from one of the world’s most popular social networking sites. This should add to their network of users, especially considering the slowliness of their competition.