How would you address this tricky database marketing challenge?

A B2B marketer relies heavily on postal mail to promote their offerings. They use email marketing but have yet to see results strong enough to justify a reduced reliance on the Postal Service. Each purchase secured via postal mail averages $1,500; average lifetime customer value exceeds $6,000. The call-to-action is “buy now” (not lead generation), so response rates are fairly low. In fact, one purchase per thousand pieces mailed is an acceptable response rate. Customers and prospects in the marketing database receive no more than 20 mailings a year. Offerings are highly specialized, so the mail quantity for most offerings is relatively small. The marketer has not studied how different segments of the marketing database have performed over time. They know a significant percentage of the database is waste, but with a minimum of a .001 required response rate (a rate they often achieve), and insufficient frequency to study how recipients behave after many mailings, they’re reluctant to delete many records. (i.e., They’re concerned about deleting a non-responsive record after the 20th mailing that could produce a response on, say, the 21st mailing.)

Have a solution or know anyone who may?

Here’s our response:

I may be wrong but it sounds like marketing and sales don’t work together here – in fact there may not be any ‘sales’ folks in the business. I would also suggest having a discussion with sales to see if they’d consider moving to a lead generation model rather than direct response as that will almost certainly improve the metrics. Get Brian Carroll in to give an overview??

A bit of telephone customer research about historic purchase decisions that got insight into why they bought and when they bought may aide creating database segments and also migrating some people onto email; off the postal mailing altogether and improve the metrics of this offering in the long term.

Here’s some ideas of ways to get over this barrier by appealing to your existing customerbase.  They know you, they know your brand and they also know their local area:

1. The English Cut – bespoke Savile Row suits – adding a ready to wear range

English Cut Savile Row suits

I have been on Tom Mahon’s email list for years – not because I buy from him (he only clothes men) but because of his promotional methods using social media and email marketing.  In the message I got today he links to a video in which he asks his readers for two things: Recommendations of stores local to their home who might stock his ready to wear range and secondly, introductions to Tailors who might want to make the suits.

The one mistake he made was not specifying ONE SINGLE PLACE for the replies – it came from a noreply email address and the video is both on his site and youtube – so he’ll have to collate answers from a range of sources.  I would have chosen to set up an unique email address for replies and mentioned it in the video – printed it on screen.

2. Global Culture wants to expand its retail stockists

The other is an iconic kiwi t-shirt brand who is keen to get new outlets in three cities in New Zealand.  Using a trade magazine, we helped them write a short article about the company and its recent growth which included the appeal for new locations.

Global Culture has its target audience in towns where there is a mix of both tourist visitors and locals and so is well-represented in New Zealand towns like Queenstown and Christchurch.  It is trying to get introductions to retailers in Gisborne, Napier, Wellington, Tauranga and around the Hawkes Bay region who might be willing to stock their range.

Idealog is the business magazine and website that features innovative businesses and new products or services and so getting the article about Global Culture published there and also included in their daily email news roundup to a recipient list of 5,000 business people was a good start to opening dialogues.

Any of you know of businesses who’ve succeeded in getting expansion plans promoted by customers?

It’s rare for a class act like Disney to get a project like this so badly wrong.  We spoke to low budget movie blogger and Client of Creative Agency Secrets, Julian Darley about why he thought this happened.

1. Be honest in your product budgeting. In the movie business, budgets are kept secret.  This conceals reality.  People forget that the marketing money is not usually included in a film budget. If it is included its obfuscated and so the headlines are probably wrong either over- or under-estimated by pundits and critics.
2. Disney kept changing the marketing pitch they knew it was going wrong so they were thrashing about with different versions of trailers which only served to confuse audiences.  Do  your market research and don’t keep changing your pitch.
3. Unless your product is a world-beater, don’t keep spending until you have to have a winner in order to make it pay.  Changing your approach may be OK when your product budget is small but when it’s this big that’s dangerous
4. Choose a title that helps the audience guess what the movie is about.  John Carter is neither a famous person nor a clear explanation of the genre of film.

