Do Business Well

Master your Product

There is no doubt that great persuaders know their product, service, or business. I have found that great persuaders use their own product or service. Through this use, they have experienced what their audience will experience. You must know every possible thing about your industry. Nothing is going to surprise a great per- suader. They are up to speed on the economy, the industry, the company, and the competition. Continue Reading »

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When you hear the words “television commercial,” what comes to mind? A slick, high-budget produc‑tion for a luxury product? Celebrities touting a soft drink or fast food restaurant? Back-to-back special digital effects that scream high-tech? Computer animation or morphing?

You’ve probably seen these techniques used at one time or other. But techniques are all they are—different visual formats for displaying the product. They are not substitutes for ideas. Effective television advertising, like any other media form, relies on fresh concepts that persuade the consumer to buy. Continue Reading »

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Most television, radio, VCR, and DVD player purchases are made today to replace or upgrade existing equipment. New flat screen and plasma TVs and DVD players represent the latest technological innovations drawing shoppers into the stores for new entertainment equipment. Nearly all (99 percent) of U.S. households own a color television, while 71 percent own two or more TVs. VCR and DVD player ownership is almost as high, with about 90 percent of households having a VCR or DVD player. Continue Reading »

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But everybody wants to grow, and you can’t blame them. So what should an Internet brand like Amazon.com do? There are five fundamental branding strategies for a leader in any category.

1. Keep your brand focused.

There are more than 5 million dotcom sites registered on the Internet, and you want your site to stand for more than one thing? Amazon.com should stay focused on books and music CDs. After all, the site accounts for just 4 percent of the $24.6 billion book market in the United States. Continue Reading »

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The biggest mistake of all is believing you can do anything.

Success in business doesn’t just show up on the bottom line of the profit-and-loss column; it also goes to the top. Success in business inflates the egos of top management.

Supremely successful companies believe they can do anything. They can launch any product into any market. They can make any merger work. It’s just a question of having the willpower and the resources to throw into the task. “What is it that we want to do?” is the question that management usually asks itself. Continue Reading »

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Every bank and lending institution will require a business plan before they commit themselves to lending you money. A business plan basically shows that you have established that there is a market for your product/service and that having established sufficient demand, you have a good estimate of what your costs will be, as well as your sales volume, cash-flow and likely profit (although the last is often optimistic). Continue Reading »

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External Activity

<CROSS-CHANNEL CONTACT HISTORY (MAIL, TELEPHONE), PENDING SUPPORT ISSUE, FIRST AND LAST SUPPORT CALL AND EMAIL, SUPPORT LOG/EVENT HISTORY, PRODUCT RETURN HISTORY …>

Data generated from your direct mail, telemarketing, customer support, and product return operations can be a critical part of measuring true customer value, cost to serve, and cost of customer contact and conversion. Linking this type of external data with your email marketing system will enable you to spot—and avoid— potential problems. Imagine, for example, that a customer has sent you an email complaining about a product defect. If customer service doesn’t let marketing know about the problem, marketing might send the already-angry customer an email offering the latest add-on to the product he or she is complaining about. Continue Reading »

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What kinds of things will trigger contact? In some instances you’ll plan and schedule your contacts far in advance (such as annual sales). Others times you’ll be responding to one of the following situations:

• Consumer requests contact. A customer might sign up to receive a personalized monthly newsletter or send an email asking about a new product you’re selling. When a new subscriber signs up for eHarlequin.com’s newsletter program, she immediately receives a welcome message confirming what she’s signed up for and ensuring that she will know how to modify her personal preferences if she should ever decide to change the content she wants to receive. When eBags receives an email inquiry from a customer, a skilled customer service professional looks up any relevant information and answers all My eBags membership, product, or order-related questions by email within 12 to 24 hours. An inbound email from a customer regarding an order the customer would like to return even triggers a series of follow-up emails that are automatically delivered within a few days of each other. These follow- up emails ensure that the customer’s product return is picked up, and that a replacement order is processed satisfactorily.

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Level of Marketing Service

On one end of the service continuum are the broadcasters who simply merge the text copy you give them with a list of names and blast it out. Some may also provide such basic services as canned response reports to track click-through information. At the other end of the spectrum are the full-service marketing consulting and service bureaus. These companies run their clients’ marketing functions in much the same way as traditional marketing and advertising agencies do. Here are the services to look for when choosing a marketing service provider. Continue Reading »

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Evaluate Professional Email Marketing Services Capabilities

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:

• An emphasis placed on professional services by the vendor (as opposed to your sudden realization that you need help implementing the vendor’s solution).
• Depth and breadth of services offered.
• Detailed domain experience that maps to the problem your are attempting to solve and products or technology you have chosen.

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