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Rare Bird Blog

Put Transactional Email to Work

Wednesday, June 11, 2008

Speaking in Washington last week, I encouraged the attendees to use the power of transactional emails as a viable means to improve their customer relationships. I noted that these messages tend to break through the clutter and are generally perceived as helpful tools for customers to remain current with the latest information regarding their orders.

To illustrate the point, I suggested that retailers send emails at the following times (as examples):

• Order Confirmation


• Shipping Confirmation


• Customer Service Messages (e.g., "By now, you should have rec'd your order..."


• Requesting Feedback (e.g., "Please come back and write a review about your experience..."


• Re-Order Reminders


• RE-Engagement Efforts

Today I saw this chart from MarketingSherpa that speaks to this very issue. Customers pay attention to these messages, so they can be a valuable tool, but it's important that they are heavy on the information and light on offers.

Labels: email marketing, permission marketing, strategy

Target: So Many Things Right, One Big Thing Wrong

Wednesday, January 23, 2008

Disclaimer: I'm generally a fan of Target®. I appreciate the turn around they've implemented and I applaud their belief that general consumers (read: the rest of us as the unwashed masses) appreciate good design and want to own it, even if we don't want to pay an arm and a leg for it.

So it was with some alarm and a great deal of surprise when I learned that they seem to be so far out of touch with the reality of the world in which they do business. Here's the story:

They recently ran an ad that featured a young girl laying spread-eagle across a life-size representation of the notable trademark. This girl happened to be lying in a position that placed the center of the target -- the bullseye, so to speak -- directly between her akimbo legs.

A blogger named Amy Jussel from an organization called Shaping Youth took notice of the ad and sent a question to their corporate headquarters voicing her concern that this ad might be placing too much emphasis on the woman's genitals, and didn't they think this might be a little overly sexually subversive? (At this point in the story, you can choose to agree or disagree... it's their response that was truly imbecilic.)

Target responded with the following terse reply:

Good Morning Amy,

Thank you for contacting Target; unfortunately we are unable to respond to your inquiry because Target does not participate with non-traditional media outlets. This practice is in place to allow us to focus on publications that reach our core guest.

Once again thank you for your interest, and have a nice day.

"We want to focus on publications that reach our core guest"? It's the Internet, folks, which part of your core do you think isn't being reached by the Internet? I could go on, but the stupidity of this stance is hopefully obvious.

I am forced to ask, however, "So what?" So they've alienated bloggers and marginalized that part of their core that is being served by the Internet. So what? Will they be generally incensed enough to write thousands of words about how idiotic Target is? Probably. Maybe Definitely. Will these people stop shopping at Target? Maybe. Maybe not. The truth is, Target may never know the full cost of taking this position, because it may hit them in ways unforeseen by methods not contemplated.

An example? Sure... It's a known fact that the inclusion of product reviews on an e-commerce site can provide a noticeable boost to sales, especially for products receiving positive reviews. The reviews that have the most impact are not written by professional reviewers, they're written by customers. Is it possible that some of these customers, perhaps bloggers themselves, might be less likely to take the time to write a positive product review on Target's web site? Or, realizing that Target devalues their input, isn't it also possible that these same people might be more likely to only share their negative reviews? I think you can count on it.

Labels: blogging, internet, marketing, strategy, stupidity

Business Consulting or Web Development?

Friday, December 21, 2007

We walked out of a client meeting the other day when Michael, one of our recently-acquired programmers asked me, "So, was that fairly typical of how these meetings go?"

I ran through a mental checklist... let's see, we talked about design, site architecture, implementation strategy, marketing strategy, product delivery, logo and identity development, branding issues and concerns, product pricing, sales efforts, post-launch PR and marketing efforts, beta testing, testimonials, and a few other things.

"Yes," says I, "that's a pretty good example of how these things go." His response surprised me:

"I'm surprised at how much business consulting goes on," he said.

Which is interesting to me, primarily because it can be difficult to define what we do. Obviously, we specialize in web development and new media, but there are so many other issues involved that we're providing a high level of business consulting at every step of the way. I just never really thought about it in that light before.

Thanks, Michael!

Labels: business consulting, marketing, strategy, web development

E-Commerce, Affiliate Marketing, and Predictive Modeling

Monday, November 19, 2007

I had the good fortune of addressing a group of progressive-thinking marketers last week at a Marketing Roundtable held by Strategic Fulfillment Group. The meeting, held in the historic Stockyards of Ft. Worth, Texas, proved to be enjoyable and enlightening. Aside from my presentation about "Perfecting the Online Buying Environment", attendees heard from Ash Ishrak, Strategic Solutions Leader for IBM's West Region; Mike Gunn, president and CEO of Chicago-based Profit Rank; and Jim Tucker, president and CEO of Integrated Marketing Technology in San Francisco.

Some of the most interesting topics from the event dealt with the methods being employed by Tucker's group to provide realistic and accurate predictive modeling. Their analysis applies 138 different criteria to your database records to help you determine which segments would perform the best. The upside is that you can achieve similar results by targeting a much smaller portion of the whole. Pretty cool stuff.

We also spent some time discussing the ins and outs of strategic, triggered email events that can be used to automatically contact customers based on a variety of criteria. You're probably familiar with things like order and shipping confirmation, but this same approach can be used for a whole variety of contacts. Examples include customer service and promotional messages, and almost any kind of targeted communication based on customer order history, preferences, activities, etc. Also pretty cool.

My time was spent highlighting some of the best practices in web design, both at the product and the cart level, with a eye toward helping companies realize the best possible results from their online efforts. I'll get more into some of this later, but here's a hint of one item: too much choice can be a bad thing.

Labels: marketing, strategy