This one's for the people, people

We've had some challenges this week with a project...yeah yeah i know that some of my readers were on the front line of this one! As we were wrapping the whole thing up the DM guy pipes up with "i know my Cost per Aquisition (CPA) and your calculation is just plain wrong!"

Now when you get into the DM methodology, you quickly find out that they know who they mail, where they live etc but they never really know response - its all assumed. The thing is they continue to bang you over the head because they think they are the most accountable marketing channel

They say its the media and the message...like this:

Dear Valued Blog Reader,

How does that make you feel? My guess is like a piece of s**t. And yet, there are thousands of well-paid Direct Marketing professionals starting pieces of communication like this every day.

This is typically how they speak to us:

Dear Valued Customer.

As part of our ongoing improvement initiative we are centralising data, in order to provide a more streamlined service. We are also taking this opportunity to realign customer sales and are, therefore, in the process of updating our information. Enclosed you will find a Customer Satisfaction Questionnaire. Complete the FREEPOST form and send it back before June and you could WIN A HOLIDAY FOR TWO TO THE BAHAMAS..YES THATS RIGHT! THE BAHAMAS.

That is a parody of real letter. From a company. It says only one thing: companies don’t care about you, they want your money and, at the end of the day, you are nothing more than a name on a list in a huge database.

People, on the other hand…speak like this:

Dear Paul,

Since I was promoted, I feel sheltered from bad news, i'm not on the frontline anymore. Now, I may just be paranoid, but I have the suspicion that elements of our service aren’t as good as they could be. So, who better to ask than someone who uses it every day? Are we as good as we could be, or are there areas where we’re letting you down? Go on, give it to me straight – because, ultimately, my job depends on you being happy.

Notice the difference? It’s human, I feel valued and I might even be prepared to reply without the bribe....although it is the BAHAMAS!

It doesn’t have to be this way. The new digital dawn should be the Direct industry’s birthright, because the digital space is all about relationships.But most DM companies are still folding paper or, at best, doing banner ads.

With the ability to cultivate relationships in an online environment comes a huge opportunity to create engaging bespoke communication. Stuff that could genuinely add value to consumers’ lives.

But I haven't seen anything like that - have you? No. Well, if you want to retire rich, there’s the opportunity.

Rant over. I hope we get through this guy. Have a good weekend all

It's google to the rescue...again!

We have all done it, come on, admit it. You have got drunk or maybe just bored or maybe you didn't take everyone off the cc list. Whatever it was, you felt a burning desire to state your feelings in an email? Once you click that send button, you know that you've made a terrible mistake.

Jon Perlow at Google has to our rescue. Under their 70:20:10 philosophy he come up with a cool new tool for Gmail that may prevent us from emailing while drunk, Mail Goggles.



So you stagger out of the pub after seeing your ex cosying up to some other bloke and fire off an email to her. Typically this mail can take the form of an ill informed rant or a declaration of undying love. Either way it's all wrong! But once you hit the send button on mail , Mail Goggles will present you with five maths questions that must be solved in a limited amount of time. Only if you complete the sums in the given time will your message be sent.

Mail Goggles activates by default to weekends and nights, but of course you can adjust that to be more in balance with your personal 'happy hour!' - Enjoy

Community Confusion?

Like the rest of the world I have been sucked into social networks, mostly for ensuring I don’t lose contact with colleagues (LinkedIn) and engaging in continuous banter (Facebook). However, I am really unsure of the true benefits of a social media campaign.
Looks like the online market takes the same view; you may pay $2 per click on Google Adwords but the same keywords on Facebook are 10c. That tells you that people on social networks simply aren’t interested in advertising – if they were, then the bid values would be much closer to one another – these ads just aren’t delivering any revenue.
However, just like any marketing campaign we usually start with objectives - so taking a step back what can we expect a Facebook ad to actually achieve





1. Awareness

We all know about awareness; its been the lifeblood of the broadcast media market for 50 years. However in the online world, where everything is trackable and accountable the awareness card just doesn’t play strong.

