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| Volume 9, Issue 6 |
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In This Issue:
 How to revise an email so that people will read it
The art of the self-imposed deadline
Three big assumptions leaders should question
Susan Boyle: A lesson in talent management
 Holy product placement, Batman!
 Put ad on web. Count clicks. Revise.
 Recession-ready marketing tactics
 Marketing lowdown: Humor me
The sales clinic: Why your cold calling isn't working
 She's a nightmare - but irreplaceable
 Why Circuit City [dies], and why B&H thrives
E-mails that sell
 Tips of the trade: The rules of e-mail and direct mail differ
 How to increase email coverage of your customer base
 In advertising, consistency pays off
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How to revise an email so that people will read it
"People think that the first draft is the big event and that revision is cleaning up afterward. But the first draft is really setting up the chairs, tables, and cups, and revision isn't cleaning up after the party, it is the party."
"All first drafts are terrible. I don't care if you're Hemingway." "What comes out unfiltered from anyone's mind is mud." The first two quotations come from writing professors whose names I've since forgotten (and they were quoting other people whom they'd forgotten). The last one is one I just made up myself. But regardless of the
source, the advice is sound: no email should be clicked-to-send without revision. I've found that for your average email, the number of revisions largely depends on the number of recipients. Here's my experience:...
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The art of the self-imposed deadline
For people who work for themselves, the self-imposed deadline is a fact of life.
Whether you're starting a business, writing a dissertation, or consulting for a dozen clients, paying attention only to your drop-dead dates would mean never meeting them. You obviously have to set up interim goals along the way. But the art of self-scheduling is not unique to entrepreneurs and PhD students. It's one that I
actively -- and successfully -- practiced for the two decades I spent working for other people. And it's now making my transition to freelance life a lot smoother. Here are the self-scheduling techniques that worked for me really well in the office
-- and that remain the hallmarks of my working style out on the professional fringes:...
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Three big assumptions leaders should question
Corporate success rests on good leadership.
Or so we all believed. For at least a generation, we have praised corporate executives as examples of good management. To me, one of the most disturbing aspects of the current recession - aside from financial insecurity - is the failure of leadership, especially corporate leadership. So the question arises, what were
senior executives thinking? How did they allow this to happen? And why were they so late to respond? In May 2008, just as the recession was gaining steam, management strategist Gary Hamel convened a group of business leaders and scholars together to consider the future of management. [And so I believe it is appropriate for those of
us who teach and write about leadership to question our own assumptions, too. Here are three assumptions about how leaders manage that are coming under challenge...]
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Susan Boyle: A lesson in talent management
Susan Boyle, who recently performed on the UK television show Britain's Got Talent, has captured the world's attention. And it's a good lesson for managers the world over.
In case you've missed it: she's a 47-year-old unemployed charity worker who lives with her cat in a small village in Scotland. As soon as she walked on stage the audience began to snicker and roll their eyes. Simon Cowell, the show's host, asked her some pre-performance questions in his famously condescending style and, to the
audience's enjoyment, she answered awkwardly. She was painfully ordinary and everyone was prepared, looking forward even, to see her fail. By now, if you don't know the story, you could guess it, right? She more than wowed them. She opened her mouth to sing and, as one of the three judges Pierce Morgan later said, she had "the
voice of an angel." She wasn't painfully ordinary; she was extraordinary. [But there's something else Susan Boyle awakens in us as we watch her come out of her shell. Our own selves. Who among us doesn't move through life with the hidden sense, maybe even quiet desperation, that we are destined for more?...]
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Holy product placement, Batman!
I love it when beloved pop culture icons have a sense of humor about themselves. And if they can use that funny bone to make a buck off their legacy, all the better.
For a quick laugh, take a look at this Funny or Die clip starring Adam West. When will some television executive wake up and realize that a buddy comedy starring West and William Shatner would be - to quote the Comic Book Shop Guy - The. Best. Show. Ever...
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Put ad on web. Count clicks. Revise.
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ON a recent Thursday, Darren Herman, the president of Varick Media Management, was sequestered in his SoHo office. He wasn't scrutinizing a television ad or images from a photo shoot. He was combing through graphs and Excel spreadsheets.
