July 29th 2008
What is yet to be determined is how well the holding companies will grapple with the challenge of integration of their services. Over the years, they have bought up a wide variety of companies in different aspects of the marketing business, but there has not been a great deal of coordination among the various disciplines. Continue Reading »
July 6th 2008
Does your provider or product vendor have a professional services group or does it rely on your internal IT group or outside system integration services to install its product or integrate its technology platform? The quality of professional services groups varies widely and the vendor’s own team is often not the one best suited to implement your email marketing solution. When evaluating professional services organizations, look for the following:
July 5th 2008
Yet today most companies organize their inbound and outbound functions separately. To avoid this, the engaged organization must organize all its marketing, customer service, and support functions into one department. This way, customers visiting the company’s website or receiving email see a single company and a single brand.
There are two primary reasons why it makes sense to combine customer service support and marketing into one department. First, organizing different functions under the same department lets you align their goals and measures of success. When the goal is to build and nurture lasting relationships by engaging customers in an ongoing dialogue, it makes intuitive sense that the inbound and outbound parts of that dialogue come from the same place. Continue Reading »
March 19th 2008
The reality of good promotional activities is that they take time. You can’t just leap out of bed and decide to have an 80-per-cent off sale when you get to work. Planning four to six months inadvance is about right.
This way you can do a little each day and have your Mother’s Day promotion, for instance, run smoothly, with time to spare to fix up the bits you may forget, such as the window notices, ordering envelopes or mailing your best customers for a preview day.
If you do a little each day it does not break up your normal working day too much and adds another interest to your life. Why not use the Saatchi & Saatchi three-month cycle for promotional activities? You could plan to have four similar promotions for your client and prospect base each year. Your planning processes would become quite repetitive and therefore much easier to do. Continue Reading »
March 18th 2008
‘Life is what happens while you are busy making other plans.’
Why use a contract? Because you want to get paid! There is no point in getting into a relationship where money is involved and then finding you have done all the work for no money or no proof that the money is being owed. This is especially important if you work as an agent and commission is owed — which could be conveniently forgotten if you don’t get it down on paper.
While the prospect has identified a need for your product or service and you have made a relevant special offer, you may still find yourself without a signed contract. To make that contract materialise, think through again what you’ve done and what is left to do. Continue Reading »