2. Website traffic and revenues

Direct revenue from a social network also doesn’t feel right. This is probably why sites like Facebook don’t have an e-commerce capability (but they are no doubt working on it). I read an article last week that stated people hitting websites coming from social networks have the highest bounce rate and lowest time on your website than from any marketing channel.
Ultimately when I go to social networks its for 2-way communication but advertising is still being advertised to…so for me its wallpaper and ugly wallpaper at that.

3. Targeting and better customer understanding

This is where it gets interesting.
Talking to a colleague last week I was informed that P&G were moving swathes of marketing dollars online, including social networks. Get this; Ted McConnell, Manager of Interactive Marketing and Innovation at P&G set up an ad to target all Facebook members who were female, 22-27 year old, worked for P&G, lived in Cincinnati, liked sex and General Mills brand Cocoa Puffs (although he didn’t specify if the sex and the Cocoa Puffs were at the same time). Facebook identified and accurately targeted one person.

Maybe online marketers have been looking at social networks in the wrong way, when people go to Facebook they aren’t really looking for a content experience, they are looking to connect with friends and store personal data (photos, likes and dislikes, where they are and how they feel). So forget the user interface of social networks and treat it like a giant database. That’s a database that marketers will pay though the nose to penetrate.

Pyramid selling…that works!
Finally, exploiting the database further. Facebook Connect allows users to connect to websites, find their friends who connect to websites and share information about their experience of websites. Wouldn’t it be cool if there was a benefit to consumers? How about if they could be rewarded for the degree of influence they have over their network of friends? Almost like an advanced store loyalty card where you could generate points for online purchases but importantly points for those you’ve influenced in your network

There’s the Value Exchange right there!

Everything you ever read about setting marketing budgets is redundant

Year in year out ADMAP has its 'setting advertising/marketing budgets' and every year the leading lights in the industry tell us its "% of revenue" or "SOV" or "need a market-mix model". Sometimes i wonder what the point of it all is

The average advertising budget as a percent of revenue is around 6%. In B2B that can fall to around 1.5% and in packaged goods that can be up to 10%. However I LOVE search, and search will grow up in 09. The stars are aligned in 09 for search. Problem is, with search the budgeting rules get broken

Budgeting for SEM without actually doing SEM is a real challenge. The concept of pay-per-click search advertising is almost impossible to forecast without being actively engaged in a campaign. You've got to test to see how many clicks you get each day at what CPC by each keyword to start to make a calculation of its ROI

You know what? I'll get out there and say that in 09 up to 25% of ad budgets could be allocated to search...however is that a good enough way of budgeting for search given that total budgets are falling? Looks like we may need some new ADMAP articles

What's cool and different and potentially rule changing is the idea that we could be seeing the end of the way clients set their marketing budget. The tried and tested ways look hopelessly antiquated in this context. Marketing budgets need to be flexible in an uncertain real-time world

Google are starting to manage the inventory for radio, print and TV through the same methods used for its sponsored CPC ads, my guess is we’ll start to see much more variation and responsiveness in marketing budgets

So what will those ADMAP articles look like? Well when things are going well and your cost per acquisition is falling, keep spending! When your CPA is rising, pull back and manage the budget accordingly. Simple? Well not exactly, you've got to track that budget like a hawk, dialing that budget up and down constantly

Next post: ROI on demand? Oh yeah...we do that!

Cool Sums

I freaked a few people out over drinks yesterday with this:

1 x 1 = 1
11 x 11 = 121
111 x 111 = 12321
1111 x 1111 = 1234321
11111 x 11111 = 123454321
111111 x 111111 = 12345654321
1111111 x 1111111 = 1234567654321
11111111 x 11111111 = 123456787654321
111111111 x 111111111=12345678987654321

Maybe I should get out more?