Creepy Creative

Halloween is coming, hooray! But, while I like all the creepy imagery that is available for us to use, we always need to step back and take in the "big picture". This email that I just got from LaQuinta is just one example.

Never forget that information is coming at your consumers so fast these days that imagery is more important than ever. Pictures have never been so important in telling your story and the story La Quinta tells at first glance is that your well-made bed comes with a huge spider underneath. This may sound silly to you but people like me that are creeped-out by spiders and (gasp!) bedbugs. Will have just been given a terrible first impression.

In Defense of the Humans

When we leave computers to fully manage the distribution of our digital advertising, we run the risk of creating something like this horribly ironic ad on Yahoo where a speeding Volkswagen drives over the touching faces of a race car driver who recently died in a crash and his widowed wife. (see below)

The point of this very brief post is that while we can allow our campaigns to run automatically without supervision, human beings need to maintain enough awareness that they can ask their media outlet questions like "how do I keep my cool animation from circling around an article about a 15-car wreck?" I may sound crazy in assuming that it's possible to foresee all the negative ad/news combos out there but let me say 2 things:

First, Millions of dollars are being spent to track our every click and target our ads. Some of that research and programming money could go into eliminating the possible contradictory ad/news combos, resulting in an even more refined ad placement. With the bonus of not having your dealership boycotted by certain auto-racing fanatics.

Second, print publications have been doing this for years. When I worked at the newspaper, airline and liquor ads were flagged as possible conflicts and were pulled if there was news of an airline disaster or drunk driving accident. Copy editors and proofreaders also know to scan the ads prior to print and move inappropriate ads.

Finally, computers rock. Data-driven marketing has made us so much better at finding and talking to the right people. As marketers, we just need to be aware of what we are doing and keep our minds working, asking "what if" every time we make a decision about where a campaign is going to run. 

Is Texting the Ultimate in Direct Communication?

The adoption of the cell phone and prevalence of web-enabled smart phones has made mobile marketing a multi-billion dollar industry. Mobile websites, apps, and emails are all part of the mix with text messaging having paved the way. I hear it over and over: "watch how the kids communicate, that's our future." And so, marketers are continuing to jump into the text messaging (also referred to as SMS) arena, collecting as many mobile phone numbers as they can get their hands on. And then ... well, that's where the advertiser is a hit or hits the skids.

If you skim articles like I do, here's the point:
Texting is most effective when you reach your contact with a message targeted to their specific need at that particular moment in time.

The average text message is opened in less than a minute. The currently limited amount of "spam-like" texts heightens the expectancy of a relevant message from a familiar source. In day to day communication, a text is the most efficient way to communicate with a friend because it's immediate, yet less intrusive than a phone call. Many people have their phones on and with them 24 hours a day, leaving the shower as perhaps the last sanctum of solitude. This environment has created the perfect scenario for a brand to deliver a quick reminder on behalf of their new product or daily special. But is the public ready to give up control of yet another communication channel?

The admittedly anecdotal discussions I've been having with people reveal certain psychologies that temper the extraordinarily high numbers supporting the broad use of text-based advertising. A common consensus is "I use my phone for sending and receiving texts but I don't want random promotional messages." That in itself is unsurprising but when they say "random" am I right in assuming they mean anything that is not perfectly applicable to them at that specific time? For example, I signed up for texts from "Spicy Pickle," a very good sandwich chain. So far every text they have sent me after the initial "thanks for joining" message has been irrelevant to me. One reminded me that for Mother's Day I could encourage Mom to give them her phone # to sign up for a sweepstakes (terrible idea). Next, I got a message around lunchtime telling me of a new sandwich offer. That's better but I was occupied at the time and seeing it was from Spicy Pickle I ignored it until I remembered it that night which, by that time, caused the message to be just more "junk mail." For prolific texters, a very few unwanted messages from a company will spur an opt-out.

