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 15th 2008
The majority of people who work from home, whether they be working for giant corporations or in one-man bands, work by themselves. On the one hand, that means they are extremely efficient — no interruptions, no joking during meetings, no office politicking around the coffee machine, or gossiping in the lunch break — but it also means that homeworkers can feel terribly alone and isolated.
`I found that working six hours a day at home was worth more than eight in the office,’ says Emma Dally, now Publishing Director for The National Magazine Company. ‘There are so few interruptions that you are able to work very intensively.’ 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
A number of different providers can help you solve your email customer communications and marketing needs.
Over the past few years a new breed of company has grown up to meet the demand for complete solutions to companies‘ email marketing needs. Providers offer a wide variety of marketing services, technical capabilities, and focus. The services these companies (the three leading players are Post Communications, Message Media, and Digital Impact) provide range from customized email marketing programs and high-volume email delivery to one-off direct email campaign execution. Naturally, prices vary considerably. Most still charge based on the old direct marketing model of cost per email sent, while others have introduced new pricing models that are based on managing the customer database and optimizing the value of the client’s customer relationships. What they have in common is that they allow you to out- source all—or at least a large part—of your email marketing solution. Continue Reading »
March 20th 2008
‘It is better to be a mouse in a cat’s mouth than a man in a lawyer’s hands.’
The point made in the preceding paragraph is so important that I will reiterate it: closing the sale is often not closing the sale at all; it’s just the beginning of many such interactions. Continue Reading »
March 19th 2008
This is a brilliant promotion in itself. Whereas unhappy clients never stop telling other people how badly they were treated, happy clients barely murmur, unless it is an amazing case of ‘And they even…!’ If you are going to be talked about, let it be in the latter way.
You can do simple things, too, such as taking care of people’s parcels as a kind gesture and security measure. In New York you have to hand in any bag bigger than a small handbag and, even though it is an anti-theft measure, it allows you to shop hands- free.
Recently, in a well-respected department store, I tried to check in my overnight bag and was advised quite firmly that it was against security regulations. I could not carry the bag and shop at the same time, so I left. In this case ‘they even’ made it seem a criminal offence for me to have asked! I just do not feel like going back, despite having shopped there for many years. Continue Reading »
February 9th 2008
So far, we have talked about projects that may take as little time to complete as a week or as much as several years. When a client replaces its computer systems or sets up a business-to-business exchange, the involvement, though lengthy, is finite with a specific beginning and end.
Here we focus on providing ongoing coaching and value- adding services to collaborators for as long as they are needed or wanted. The market leaders that excel at offering them stand out as much for their insight and knowledge as for their clear understanding of customers‘ specific and evolving needs. At the root of their success is the capacity to form genuinely respectful, trusting, close relationships with their clients. Not unlike the relationships that doctors, clerics, lawyers, and other confidants form with their patients and clients, these suppliers get to know and understand their customers, hence are far more able to guide and advise them on myriad circumstances. Continue Reading »
February 9th 2008
Market strategy number two is a logical outgrowth of the concept of core competencies, which is the idea that, in a world where specialists increasingly outperform generalists, a business should focus on what it does best and what is essential to its success. All other tasks should be farmed out to people who perform them better. Consistent with that credo, more companies are having components assembled by someone else, as well as delegating chores that include payroll, bookkeeping, manufacturing, even research and development, to specialists who have the scale of operations to perform them efficiently. Allocating as much of what you aren’t good at to someone who is better will free your own time and capital to devote to myriad other tasks. Continue Reading »
February 8th 2008
Our leadership roles in experience strategy have spanned the “new economy” boom and the “next economy” bust. In addition to specific constraints and opportunities unique to every organization, market conditions greatly affect the politics of usability. During the boom, many traditional companies and web startups hurried to get in on the action. Being ‘first to market” led to a rush to launch and became a mantra for e-business leaders and their venture capital founders. Working in “Internet Time’ meant that anything that could slow launch was often suspect. In some cases; that made attention to customer experience prone to be chopped, despite a few loud voices about the perils of ignoring customer experience Continue Reading »
February 7th 2008
The third delegation strategy involves more than the second. What we have been talking about so far is the deep delegation strategy, that is, off-loading a specific process or activity onto someone that specializes in that task. There is also a broad strategy, in which a customer contracts out entire business operations. As in the previous approach, the suppliers’ expertise and scale advantages motivate clients to delegate. What distinguishes this strategy is that it places a high premium on the supplier’s orchestration skills. The broader the scope and the more critical the nature of the work, the more customers have to trust that the supplier excels in coordinating and juxtaposing various pieces of the puzzle to form a solution and keep it running smoothly.
Responding to this demand, General Electric Power Systems, which builds turnkey power plants for thousands of customers around the world, will even run its customers‘ plants for them. For the company in need of a power plant, GEPS will take care of everything. In this case, all the delegators have to do is determine the spread between what they plan to charge and what they are willing to pay. Continue Reading »