Mr. Herman had run 27 ads on the Web for his client Vespa, the scooter company. Some were rectangular, some square. And the text varied: One tagline said, “Smart looks. Smarter purchase,” and displayed a $0 down, 0 percent interest offer. Another read, “Pure fun. And function,” and promoted a free T-shirt. Vespa's goal was to find out
whether a financial offer would attract customers, and Mr. Herman's data concluded that it did. The $0 down offer attracted 71 percent more responses from one group of Web surfers than the average of all the Vespa ads, while the T-shirt offer drew 29 percent fewer. And Mr. Herman didn't just compare the messages in the ads - he also
looked at the sites where they ran, when they ran and what groups of people responded. From the “Mad Men” era until now, advertising has been about a catchy tagline, an arresting image, the Big Idea. But Mr. Herman and his competitors are bringing some Wall Street-like analysis to Madison Avenue, exploiting the huge
amounts of data produced by the Internet to adjust strategy almost instantly...
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Recession-ready marketing tactics
How did Depression-era companies preach the value of their products and services? Take a look.
Here's a notion: telling customers in no uncertain terms why your product or service is worth its price tag. Isn't that what marketing and advertising are all about? Not during a boom. For the last couple of decades, ads that preached "value" elicited a collective yawn from Madison Avenue. Speaking frankly and concretely about what
customers get for their money was deemed ... well, uncreative. There's nothing like a heavy dose of economic reality to change, if not hearts, then minds. Out of necessity, value has come back into favor. The trick now is selling it...
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Marketing lowdown: Humor me
Victor Borge, the great Danish comedian, once said, "The shortest distance between two people is a laugh."
Humor has a way of cutting through formality, breaking down barriers, allowing people to talk one on one. What better way to make friends-and customers? Humor can be used effectively in the promotions you do for your company. Think about the advertisements you remember best. They tend to be the ones that made you smile.
Everyone loves to laugh. Men will confess to cosmetic surgery, false teeth, or a wig. But how many will own up to a lack of humor? We all have a love for laughter in most situations, give or take a dentist. Who would you rather deal with, somebody
who makes you laugh, or the Department of Motor Vehicles? Playfulness sells. Sometimes it's the unexpected that makes for humor, as in this sales letter:...
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The sales clinic: Why your cold calling isn't working
Whenever I'm talking to business owners or their sales teams, the topic of new business development-and cold calling, in particular-always evokes interesting reactions.
Cold calling is one of those topics everyone has an opinion on (even those who don't do it). And the salespeople and business owners who do it normally fall into one of the camps: love it, loathe it, or tolerate it. But regardless of which camp you or your team fall into, most people just don't get the results they want from cold
calling. Below are some reasons why that's the case, along with some ideas on what to do about it...
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She's a nightmare - but irreplaceable
"I'm having some trouble working out how to reprimand an employee. We are a small to mid size wholesale company and most of our business is done through sales personnel. One individual is very skilled and a huge asset to the company (producing perhaps 30% of all sales). The problem is that she also has the worst personality and causes a lot of drama within the office (screaming at other colleagues, talking ill of management behind their backs, and at times being rude to customers). Some employees have threatened to quit due to the poor work environment she fosters around her... David, Maine"
I feel for you, David. Your top sales person is certainly valuable and you are wise to want to keep her. But considering how much you lose by replacing people who quit because of the environment she creates, you are even more wise to find a way to make her more of a team player. In other words, since the average cost to replace an employee in the US is $38,000, you are wise to invest heavily in some one-on-one coaching for this individual, as it will actually save you money in the long haul. It will also bring you even better returns after her co-workers feel the difference and become more productive. Because I have no information on what you've done to this point to address the issue, let me suggest a three-prong approach...
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Why Circuit City [dies], and why B&H thrives
Many companies that have gone bust didn't die because of the recession. They failed for one reason: They treated customers poorly.