A hip young marketing professional I interviewed told me the following:
"I used to love getting texts from Express during the Holiday seasons simply because they had good specials going and I’m a savvy shopper. I then opted out of their campaign because they were sending it too often for me and I didn’t need any more clothes. I found myself [subscribing to receive texts] for bars promoting Happy Hour and was getting irritated at them too. I still get it from Macy’s which is fine, but I rarely read them. I still get them from radio stations and opt out of those immediately. On the flip side, when I do want clothes from Express, I will opt back in [for sales notifications], but will quickly opt out once I’m done."

Another individual who is a sales professional said that he's very protective of his phone number because he feels it's the one channel that hasn't been taken over by advertising. Still another young adult tells me that while he used to get a hundred or more texts a day, he tired of the interruptions and is now very reluctant to opt-in to text based messaging because of those inherited negative feelings toward the medium.

All that said, InterDirect offers text-messaging along with our other direct marketing options but we encourage extremely careful and calculated use to make it effective. Here are some tips:

1. Texts are PERFECT for personal notification of orders ready for pickup. E.g."your (dry-cleaning, specialty cake, alterations, auto-service, reserved table, pre-ordered book, hotel room, etc.) is ready.
2. Texts are APPRECIATED when used as change in service announcements such as: closing early, meeting times changed, power outages, work being done in your area, etc.
3. Texts can be VALUED when used for hyper-limited-time offers that are perceived as a reaction to things beyond a retailer's control. If used sparingly, a message about truly door buster sales on surplus items can make the recipient feel like they are in the "inner circle" getting special offers that only the most savvy shoppers are aware of. This scenario accomplishes 3 things: 1. drives traffic to the store during a slow period, 2. unloads truly overstocked, about to expire products, and 3. enhances the loyalty of the recipients and their appreciation of your communications. CAUTION: Using this method on a frequent, regular schedule can reduce the impact and make it seem preplanned and deceptive.
4. Some people really do want all their communications via text. At your signup page ASK them if they prefer text or emails. Then target your content as much as possible and make every effort to monitor their engagement.
5. When looking at statistics on how much any one group texts, remember that the more messages a person sends and receives, the less your message will stand out.

The Takeaway:

Data collection, storage and analytics are a huge focus in advertising and marketing circles. With a great plan, retailers who use text messaging have the unique ability to immediately connect with their customers with the perfectly timed and targeted message, resulting in responses beyond any other available channel. Every tiny step AWAY from that goal is an equally big step towards annoyance and abandonment.

P.S. As I said, my research is anecdotal. Please be encouraged to comment with your personal feelings about how you use texts in your daily routine. Please give your general age and occupation if you don't mind.

Do Track or Do Not Track, that is the question

Not being a politician or industry lobbyist, I probably shouldn't even tackle this question, so here's a comic that sums up my mood at the moment:

Admittedly, there is a certain amount of spin here because, of course, the goal of any privacy legislation is to keep individual's personal information, well, private - and that's a good thing. My point is simply that we are bombarded by meaningless messages all day long. Wouldn't it be nice if the ads that we saw and heard actually meant something to us? Most people turn to Amazon for an example of the right way to "advertise". When Amazon sends you an email, it seems more like a friendly note from someone that knows you because they are suggesting books and music that you really are likely to buy. What if all the ads we saw online were for companies and products that were pertinent to us? In a perfect world it's a win-win.

So much time and money is wasted in "blasting" ads out to the public. I can't speak for general advertisers but even direct marketers can be thrilled with response rates in the single digits. Be it direct mail or email. With Google's paid-per-click ads, even the best performing terms can easily be a fraction of a percent when comparing clicks to impressions. Such waste, not just in money but in the brainpower it takes to filter out all the irrelevant crap. And speaking of how we process things, I believe most searchers' brains have been trained to completely ignore the paid Google ads and focus solely on the "natural" searches. While sophisticated, targeted ads based on a person's web activity might be more expensive, the return we can expect from these truly targeted ads will surely outweigh the cost. As with the Amazon model, when people go to the websites that are using the targeted ad technology the visitor will see that banner ad as more "news" than "ad" and will begin to pay attention and click thru more frequently.