Julian goes on to explain,

Look at the trailers, Disney kept changing their minds and releasing different trailers.  Was it sci fi or a straight hero/rescue or a historic romance (it starts in period costume) and there are lots of battles in it so is it an action/adventure battle. or an interplanetary sci fi film?

These many angles are different – they reveal a different part of the story and the way we’re telling it.  In my opinion you’d better test it on the public first.

The main lesson for brand marketers

It is amazing how clear people’s opinions are and how unchangable they are, once they are formed.  Disney found that no amount of huge budgetary spend on promotion and influence can retrieve a bad opinion after those initial impressions have taken root.

Take a read of this Problogger article – 10 famous things David Ogilvie said and how they influence blog writing.  The answer that Disney ignored is there in the list at number 9 ”

“Never stop testing, and your advertising will never stop improving.”

Julian Darley said that as a film maker and script writer he’d add to this “and do your market research early“.  Audiences are the key to great money in movies – and few can afford to ignore their views, as Disney shareholders may soon learn.

Related articles

• ’7 Business Lessons I Learned From The Artist’ (openforum.com)
• It’s a Shame About John: How the Failure of John Carter Only Ensures More Hollywood Unoriginality (thebrowntweedsociety.com)
• Great Geek Debates: Disney Princesses vs. Hayao Miyazaki (wired.com)

We got a great set of four questions in the mail today.

4 Questions for customer insight

1. Why did you (sign up to our mailing list)?
2. What made you nearly not (sign up)?
3. What would make you spend more with us?
4. What’s your biggest question about (our product or service)?

What an awesome list.

Why these questions are golden

Why did you sign up? – give you real understanding about what the customer thinks drove them to click that button.  Remember, you can cross check this against your stats to see if this aligns.  And you might learn a lot from what the customer thinks drove them…

What made you nearly not (sign up)? – again, understand the principal thing that nearly stopped your desired action happening.  Can you affect that or influence it in future?  You betcha – this could be the insight that leads to the biggest improvement in your CTR.

What would make you spend more with us? rather a forward question – but you never know.  Some people may just need a tiny nudge.  Or they may perceive your pricing versus features incorrectly.  It may not be a matter of switching budgets or reducing your price.  Listen hard to these answers.

What’s your biggest question about (our product or service)? Great insights come here from your user because this shows where mis-understanding or mis-communication has occurred.  Could also give you ideas for new features or products for the future.

Do this for your brand

Don’t use a check box or pick list for this.  Free text answers will give you the best insights.

Adapt the questions to suit your situation.  The words I’ve put in brackets can be adjusted to suit your situation.

And figure out the best place to do the work… on the blog, in a newsletter, when someone unsubscribes or subscribes…. Let us know how you get on.

For brands who are growing  and becoming profitable there comes a time when you choose to professionalise your marketing.  Many businesses decide at this point that they have two choices: to hire a staffer or to buy in expertise from an agency.

Why you need better marketing

The needs are clear – you want more traction with your marketing, you suspect that there are better ways of doing promotion and marketing to get inbound leads and you can afford a budget just for marketing.  These are good signs.

You have identified clearly that your brand has a need and the possible shortcomings of your current set-up.

Hire versus buy: the dilemma

There are advantages and disadvantages – the internal member of staff will need to have well-rounded skills in a range of marketing disciplines (web, advertising, PR, copywriting, print design) and therefore a senior hire with this range of skills is more expensive than a junior.

Using an agency also requires decisions about their skills and area of expertise compared with the type of marketing and communications activity your brand has done in the past or plans to do in the future.

Costs are usually the determining factor

It may be less costly to hire external advisers compared to the cost of a senior member of staff – compare the full cost of hiring and paying (including office costs) a new senior marketer with the price an agency would charge you.

Have a couple of ‘chemistry’ or getting-to-know-you meetings with local marketing agencies and ask their advice.  Also ask to speak to a couple of their recent clients to see if they also made the same transition.

