Chris Baggott's Email Marketing Best Practices

The 70% Solution

I'm doing a lot of thinking lately on program effort.   You might remember a few years ago we talked a lot about execution pain.   Basically if you look at the whole marketing pie and divide your time between execution and actual marketing you will probably find that 70% of your time is dealing with execution.

I think marketing is easy.   Its basic; you simpli want to listen and respond appropriately.  You want to find new people to begin relationships with and then nurture and maintain those relationships for mutual benefit....(I'll discuss mutual benefit in a later post)

Peter McCormick one of my partners with ExactTarget has this saying about Boiling The Ocean.  I think this is what happens to most marketers.  We attack the entirety of a problem.   My experience has been that you can get to 70% of a solution with about 20% of the effort.  All the pain comes with the remaining 30% that consumes 80% of the resource.

Couple of big problems here:  For one, there is no such thing as 100% of solution in anything related to marketing.  It's never over.  Marketing is about incremental improvement. 

What I see happening, even in my own environment is creep.  "Boy let's use city as a segment".   "Yeah, great idea and then lets add last purchase date and the compatible product with that sku".   

"Uhhh....  Sure.....but that data is in a different system"  "let me go get (insert IT here) and see how to get at that"

See what happens??   Nothing.   

Sony DCR-SR80

To give credit where credit is due. I tried the Sony Chat (which by the way is the greatest thing to ever happen to customer service) and got another person who gave me the right answer. This camera uses the mpeg-2 format. Apple has a $20 download that coverts to Quicktime automatically. All good now :-)

Sony DCR-SR80

Ok, this has nothing to do with my topic of Email Marking, but I'm so angry.   I use a Mac.  I want to do more video blogging.  Went out to buy a camcorder with a hard drive.  Read the reviews  and came home with a fantastic looking Sony DCR-SR80.

Took about 15 hours of video with it.  Plug it in to learn that it's not compatible with a Mac???

If I want I can buy third party software.  Deep on page 21 in the manual is a site that will sell to me for an addtional $153. 

The image attached is a screenshot from my chat session with the Sony customer service people.....

More on Best Buy

What's interesting about the word "Sucks" is that it is so pure in it's meaning and in it's ability to get people talking.

So does Best Buy's marketing suck? 

What I like to fight against is Mass Marketing tactics when you have the ability to do targeted marketing.   If you don't have any data then you are stuck with Mass Marketing. If you have data however, why wouldn't you use that data and build better one to one relationships?

The data I'm talking about is individual data.  I'm not talking about "Campaign Data".  Campaign Data tell the marketer that if they blast enough mass advertisements more people will buy...enough people to cover the cost of the "Campaign".

Julie explained how this works in her comment.   She got an offer for a radio after buying a laptop.  Does the data tell Best Buy that women in Michigan who are mothers and have lived in Germany and who buy laptops are more inclined to buy radios or does everyone get a radio offer no matter who they are?

Does it matter?

Why Best Buy Marketing Sucks

Ok, so why would I possibly have an ax to grind with Best Buy’s marketing?   

The simple answer is that they are great in so many ways that when they are horribly weak in one area it is completely magnified.   When great companies do something that is completely average it’s more painful.

Imagine if Starbucks started serving coffee with Gas-station cups or Apple added more buttons to an iPod? 

So my beef with Best Buy is the “Rewards Zone”   

There is a problem that plagues any “box” retailer.  That problem is that customer transactions are anonymous.    There is no excuse for poor database marketing with online retailers or airlines for example.   The online companies know me, they know my transactions, they know my visits…they have the data.

In the physical world the customer is kind of invisible.   They can’t really tell when I enter the store, where I browse and what I actually buy….unless they are able to compel me to join some kind of loyalty program.

Compel me to join your loyalty program and you know have permission to not only monitor my behavior, but my hope and encouragement that you will do something to actually use that data to build my loyalty.

I could go on for another two pages on what that means to both me and to the merchant, but suffice it to say that the benefits of loyalty should flow two ways.

I’m sure lot’s of you out there are members of the Best Buy program.   I would love feedback on the Rewards you are getting from being in this Zone.

