The trouble with email opt-outs – they are killing what’s left of email marketing

We had an employee recently depart our company and agreed to forward emails to the employee's personal email for 6 weeks. After 6 weeks the emails were then redirected to an address back at our company. I was assured by the former employee that the individual had opted out of newsletters and sea of emails they received on a daily basis (many, many emails), yet the deluge continued.

So I opted out on the employee’s behalf. That stemmed some of the tide but far from all of it. What began as a desire to simply stop the madness ended being a study in deception. I have come to realize that despite best practices being an easy email opt-out (most of the companies did have this procedure) there were a good number of companies that did not have an easy opt-out, and even more that ignored the opt-out request by continuing to send daily emails even after an acknowledgment was sent saying ‘sorry to see you go’. Those companies are not only breaking the law, they are taking down the medium day by day.

Our company supports email marketing to current customers as well as those would-be customers that have opted in to receive more information. We rarely use email as a customer acquisition tool. And for the Generation Y folks and Millennials email is a passé form of communication. It is seen as an irrelevant communication tool and my recent experience only goes to support that notion. And ask for an email address from someone and you are 6 times more likely to get it than to get access to their Facebook account. Pretty easy to see which is the more relevant communication.

What possible benefit could a charity, marketer, or anyone for that matter gain from continuing to send out emails to those that do not wish to receive them? Aggravating them? An unusual marketing tactic to be sure but I am hard pressed to think of any other reasons other than dishonesty, laziness or plain stupidity.

Email opt out should be obvious, easy and immediate. Those that are not doing so are just killing it for the rest of us.

Power Reviews are flying high

We have a fairly small company (www.YourCover.com) that has recently signed up for Power Reviews (www.powerreviews.com). The team brought this idea to me and I got very excited thinking that since we receive such positive customer feedback we are bound to benefit from being a part of Power Reviews.

In today’s (10/12/09) Wall Street Journal Geoffrey A. Fowler’s interesting article on the Business Solutions page notes (http://bit.ly/3tUjbx) that Drugstore.com and Diapers.com both feel they are better connecting their brand to consumers by using Power Reviews. The article also talked about creating ‘verified buyers’ who would have badges next to their reviews in order to add authenticity to their reports.

Amazon.com was the pioneer here but now product reviews are ubiquitous. Last week I noticed another article citing that reviewers in general are overwhelmingly positive – 4.3 out of 5 ‘stars’ is the average rating. But the article also went on and noted that one particular reviewer was going the other way and not throwing around platitudes of positivity when it came to different products he encountered. And that the trend was that reviewers would become harsher as time goes on. So it could be said that these are the salad days for product reviews.

Are product reviews a component of social networking? I say yes. Is there a risk in having negative reviews posted about your product? Absolutely. But there is even greater risk is an attempt to steer or manipulate the conversation. Not everyone will love your product and while deep down we all know that it is quite another thing to have someone publicly slam your product for all to see.

What we hope to learn from (hopefully) YourCover.com having an active Power Review flow is how we can make the product and service better for our present and future customers. Not every review will be positive – nor should it be if the conversation is truly genuine. Of course we hope and expect that most of the comments will be positive, (hey we’re not masochists here), and that we are able to learn from what people think about their experience with our site and products.

I suspect for companies using Power Reviews that there will be bogus reviews – both on the positive and negative side. This is why there are recommendations to tie reviewer’s comments to their Facebook, MySpace, or LinkedIn page. Then there would be background on the reviewer such that you will ‘know’ them better. After all then you are getting a recommendation from a known and ‘trusted’ resource.

The question I have is – why should these folks be trusted?

Facebook fan pages - who are they serving?

I sat through a 3+ hour presentation last week by a noted social media ‘expert’. He had much to offer and kept the presentation moving and also took time to answer questions along the way which I always like to see. However despite the fact that he had spoken to groups like ours a number of times the presentation did not resonate as much as it could have because he did not do his homework on the audience. Our group is a diverse group of executives that run companies of varying sizes and distinctly different focuses.

When the conversation turned to Facebook fan pages it was his opinion that ALL companies should have a Facebook fan page. It was all I could do to not jump and say – WHY? WHAT FOR? For instance my company is a direct and digital marketing agency. Why would somebody ever want to be a fan of my company?