A third option worth reviewing is using a freelancer.  You don’t have the full hire costs of a full time person but can often get very experienced people at lower fee rates.  Check out the freelance hire websites like eLance.com and Freelance.com, Freelancer.com and guru.com.  I’ve successfully hired people for my agency and for clients using eLance.

Creative Agency Secrets has two current clients who use us for mentoring work.  They hired a junior marketer and we speak weekly to review their work, priorities and give guidance.  Could this work for you?  Give us a call – we always offer a free 20 minute first call.

In the meanwhile here are a few other articles that may help you figure out what to do

• Advertising – do it yourself or hire
• Hire a PR firm or do it yourself?
• Do it yourself internet marketing, or hire
• Hubspot offers inbound marketing tutorials for people using its website / content marketing system.
• Read Creative Agency Secrets’ assessment of Hubspot and how to do it yourself
• SEO do it yourself or hire a professional
• Small Business marketing – DIY or hire a pro?
• Web design – do it yourself or hire someone
• DIY or hire a market research company?

A quick look at how to find the name of the right person at the business you want to pitch.  Using both free and paid-for resources, we illustrate good websites to use and the tools they offer new business development professionals who are trying to start conversations with prospects.

Enjoy and download your own copy here.

It uses your existing connections on social media sites, to suggest the best person to connect you to your target.

Read our slide deck about our trial.

Here’s my connection link you help me get my beta invite by clicking here to make the connection.

See how Go Hachi describes itself

Related articles

• Hachi Shows You How To Meet New People (crenk.com)
• Emerson tests out how to meet Zuck (emerson social media.com)

As a research survey it was flawed in three ways.

First error – question structure

Take this example of a question on the first page

Overall, how satisfied were you with the information distributed in our print publications? 5= Very satisfied, 1=Very unsatisfied

Looks all good  But then two questions later they ask

Please respond to questions on a 1-5 scale, 1 being very unsatisfied, 5 being very satisfied. If questions do not apply to you, leave them blank.

Did you notice the inversion of the 1 to 5 scale?

Why change the scale? This is going to test the respondents. Many will skim read and the outcome is they’ll get inverted results as respondents assume the scale was the same.

Second flaw – Giving the feedback I wanted

I always think that any survey that enables me to give exactly the feedback I want by asking the right questions is both well-constructed and the survey designer has a deep understanding of the event in order to ask the right things.  This fulfilled neither.

Having ‘catch-all’ comments is not ideal for survey analysis – especially of large response events.  I reproduce below all the free-text answers I gave.  This shows that there should have been space for qeustions about

• excellence or poor performance in panels / sessions
• overcrowding
• travel arrangements to venues outside the convention center
• wifi / AV / power sockets in venues outside the convention center
• value for money perception
• learnings / business opportunities or transactions

Third flaw

The over-high reliance on free text answers.  A question on the trade show didn’t have pick lists of exhibiting companies; a question about audio visual only focused on the convention center not on other venues just seems to raise the likelihood of added analysis workload.  Plus insertion of seemingly erratic questions about sponsors and perception awareness of contributing brands some of which had such a low profile I never noticed and others seemed to be ‘trick’ questions e.g. listing both Pepsi and Pepsi Max… were both there?

There also seems to be a green agenda going on…. which wasn’t in evidence at the event at all.

Does your company pursue green/sustainability initiatives?
Does your employer or organization require proof of sustainable choices in housing or transportation during your time at SXSW?

My detailed answers

Interactive Panels, Conference Events and Party Comments:
One of the branding / marketing panels was not prepared [client knows best #sellideas] and Day Stage session by Colin Shaw #beyphil promised 7 tips for customer experience and didn’t give out any - he was AWFUL.

I went to 5 talks at non-convention center venues and 2 were full when I got there.  None had adequate power points and AV was less good. Very disappointed that many talks were repeating old material and only two advanced sessions #rdbdeath and #healthapps were “leading edge”.   The quality is lower and the overcrowding of venues spoilt my enjoyment. In value for money terms SXSW is now 50% lower than my previous visit. I may not come back.