I get paper based junk.  My reward for spending around $10,000.00 since joining the program…..and the most recent offer following the holiday season?

A Credit Card Offer!!

Man do I feel special.

This is a campaign, nothing more.  Marketing 1.0 just like the airlines.   Monetize your list, not build better relationships with your “special” customers.

Hey!  How about an email thanking me immediately after a purchase?  How about an email a week later making sure I was happy and not in need of some additional service, support or upsell item…I’ll I’d be happy to pay for.   (I’ve got a giant hard drive I still can’t figure out how to use),  I needed a mounting bracket for a Flat Screen TV,  I would have loved to have been notified when Nacho Libre was available on DVD, and I would have loved to see how the many gift cards I bought this holiday are being used )

Too much to ask I guess.   

How do great brands become average?  How does leadership sink and innovators emerge?  I think we are witnessing it here.

Duct Tape Marketing

One of my favorite blogs is Duct Tape Marketing by John Jantsch.  The blog is a fantastic resource for Small businesses everywhere.  As you know i'm a firm advocate behind Marketing Democracy.   With today's tools, any business can be great marketers...without a big budget. 



John's got a new book coming out and I can't wait to read it.  They have a site set up for advanced orders that can be found here: 

http://www.ducttapemarketing.com/book.htm

I'm looking forward to my advanced copy for a review...but judging from John's body of work on the blog, this should be a winner.

Best Confirmation Emails

Again with the theme that great email marketing doesn't need to be hard, let's talk about confirmation emails.

I place an order.  Some system confirms my order and triggers an email. 

The problem is that these emails are normally complete wastes of opportunity. Typical of this genre is a simple text email with a link for tracking my order. 

What's normally missed is the opportunity to seal the relationship, to invite feedback or questions...and don't forget the opportunity to upsell. 

Transactional emails are going to be read!  Don't miss the opportuntiy.

I just ordered some new Tele Skiis from backcountry.com  (not a customer of ExactTarget, but I sure wish they were)   This is one of the best transactional emails I've ever recieved.  They even invite me to chat right from the email and offer some potential cross sell opportunity.  Seeing that I bought skiis, I'm not sure why they are offering me a link to Rossingnal, but I'll assume the have tested this...or perhaps Rossi paid for that spot.

Marketing Is Easy

Hat's off to Kurt Vetters.  Kurt is a very successful medical rep.  I don't know a ton about his business, but I guess he is an independent distributor for a specific kind of wound care supplies.  What I do know is that Kurt is proof that great marketing doesn't have to be expensive or hard.  What he does best is take advantage of simple & inexpensive web tools like a blog (check out the link), His ExactTarget email marketing software (seen below), and is now doing online product demos on YouTube.  Way to go Kurt!

Note the use of a survey at the bottom....

Great email marketing doesn't have to be hard.

Many thanks to all who voted for ExactTarget in the ClickZ awards

I just wanted to say thank you to all who supported ExactTarget in the recent ClickZ awards.  ExactTarget was voted by their readers as best ASP Email Software.  I'm not crazy about the term ASP (Best On Demand Email Software or Best SaaS Email software is probably more appropriate) but I'm not complaining :-)

This award really tops off a fantastic year for ExactTarget. 

Salesforce.com Appy award for Best Appexchange:

Deloitte Fast 500 #11 Fastest Growing Technology Company:


Forbes Best of the Web Blog:

Inc 500 Fastest Growing SaaS Company:

some redemption for the email survey experience

Ok..credit where credit is due.  Maybe I've been too hard on Sofitel.  I actually got an email back that reflected some of what I answered in the survey:

Now, I think this is great.  I replied back and I feel actually a pang of human relationship here. 

I'll end this by saying that there are still some great lessons here:

1. Why didn't the first email come from Eric?
2. Why can't I reply to the first email?
3. What is the incentive for someone to go through the survey in the first place?
4. The headers in this email show's obviously this was automated...no problem with that but you don't need to make it so obvious.

To me this is a great lesson.  What was that Jerry Macgure line:  "He's almost the man I want him to be."

Same here.   This is sooo close as to be painful.