Furthermore the strategy was to contact people in my Facebook friends and ask them to be a ‘fan’ of my company. Since I use Facebook as a place to keep up with friends and family I felt strongly that it was a cheesy notion to ask them to be a ‘fan’ of my company. I don’t think of my Facebook relationships as a platform for business offers.

I do have friends that have retail oriented businesses that have Facebook fan pages. This makes sense to me. If you have a retail business (restaurant, gym, boutique) having a fan page allows the distribution of special offers, sales, and other types of promotions. A FB fan page in retail businesses offers the potential of real added value to those that have decided to become ‘fans’.

Where I don’t see FB fan pages working well is in the business to business sector. Would you want to be a FB fan of your health or car insurance company? GEICO actually has a fan page with more than 6,000 fans. What are these people receiving for their fandom? More offers on additional insurance? My guess is they are not receiving deeper insurance rate discounts than the general population so where would there be value?

How about a DMV FB fan page? (Ok that would never happen anyway).

What I am missing here?

The good the bad and the ugly in couponing

We have a local restaurant here in town that serves Brazilian food. The food is quite good but it is a bit on the expensive side so I reserve it for more special occasions. In my local paper this morning I saw a ¼ page advertisement for the restaurant – the first time I had ever noticed one of their ads. The restaurant has been around for a little over a year (I think).

The ad offered $ 9.99 all you can eat on Monday and Wednesday nights. Since per person a full meal without beverage can easily cost $ 30.00 that seemed like a good deal – in fact a REALLY good deal. But in the SAME SMALL AD they also had another note saying 5% off with this coupon for orders over $ 20.00. HUH? 5% off of $ 20.00 is $ 1.00. This is supposed to motivate me? Off a $ 50.00 check it’s $ 2.50 – that does not even equal the tax!

This isn’t just bad marketing; it’s plain stupidity. Any positives generated from the interesting offer of $ 9.99 all you can eat (I do wonder what menu items would be available for all you can eat at $ 9.99) is offset by the bizarre $ 5% discount offer. In fact I don’t recall ever seeing a 5% discount for a restaurant ever before.

A different local pizzeria (Planet Pizza) which has several locations in our county does send out coupons upon occasion. But last night when it was duty to pick up the pizza to bring home for dinner I realized I had no coupon around. I recalled that coupons are available on their website. So I went to their website, clicked on the individual location I wanted and was able to download a $ 4.00 off Val-Pak coupon for my order which had to be over $ 15.00 (and was). It was so easy and the store seemed quite content to take the coupon which I told them made me happy. The pizza was great and I got it for less. Win-win.

These were two examples of completely different ways of handling a coupon. The first does not get it, the second does. Make sure if you are offering a value (discount) to your customers you make it clear and easy to understand and redeem. This isn’t that difficult folks.

Celebrities and holl

Celebrities and hollow apologies - http://htxt.it/FUe7

Celebrities and holl

Celebrities and hollow apologies - http:www.markkolier.wordpress.com

Celebrities and hollow apologies

What do Serena Williams, Manny Ramirez, Mark Sanford, and Kanye West have in common? Unless you have been living under a rock you probably guessed (correctly) that all have I one way or the other embarrassed themselves and their fans. All of them also engineered an ‘apology’ of sorts.

Here in the United States we live in the land of second (ok maybe third and fourth) chances. I actually do feel that second chances are often worthwhile since people make mistakes. Honest ones often.

But is it my imagination or do I sense a strategic shift by those who commit egregious and stupid acts? Almost as if when one makes a terrible decision, or acts rashly and unthinkably, even violently, that all a celebrity needs to do is issue a seemingly heartfelt apology and most people will issue a free pass. After all it seems to me that what Americans like more than a second chance is a good comeback story.

And I have nothing against Serena, Manny, and Kanye and have appreciation and respect for their individual talents. I don’t know enough about Mr. Sanford and that’s actually just fine with me. But I am not buying their apologies. To me they all smack of insincerity and positioning. Ask yourself the following: will their behavior change at all in the future? If not (and that’s my position) then their ‘apologies’ are nothing more than a weak marketing statement to engender some positive reactions from their fans and followers.

But insincere marketing is the absolute worst marketing of all. It does not work in the long run and maybe not even in the short run.
What bothers me the most is that too many people actually buy this garbage? It should take less than the actions of a Bernie Madoff to create public outrage. Nobody seems to be buying his apology. Why should the others get a free pass?