When Circuit City went kaput in January, I didn't waste my time on the chain's so-called going-out-of-business sale. First of all, Circuit City never had anything good in stock, even before it decided to go out of business. A year ago, I looked at the retailer's entire selection of laptops, and all I found were these huge, ugly,
shiny things festooned with garish stickers announcing that they had "Intel Inside" and were "Vista Adequate" and "Y2K Ready." Also, I had read on the Consumer Reports website that Circuit City's liquidator had actually raised the price on many items for the going-out-of-business "sale." [You know what? I don't buy the argument that
the economy caused Circuit City's failure. Take one look at its competitors, and you know that the market for consumer electronics and computer equipment remains strong, even in this economy. You can walk into any Apple Store and see large crowds of people lining up to buy computers and iPods. But enough has been said about how
wonderful Apple is. I want to tell you about another first-class consumer electronics retailer -- a much smaller business you probably haven't been to, unless you live in New York City or are a professional photographer or an avid hobbyist. It's called B&H...]
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E-mails that sell
Turning employee missives into ad campaigns.
The average employee sends about 38 e-mails a day. Could those be wasted marketing opportunities? That's the thought that occurred to Sean Guerin, co-founder of U.S. Imaging Solutions, a Davie, Florida-based company that sells and services copiers and printers. Guerin decided to try WrapMail, a service that slips advertisements
for his company's products into the e-mails his 60 employees send to customers, vendors, and friends. Now, all of Guerin's employees have become de facto members of the sales team just by keeping up with regular correspondence. Several recently introduced products and services, including WrapMail, mailPrimer, BrandMail, and
Exclaimer Signature Manager, offer these so-called e-mail enhancements. Prices and features vary, but they all take a company's outgoing e-mail messages and turn them into marketing...
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Tips of the trade: The rules of e-mail and direct mail differ
I'm very bad about getting my mail.
On a good week I might go down to the mailroom off my condo lobby one or two times to peek into my little silver mailbox. Occasionally, as I'm sorting through the pile, I might discover a relic that harkens back to another marketing era called a catalog. When I do get one of these I smile and think, "Wow they're still mailing,
huh?" Say the term, "you've got mail" and let's face it, nobody's thinking mailbox. They're thinking inbox. In an advertising world racing at lightning speed towards e-mail, social networking, SEO and SMS there's a marketing "sit in" of sorts quietly taking place. A large number of "holdouts" are hanging on to their postal presort
indicias with every breath in their bodies. On any given week many list sales reps tell me that they speak to a large number of mailers who have NEVER done anything BUT postal. Because, well…they just haven't. There will always be a place for direct mail-at least for a while. [Postal speak and e-mail speak are different, like apples
and oranges. Try as you might to get that darn orange on a postal carrier route, it ain't gonna go. Here's a few tips on running a successful e-mail campaign...]
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Managing email addresses in B2B: How to increase email coverage of your customer base
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Everyone's looking to do more with less these days. After comparing the cost of postal mail (about a dollar apiece) with the cost of email (about a penny apiece) any B2B marketer is going to prefer using email as the medium for staying in touch with current customers and inquirers. No-brainer, right?
But here's the rub: Most B2B companies have email addresses for only a fraction of their customers. And, even worse, if their privacy policies call for opt-in, only a fraction of that fraction are emailable. Consider the case of Cisco Systems, the networking hardware giant. While 45- 50% of Cisco's global house file contains email
addresses, only 29% of those are opted in. That's a mere 14% of the house file that can be contacted via email. Clearly a dire situation when you're trying to cut costs. So, what are the options for business marketers to increase their customer coverage via email? Here are four approaches that can work...
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In advertising, consistency pays off
Your ability to sustain a long-term advertising program shows customers that you're a successful, reliable brand.
I recently purchased a new digital TV. Normally, Circuit City (CC) would have been on my list as one store in which to shop, but the struggles the company was facing (followed by its decision to declare bankruptcy) made me nervous. I was sure I could somehow get my TV serviced under the manufacturer's warranty if something were to go
wrong, but I figured it would be more of a hassle if the retailer from whom I purchased the TV wasn't there to back me up. So I went elsewhere. This principle, which I call "the fear of warranty," is one of the reasons why GM (GM) is doing everything it can to avoid the bankruptcy process. People tend to feel less
comfortable doing business with companies they perceive are on the ropes. But I submit that the principle holds true at the other end of the spectrum as well. Brands that are setting the world on fire make people feel more confident about (and
perhaps even more intelligent for) doing business with them. And one very visible signal a brand can send about its momentum is how consistently it advertises...
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