As for the privacy issue, that's a tough one. I remember when Amazon began targeting their emails and web ads. Initially I was "creeped out" by the "invasion" but eventually I came to appreciate it for it's value. Perhaps my biggest fear is that politicians will craft a bill that sounds good but will be so unwieldy that the online marketers find it impossible comply. If that happens, it will be a step back for the internet. Personally, I hope what the industry is doing to self regulate will be enough and will quell the political desire for government intervention but as Carla Rover at DigiDay writes, is it too little, too late? Finally, as it turns out we may have a ways to go before we will be really collecting meaningful data anyway. Joel Stein recently did very thorough research into this in a recent article in Time about how all our personal data is (and is not collected).

Smarter people than I will be debating this in the upcoming weeks and months so you'll get more information than you care to know about the pros and cons of the different bills. I just hope that politics doesn't win out over common sense. Feel free to weigh in on this and if you like the comic, you're welcome to reuse it with a little shout-out back to me. 

Your Marketing Mix: A Beginners Guide to Prospecting

The easiest thing for a marketing consultant to advise is a MIX of advertising/communications medium. "Multichannel" is not only necessary in today's environment but it just sounds so smart when you say it. The specific application, however, does need some consideration to be effective, so here are some suggestions that will hopefully put some meat on the bones of the multichannel strategy. Since there are a TON of options and situations, I'll just tackle one goal at a time starting with prospecting, or customer acquisition, and leave customer retention for another post.

Signage

source: mediaandcommunitybuilding.wordpress.com

When you open your doors for the first time your only preset "customers" are your Mom, the babysitter and the guy who lives next door. No one else knows about your business and you have to get the word out. If you are a bricks and mortar retailer that appeals to the general public, pick the low hanging fruit by focusing on your location. Signage is priority one. If you are on a busy street, balloons and a banner might do but if you are (even slightly) off the beaten path, you may need to invest in outdoor advertising (billboard) if your audience is broad enough and you can afford the outlay. Try using a guy with a sandwich board, it seems a little hokey to me, but you have to admit it gets attention and is much cheaper than a 40" billboard.

Direct Mail

Next, take a guess at how far someone will travel to get to your location and start with direct mail. If you're selling Pizzas or Coffee, it's almost a given that the sales generated by your offer will NOT immediately pay for the mailing so don't be misled. HOWEVER, with prospecting you have to think in terms of "lifetime value". If your sandwich shop provides a great first experience, then that one card might be responsible for hundreds of dollars worth of future sales. Once you build a customer base, then work on retaining your best customers through means that I'll discuss later. Speaking of your customers, you can glean valuable information by profiling or modeling your customer database and find new customers with uncanny accuracy. A database marketing company like InterDirect can help you there. One more easy prospecting tool for location-based retail is mailing to "new movers". Just think, is someone new to the neighborhood looking for a new favorite (grocery store, hardware store, hair salon, church, dentist, etc.)? Marriage-mail options like Advo and Val-pak are cheap options because they share the postage and production costs across (40-60?) companies but keep in mind that many people trash them or skim the contents so fast that your response rate is a fraction of solo-mail.

Many companies are not location dependent, such as businesses-to-business operations and online retailers, so different strategies apply for them. Since there are so many more considerations in B2B, I'll give one suggestion to anyone new to direct marketing. All businesses are categorized with a NAICS and/or an SIC code. A good list provider can help you find people to contact using these codes. My suggestion is to start with pretty broad categories and re-mail to the subcategories that are the best responders. Your list could be pretty small and segmented, so beware of making assumptions based on small numbers.

Social Media

I'll discuss social media more later because I believe there is more to say concerning loyalty than prospecting. However, You can use social sites like Facebook, FourSquare and Yelp to get new customers provided your pages are positive and have a healthy fan base. One of my colleagues just took a weekend trip and exclusively ate at restaurants with which he had no experience. His decisions were based on a combination of location and reviews both easily found on yelp.com. Word-of-mouth is the best driver of new customers available because it is unbiased and the prospect has a good first opinion before they even walk in the door. Just make sure you are well reviewed, otherwise it works the other way around!

