Creative Agency Secrets

One of my clients just got their very first email newsletter from a supplier. 

Oh my goodness, it is so DULL.  Here's the opening paragraphs

Welcome to the first edition of XYZ's Connections e-Newsletter, designed to provide timely information and tools to help your business run more efficiently.

The cornerstone of our first issue is exciting news about the global alignment of our organisation and the development of our powerful international processing platform, designed to help your business efficiently accommodate industry regulations and technological advancements.

 I have changed their name to protect the innocent and deadly communications advisor who must be surely about to lose his job for sending out such twaffle. 

Apart from being rather far behind the curve for newsletters (albeit sending it by email is vaguely 21st Century) This communication sucks. 

It's full of corproate-speak, management consultant catchphrases and has a TOTAL LACK of orientation around the customer.

Why would my client be interested in the "global alignment" of their organisation.  WIIFM? 

PS here's the text from the rest just to make you cringe further. The first sentence reminds me of a ghastly corporate mission statement written by Peter Jenner for Erdman Lewis while I worked there "Anticipating the needs our our clients, we bla bla bla…."

As we continue to add value to your business, we will provide you with industry-leading support and service. That is why each issue of Connections will connect you with valuable information about security, compliance and innovative solutions to help maximise your operational and financial efficiencies. We hope Connections helps you stay connected to your payments processing operations and the robust solutions XYZ offers.

Some ideas from a US group I belong to…. discussion thread What I learned from the Direct Marketing Revolution

[requires Facebook membership to read, sorry!) 

Good points:

• keep your own new business pipeline full now - it'll take ages to fill up after the recession passes
• cut marketing activities that can't be measured
• look for new undiscovered channels for traffic/signups/leads
• double up on things that are working
• test more with less exposure per test 

It is for both brand managers and Marketing Agencies to show how to use customer data in order to stop 'campaigns' and start long-running 'conversations'.  

This drives improved ROI for brands (retention, lower costs, higher response rates).And for agencies, can be a new income stream (selling data services, analysis, results-based fees).

Event is in London, UK on Tuesday 29 April. The Secrets of Closed Loop Marketing Event Details:  

It is free to attend.

The product is called Data Centre. It is a desktop application for the marketing department / marketing agency.  It uses data feeds from multiple sources (sales, prospects, e-commerce etc) drawn overnight. 

It is innovative in that it enables:

• Single Customer View
• Customer Data Profiles
• Highly targeted marketing campaigns in a closed loop environment

The major smart thing about it  is that your data CAN be siloed, CAN be in multiple formats and places and Data Centre CAN STILL be used.

Data Centre allows you to

• run multi-channel campaigns
• by-pass the IT department….(!)
• closed-loop tracking and analysis for SMS, email & telesales
• web and email marketing integration

Can you blog / circulate it?  Anyone who wants copies of the case studies (Kettle Crisps, Hoverspeed) write a comment and I’ll send them over on email.

Afterthought… if you have a client who you want to challenge and educate about integrated campaigns, bring them along! 

How to do big things in the shortest time possible.

Mike Cassidy – serial entrepreneur [and very rich man].

Kelly Lewis – geekbrief TV host

Evan Williams – Founder of blogger, twitter

Tim Ferriss - author The four hour work week. the book hit the tipping point at SXSW last
year…. 

Key learnings: Do usability testing; pre-plan your key days with VC / hires; ask advice of the more experienced and do what they suggest; Tim's advice on how to reach influencers is SPOT ON for biz dev; as is the question at the bottom about finding a mentor, how to run a daily to do list

(more…)

Just got registration confirmation email…. and another trick missed.

If you feel that a colleague would also benefit from visiting Technology For Marketing & Advertising, please forward this email where they can register for FREE at:
http://www.t-f-m.co.uk/colleague

I left the link unconcealed so that you can see there is no embedded connection to ME.

The conference has no way of knowing who their most powerful & active referrers are.   Who are the “Mavens” who will help them with their marketing by contributing their personal contacts to hte common effort.

And other things…. no blog of the event, no questions about whether I write or contribute to a blog, no message forum space, no Jaiku / Twitter channel planned.  And that’s just the obvious stuff.

Gad, wish I wasn’t going now.

Correction: TFM&A doesn’t use best practice any CRM.

Just got emailed by TFM&A to get me to sign up to their 2008 event. I’ll probably go.

But first a gripe.

If they are the pre-eminent exhibition and conference for technology for marketing and advertising (as the name implies) why oh why can’t they use best practice for email communications?

My email WAS individually addressed to me “Dear Rebecca Caroe”. Good start.

It WAS sent just to my email address and although it made it past my Outlook spam filter, Mailwasher picked it up as ‘not to me” and I had to manually accept the communication.

But when I clicked on the link

It took me to a registration page where NONE of my information was pre-populated.

As I laboured my way down the registration opting in and out for various items, it dawned on me that this was just a ‘plain vanilla’ registration page for all the outbound email marketing. Why wasn’t there a unique response code embedded in my link? Why don’t they ‘know’ which email I replied to and from what source [they asked me both in the registration questionnaire and these questions were mandatory not optional].

And lastly, why isn’t Business Development, a skill area listed under specialisms?

I feel alone in the marketing world.

Many companies are continuing to send direct mail to large audiences who have not opted in to recieve it.

Read this if you want convincing about what the ‘average’ consumer in the UK does with it.

And if you want to see the future do some research into VRM. Vendor Relationship Management or the ability of the consumer to pre-select the brands they will allow to communicate with them.

Definition: VRM, or Vendor Relationship Management, is the reciprocal of CRM or Customer Relationship Management. It provides customers with tools for engaging with vendors in ways that work for both parties.

CRM systems until now have borne the full burden of relating with customers. VRM will provide customers with the means to bear some of that weight, and to help make markets work for both vendors and customers — in ways that don’t require the former to “lock in” the latter.

The goal of VRM is to improve the relationship between Demand and Supply by providing new and better ways for the former to relate to the latter. In a larger sense, VRM immodestly intends to improve markets and their mechanisms by equipping customers to be independent leaders and not just captive followers in their relationships with vendors and other parties on the supply side of the marketplace.

For VRM to work, vendors must have reason to value it, and customers must have reasons to invest the necessary time, effort and attention to making it work. Providing those reasons to both sides is the primary challenge for VRM.

Be scared, be very scared if you company is a heavy DM user and has not started to work towards an adapted / altered database marketing strategy - your world is dying a slow, lingering death and your brand’s marketing budget will go with it.

Learn more by subscribing to the Harvard ProjectVRM updates; James Burke does a good summary here and Read Adriana’s blog (link is to all her VRM articles). And if you want to move towards database marketing using a cost-effective, laptop based database package, have a look at Honeycomb.