I wish I could read more blog posts on SXSW.com about?
Liveblogging each session. I did this on my site (creativeagencysecrets.com). I think you should leave a permanent record of each session online like TED does. A written liveblog plus audio would be a valuable addition to online knowledge.

I missed 2 sessions because of overcrowding – there was no way to hear what was said in the hallway and no record after of what was discussed = VALUELESS.

Trade Show/Exhibition comments:
Wish it had started on Sunday as I had to leave Monday after lunch.

Which sponsor(s) enhanced your SXSW experience and how?
Samsung in Bloggers lounge – good food and drink, great interaction with other bloggers, OK book signing by Guy Kawasaki and other interviews.  The not for profit lounge had the BEST people inside using it. Verizon in the Hyatt – their lounge had nothing in it but fancy white sofas – not of any value at all.

Any other comments?
The overcrowding this year was noticeably greater than in 2009 when I last attended.

Fewer sessions had ‘leading edge’ thinking. Many sessions were too populist and frequently speakers were “content-free”.

Mediocre to awful panel chairing skills e.g. Gigi Peterkin of Edelman, Alessandra Lariu at McCann Ericson and Allison Mooney of Google meant we got less from these sessions.

The committee needs more influence over panel selection to weed out the time-wasters.

Also suggest you cut number of ticket sales and adjust room allocation based on attendees’ likely topics of interest so popular tracks like Marketing / Branding get larger venues.

I commend you to take part and sign up to receive the findings.

Here’s a quick excerpt…. look away if you plan on answering it yourself and come back here laterI love the way Robert inverts the yes / no answers here to prevent bias.  Great questioning technique.

Zemanta is a superb recommendation tool for blogs – we’ve bee using it here on Creative Agency Secrets for years after seeing it on David Cushman’s blog.  Its easy to use, helps us create professional content in minutes and best of all enables our content to feed back to other blog sites.

What gave you the idea for Zemanta?

My co-founder and I were working on a project for national TV as journalists, we noticed that professional media journalists have a huge machinery of assistance and research, proofreaders and picture editors to ensure the article they write at the end is perfect.

An individual blogger has none of this.  He is on his own.

At the time, blogging was becoming an important media channel online.  By using smart technologies we could create a similar experience for a blogger as a professional jounalist.

We did a proof of concept and we raised angel funding.  Version 1 got seed funding and launched.

From day one every blogger who tried it totally liked it.  We got rave reviews calling Zemanta the “blogging god”.

In 3 years we have almost no complaints or people saying it is useless.

What does Zemanta do?

Zemanta is your friend that helps you tell a story on the internet in the most interesting way.  By listening closely to your ideas  you type in the blog post draft, Zemanta finds pictures and explanations to illustrate what you want to say. By looking at other ideas that are similar to yours Zemanta lets you know where they are and how they connect.   You then click and drag them into the post draft as images, related content, links and so on.

What are the main features of Zemanta?

People are excited about how much time it saves and discovering content that they didn’t know about before. Every blogger who uses it has the right to share his blog content into our network to become recommended quotes for other bloggers creating cross-promotion that wasn’t possible before.

How many bloggers use Zemanta?

Tens of thousands.

How is it useful for business bloggers?

It is even more important that business blog posts look professional and are set out and featured as a professional article would be with references, illustrations and pictures. Creating a “rich” post is even more important.

At the same time business blogs have more interest in being promoted on other blogs as references and bringing in more traffic.

What is your business model to make money?

Two ways – we offer our core technology as an API,to clients like Flight Share and Lonely Planet, who want to categorise their content.

Promoted recommendations is the second method of monetization; some businesses who are not our users would still like to contribute content to us so we charge them based on the number of times we recommend their stuff.

Their stuff is of core value so it goes into the same recommendation engine but when it displays, the word ‘promoted’ is next to the link.  Yahoo Finance is our largest client for this service.

Take the Zemanta demo yourself – post any text into the box and watch the images, tags and related content recommendations display for you.  Suggestion – use one of your recent blog posts as the text!