Public Relations, Events and Viral

PR can be a tough nut to crack but if you have something truly new and exciting, employ a PR consultant to help you get the word out. An article in the local newspaper is free but it's worth paying someone who knows the environment to actually write the press release and contact the appropriate news outlets. But let's face it, post grand-opening, most retailers don't have anything truly newsworthy to say, so we have to create the buzz through an event or a clever "viral" application. There are companies that are experienced in this type of marketing such as The Black Sheep Agency. One look at their site and their blog will give you an idea of the out-of-the-box things that can attract attention to your business or brand. With luck, you may be able to make some impact by yourself at virtually no cost through the unpredictable world of YouTube. If you are able to create a video that has the right amount of creativity and hit the web at just the right time, you just might be able to associate millions of people with your brand but with 24 hours of video being uploaded every minute your chances are better at a Vegas roulette table. My suggestions here are:
1. Have fun but don't disrespect your brand.
2. Make it applicable to your brand.
3. Be aware of other creators' copyrights.
4. Be thick skinned when it comes to comments.

Print and Media

There are a lot of options to cover here, so I'll just suggest that you track your sales as best as you can with coded coupons or specific URL/phone numbers. You can target with most media/print by location, so look at that option. B2B applications can take advantage of the many industry newsletters/magazines which, by the way, are often open to guest contributors, giving exposure and credibility at the same time.

SEO/PPC

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising are the last prospecting tool that I'll discuss (finally!). Simply put, when someone is searching for a product/service online, you want them to find your site first. You can spend a lot of money on these 2 categories, so here are some suggestions:
1. SEO - Write your website with your customer in mind. What terms will they use to find your products? DON'T try to "rig" the search results by putting popular terms buried in your pages. All your copy should read in a friendly manner and be truly relevant.
2. SEO - Name your pages and create your headlines based on the most important copy on the page. A page named "aboutus.html" will have less impact than "the_barbecue_experts.html" provided it really is for a barbecue restaurant.
3. SEO - Solicit relevant links from other sites back to your own. If you support the local little league, make sure your listing links to your site. Write articles for other newsletters that can list you as an expert and allow a link.
4. PPC - spend time thinking of as many search terms as you can that would bring legitimate clicks to your site. You could spend $10 on one click from "Atlanta bookstore" or $10 on 10 clicks from "Independent book resources in Atlanta," "Atlanta indie books," "support your local Atlanta bookstore" etc. Don't be tempted to bid your entire day's budget on one click. Web surfers are generally flaky with an incredibly short attention span so you are playing the numbers-game hoping to convert only a percentage of the clickers.
5. PPC - Make sure your ad links to the right page on your site. Feel free to send the searcher right to the appropriate page so they don't have to search around for whatever they are looking for. This requires the creation of multiple ads.
6. PPC - use web analytics to make sure that most of your clicks are spending time on your site. If not, review the search term and ad to make sure they aren't misleading.

There is so much here, I almost feel I should apologize for being so verbose and yet not covering all the options. If you have comments about all the things I left out, feel free to weigh-in below. If you have specific questions, you are welcome to drop me a line. I look forward to hearing from you.

Your Relevance Please

In an earlier post, I talked about the importance of great imagery in communications. This post is to discuss the importance of RELEVANCE. I wouldn't think it would need to be said but the image you use should not only tell a story, it should tell the right story.

First off, I don't want to make a habit of criticizing other people's work in this blog – there are others who already do a good job of this including the guys at emailcritic.com. That said, the following postcards are two recent examples from which we can learn something. The first is a postcard from KwikKopy about their Direct Mail services:

While the whole "message in a bottle" image is intriguing and really tells a story, it tells the opposite story that it should. The last time I put a message in a bottle was when I was stranded on an island with a professor, a movie star and a millionaire. We didn't care WHO got the message, in fact we sent hundreds of messages in bottles and coconuts and not one made it through. Also, the "on time" message is not supported by the pictured aquatic delivery method that even the USPS can outperform. I had hoped that the other side of this postcard would redeem itself by acknowledging the contrast and saying something like "Your customer swims in a sea of advertisements, don't just drop your message in a bottle and hope for the best. Hook 'em with Direct Mail that's sure to reel them in." ... but they didn't.

