May
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A lot of content without substance (or how Direct Marketing needs to stop loving the bomb).
My inbox has a lot going on at one time. Interspersed are marketing messages that I have dubbed “noise”. Has anyone noticed that as the economy starts to slow, the amount of advertising emails have steadily increased? I am not a Direct Marketer by training but have in some regards become fully versed in Direct Marketing over the last eight years throughout my career.
While it is typically a smart move for organizations to hit the send button immediately when they start to feel the wheels of economic growth slow down, they are missing the obvious. If you are sending a 20% offer or some other ridiculous marketing message, so are your competitors. There is nothing differentiated in coupons and discount offers; in fact they at some point they hit the peak of “noise” that I refer to above. When e-commerce sites that don’t typically send messages send me “reminders” I just bow and shake my head. Don’t they see the diminishing return from saturation they are facing?
What about a creative email that checks in with the last purchase I made? For example a good subject line would be “Hey Tim, How is that blender working out for you?” or “We wanted to give you a few recipes to try with that new toaster oven”. See that is an email I would open- that is an email that would make me go, wow rather than trying to sell me something or entice me to buy more crap than I need there is value in having this in my inbox.
It is not limited to just email marketing- I see it in product offering on the web as well. Marketers, Product Managers, Brand Managers, Direct Marketers, whoever are losing focus on this vital piece of the business. They are no longer asking how you can make the offering mutually beneficial for both the organization and the consumer. See it’s in the consumption that success is defined not in the pure berating of the message.
For your enjoyment a recent Amazon email that added to the noise:
May
1st
Thu
1st
We experience our moments of purest joy at precisely those moments when we are causing it in others.
So I am going public with my TV obsession, otherwise known as The Bad Girls Club. People who know me know that I watch the most awkward television known to mankind, my Tivo resembles what I think Perez Hilton’s would look like. To make my point when I shared some of my television tastes at a round-table recently there was a range of emotions from disbelief to utter laughter.
I digress, the whole intention of this post is to spread the word on one of my guilty pleasures (soon to be yours as well I am sure)- The Bad Girls Club. This gem can be found on that little known station call Oxygen but tune-in, trust me it is so worth the time. It is a group of 7 “bad” girls who are put in a house to do nothing but be bad. It goes down hill from there.
Online Advertising: LinkedIn's CPM rates lower than reported $75, but still impressive
pile mentioned this during our meeting today. i find it simply amazing. also mentioned during the same meeting was general perception on what facebook’s cpm was running at (cents), and that coupled with their payroll and infrastructure cost, how long they can afford to keep their “we ain’t selling” stance. i still think microsoft will buy them someday.
Apr
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What a blah day…
Apr
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De la guardia!!
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Great interview
Not a huge fan of Tiger myself but my buddy Eric passed this along. I really dug what he said at about 11 minutes in:
SVP: “You have 64 wins on the PGA Tour, a fortune in the bank, how do you fight the human nature that says ‘I’m going to hit the snooze button today, I’m gonna take my foot off the gas, I’m just gonna coast for a while.’ Where does the hunger inside of you come from?”
Tiger: “I don’t know how you can think any other way”.
SVP: “There’s no….what would allow you to be satisfied?”
Tiger: “Hmm - win more.”
SVP: “So the 64th is…it feels as good, as fulfilling, as the 1st, the 2nd, the 33rd?”
Tiger: “God yes. Oh yeah”.
SVP: “So there’s no point when you can sort of put the feet up on a Tuesday afternoon and say ‘Today I’m not going to the gym’.?
Tiger: “No. Because the next…that’s…I look at life as: the greatest thing about tomorrow is that I will be better than I am today. And that’s the way I’ve always lived my life. So I have no understanding why people do hit the snooze button because you have a chance to become a better person, become - for me - a better athlete…all the different things you can do to become better for tomorrow. Why wouldn’t you take advantage of that?”