The second example is really clever. It has all the qualities that cause me to pause and read the little card. There's just one little problem: It's an ad for a stock photo library and it has NO PHOTOS.

Seriously, I like the ad. It's printed on a cool, seed-infused paper that grows when you plant it. It has clever copy to go with the whole growing/weeding/planting theme of the paper. But why, oh why, does a stock photography site use a big yellow box instead of a clever picture? They have thousands of pictures at their disposal, don't they have one picture of a Marigold? My takeaway from this is that I can send clever messages without having to pay for a single picture. It's bold and simple, colorful and clever and doesn't need a stock photo to succeed. Is that really what they want me to think?

So here's the deal. Think about what kind of story you want to tell with your ad. Work on the imagery in conjunction with the headlines and bullets. Make sure everything leads back to the call to action and that the creative doesn't take on a life of it's own going in an unintended direction. Consider running comps by people that are disconnected from your creative team: your receptionist, a friend or your kid's soccer coach and then take their comments to heart.

Feel free to comment on this or send me examples of your GOOD creative. That would be much more fun to review anyway.

Oops!! An email apology.

Being in the email business, I pay attention to the emails that I receive and RARELY does a mistake make it through to my inbox. It happens though, and the ways that a company can handle the mistake are many.

One way is to simply ignore the typo. I mean the majority of people are skimming their emails so fast that they won't even catch it right? Sure, a handful of English majors will reply to your donotreply mailbox with a tirade about how American grammar is going to hell in a hand basket and what ever happened to proofreading anyway? 

Another is to resend the same email with the corrected offer/wording/programming/whatever. No different subject line, no explanation of why a second email is being sent.

... PLEASE don't do this option. It's the kind of mass-blast mentality that gives emailers a bad name and makes me not get invited to parties. AT LEAST put "correction" or something in the subject to let the recipient know why they are getting another email an hour after they got the first one.

Finally, TAKE THE OPPORTUNITY to use this second communication to not only correct the error but give some human touch to what has become a very impersonal medium. (What? "Dear Dave" is impersonal??) You can easily become a hero in customer relations with a "personal" note correcting your error and explaining how you promise never ever to do it again, cross your heart and hope to die! The following is an example of an email that I sent recently to about 800 recipients. One note: only one person responded to the original incorrect email and 10 people responded to the OOPS email. Some of the responses are below.

Dear Lucille, Happy UN-Birthday? So, unfortunately I can't tell February from October and I accidentally sent you a birthday greeting from [company] -- Sorry about that! Hopefully you're having a perfectly wonderful non-birthday today and I do apologize for the confusing email. Sincerely, Dave Nelson Communications Representative

_____________
Some replies:
"Hey!!   I'm sitting here in Ohio under 10" of snow on top of 8" from a few days ago and you made me laugh!!   GREAT JOB!!  Lucille"


"oh that is okay!.................any time someone wishes me a good day that's cool..............  and it was perfectly wonderful too sitting here watching the ice melt.............hope you had a good one too!"


"That's okay Dave, when you get to be this age you likely won't even remember you have birthdays, ha  ha  ha  But thanks for the thought. I'ts nice to be remembered anyways :')  Sue S."


"Want to know of an even more of an epic fail?  My name isn't Sharon."


"Ha Ha! This was cute!! Love the photo.

Thanks,

Natalie"

"Well, my dad's birthday was yesterday so maybe there's the confusion? 

Thank you for the note. It was humorous. "

>>>The takeaway: In Advertising, once an error is out there you can't take it back but with email you have the very inexpensive option of changing your customers' opinion of you from careless to caring. Take the opportunity to add a "face" to your errors.

Email growth through appending - a cautionary tale

I try to encourage the best list practices for the sake of maintaing a good reputation. Our company never rents/purchases email lists, we subscribe to feedback loops, handle opt-outs immediately ... But one thing that is a bit of a gray area is the process of appending or e-append. I've heard experts speak pro and con about it, so we allow it within a controlled environment. The following is an example of a recent append that we participated in.

From a list of around 300M we found about 90M email addresses. The addresses were returned after an initial "invitation" to opt-out by the list compiler. BTW, have the compiler do this first communication or you'll kill your reputation faster than a politician's mistress. Anyway, the compiler should give you the appended email addresses along with codes like: soft-bounce, opened, no response, individual match and household match.

Here's where the caution really begins.
We add a relatively tiny mix of the appends into our normal newsletter list and monitor the reporting. When you start small, even a terrible complaint rate will not tip the scales with the ISPs but you do have to be able to report on the list codes, so don't lose track of them. In our project, we added 3M appends to our regular 110M newsletter send, gauged the results and added an additional 6M the second week and so on ... And here are the numbers that tell the rest of the story.

After 2 weeks/sends we found:
- The appends that were "unknown" had the worst complaint rate at about 40 times the base. Unknown Household match being a whopping 1.8%. That's reputation suicide if it had mailed by itself!
- The appends that had been "opened" had a great open rate, about 2x more than the base (makes sense) but the complaint rate was also high: 14x the base for the individual matches and 28x for the household match. That also makes sense since i don't want my brother's junk in my inbox.
- We went ahead and tested the "soft-bounce" although it's a lot of trouble for not much payoff: 10-15% bounce rate and half the open rate as the base. Also a complaint rate as high as the unknowns, about 1.6%
- As a whole, the unsub. rate for the appends was 8x the base for the first week and 6x the second.
- The bounce rate is also important to monitor and was 8x the base for the fresh appends.
- Finally, the "opened" appends had a positive click rate (not counting click to unsub.) that was 25% better than the base names, so there are obviously some good names to be had in that category.

The takeaway here is to BE CAREFUL! Deal with a reputable append company. Have a strategy for deployment and watch the responses like a hawk. Remember that the complaints accumulate as the new names begin to realize that you are sending with some frequency, so don't just use your first week as a throttle for the rest of your sends. And, I didn't even touch on the ROI of running the append. You can work that out based on your own situation.

Feel free to comment on this or email me with questions.

Great Photography is more ...

When you work in advertising you see a wide range of photo quality. Truthfully, the most recent digital cameras do such a good job that the average art director, journalist, teacher or grocer can take a picture that's good enough for print even at large sizes. Heck, I've been taking last minute pictures of people and products for years -- it's just the way things go. Good enough but not great ...

I ran across the portfolio of Lee Page (leepage.com) today and was reminded of what great photography really does. A professional photographer like Lee is thinking beyond the requirements of good lighting and instead concerns himself with accentuating the mood that the ad or article is emanating by adjusting the color cast, camera angle, props and model. The two pictures below are a good example of how small differences can change the feel of a picture entirely.

What stories do you think these pictures tell? What's the mood, the setting and the time of day?

In the end, as creative/art directors we can only do what our budget and timeframe allow. But if your message really hinges on the images you are using consider spending a little more time and money to get a picture that engages, that brings the reader in and informs them before the first line of copy is read.

If you know of other really great creative individuals, drop me a line. Thanks for reading!

Direct Marketing is Your Friend.

Direct marketers have a bad reputation as "junk mailers" and more recently "spammers". And to be fair, as an industry we bring it upon ourselves. When we succumb to the VP who constantly wants to send out more and more communications, we stuff inboxes full of unexpected, unwanted "junk" causing disdain and associating the brand with the money-grubbing nuisances that we are. Hey, just callin' it as I see it.

On the other hand ...

There are, on the other hand, direct marketers who have it right. Those wise marketers that make an effort to connect on a one-to-one basis. Those companies and agencies that spend as much time getting to know their current customers as they do finding new ones. Those advertisers are the friends of the people, the champions of real customer relationships, no matter whether their list is in the hundreds or the hundreds of thousands.

That's what this weekly blog is intended to be about. Observations about how some marketers are getting it right and how others are missing the mark. Tips on stepping back and taking in the broader picture of how the lifecycle of good direct strategies never ends, it just builds upon itself. If you have any questions about how to make your direct marketing better, or if you have an example that you'd like to share, please drop me an email.