I recently read a terrific article about one journalist’s experience with Linked In. I’ll boil down the point of the article to this: There’s no point in signing up to be a part of a social networking website if you’re not actually going to be “social.” He makes a good point. Some business networking sites offer numerous benefit that are, of course, only beneficial if you use them.
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In today’s hyperconnected world, companies have little control of the information that moves around the Internet about their organization. One way to improve brand perception is by taking control of customers’ conversations and by making it easy for customers to talk in a public forum about an organization’s products. In her book Beyond Buzz. The Next Generation of Word-of-Mouth Marketing, Lois Kelly reminds us that marketing’s primary purpose is to help people understand organizations and products in ways that are
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I'm not too impressed with what I hear and see from new AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson. First off, he places all his bets on a rebranding campaign to make Cingular go away and AT&T louder. This on the eve of introducing a potentially huge product, the iPhone. I don't know what the iPhone does yet. But I do know AT&T is not a draw for me. I would be a little more information and customer-centric in the approach to the
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Today’s time-pressed consumers want speed with their service. Consider the following:
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In most cases the last place employees who work weekdays want to be on Saturday is at a work-related function. Unless, of course, they work for a company whose culture creates employee loyalty and engagement -- the kind of engagement that spurs people, like Marty Peters of Detroit, to dedicate their life’s work as an employee (61 years, in Marty’s case). And spurs others, like Martin Joseph of New York, to give up their Saturday to volunteer at said company-hosted
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A colleague of mine recently told me that she read about some well-known fast food restaurants serving “secret” menu items where customers can order off the menu at restaurants like Jamba Juice and In-N-Out Burger. When I researched this concept, I found that the secret menu at In-N-Out Burger is not only an entry in Wikipedia, but it’s also displayed on the company’s Web site. “The secret Menu: urban myth, or just plain excellent customer service,” the site reads.
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In case you missed it, direct marketing service firm InfoUSA was excoriated on the front page of The New York Times on Sunday. The story detailed how InfoUSA customer data was twisted into customer segments such as "Elderly Opportunity Seekers," "Suffering Seniors," or "Oldies But Goodies." As it turned out the story was based on an investigation that was three years old, and closed. InfoUSA posted a detailed and effective rebuttal on its website. In short, InfoUSA was victimized here.
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In today's issue of 1to1 Weekly, we discuss the strategy behind American Airlines' new Web site aimed at women. The company has also developed Web sites for the gay and hispanic communities. The idea is that the information is the same as on the standard American Airlines Web site, but the presentation makes all the difference to become more relevant and useful to customer groups. It's also interesting to note that differentiation online is a relatively new phenomenon.
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Yesterday one of my colleagues and I were commiserating with each other about our daughters high expectations. Interestingly, both girls – although different ages (one is nine, the other is 18) – share a common attitude: When they’re “busy,” they’re not so interested in switching gears to have a conversation with us. But, when they want to spend time with us, they expect us to drop everything at that very instant and do their bidding (hang out, give them a
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One of my expectations—and hopefully yours too—is that CRM technology vendors practice what they preach, strategy-wise. Sure, they have cool CRM tools, but have they crafted a smart customer strategy, and are they using their applications to support it? They should be, and customers should expect it. I mean, hey, would you want your car repaired by a mechanic who doesn’t drive?
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Last week, JetBlue’s board of directors replaced its founder and CEO David Neeleman with the company’s COO David Barger. The impassioned leader whose name is synonymous with the airline he started nine years ago, built an emotionally connected airline with a laser focus on the customer. The change follows the February 14th disruption of JetBlue operations at Kennedy International Airport during a snow storm that left hundreds of passengers stranded for hours on airplanes sitting on tarmacs. But customers' appreciation
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It's called "blogola." It's the practice of rewarding the right blogger at the right time for saying the right things about your product. According to a WSJ article today, it is the hot influence tactic at several TV networks. If you ask me it is the anti-customer strategy and the best way I've ever heard to stick an incendiary device into the whole concept of blogging. The beauty of blogs, from a customer strategy standpoint, is its unfiltered glimpse into
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In an upcoming issue of 1to1 magazine we’re going to hold a microscope over the DNA of the customer-centric organization and dissect its leadership components. Through our various newsletter and magazine articles, we’ve seen some of these in action, like the ability to think strategically to build a win-win for company and customer, create consensus, and connect customer-focused metrics to hard-dollar metrics. We’ll be looking further into these and other areas. We’ll go out into the market and research what
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Earlier this week I received an email newsletter from SubscriberMail about email marketing best practices. The fun thing about it was that, in honor of Mother’s Day this weekend, the column was titled, “Email Marketing Advice From Mom,” and suggested that “marketers would be wise to apply some of mom's lessons to their email marketing efforts.” Here’s a digest version of SubscriberMail's, er, “mom’s” 8 lessons:
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In last week’s blog Got Brand Strategy, Tom West commented that companies can no longer force a brand on the marketplace—that they have to believe in their brands first. In another post, Graham Hill mentioned that in the old way of marketing, communications created brands. Experiences do create brands, but marketers still must figure out how to leverage those rich social experiences on the Interent and build effective communications strategies around their findings. In an interview this month in The
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If Microsoft does buy Yahoo!, which has been rumored, it will do so by overpaying on a scale matched only by the Yankees and Roger Clemens. For Microsoft, it's a big deal because it will acquire what it could not build on its own, which is a scalable search business. But from the customer point of view it doesn't mean much. If you're a BtoB customer that buys search keywords, Google will still own your budget. If you're an average
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In my experience at 1to1 Media, when the words branding and customer centricity come up, they're usually on opposite sides of customer strategy. Branding is meant to build general awareness, while customer-centricity, when done right, focuses on the needs of customer groups or individuals. At the recent Forrester Marketing Forum, however, three companies representing three different industries talked about tying the two themes together. Is it just talk, or can it happen?
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A couple of weeks ago I rented a few (OK, well, five) movies from Blockbuster for a weekend movie marathon with my daughter (complete with popcorn, Coke, and Twizzlers, of course). They were all due the following week. Two days before the due date I received an automated call with a reminder to return the movies by that Thursday to avoid any charges. Wow. Blockbuster took proactive action to save me money – at the expense of the company adding
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Last week I attended a gala printing plant opening, complete with a plant tour, wine tasting (that included customized bottles of wine for each attendee, of course…), hors d’oeuvres, and two speakers. The host company, GDS, is among those trying to spread the gospel of using variable data printing to create more relevant, personal, one-to-one marketing communications. So GDS invited me to speak on trends in custom communications, and Tom Glick, CMO of the NBA’s New Jersey Nets, to speak
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As Dick Martin says in his book Rebuilding Brand America, “Any cowboy with a hot iron can create a brand.” Martin refers to a time when brands started as a signal of ownership. But today, successful branding is tied to emotional values. Brand, Martin says “has to be easy to understand and flexible enough to modulate in a wide variety of interactions with a large number of different audiences. Most important, it can’t simply be something you stick at the
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If I ran a public company it would be deliciously tempting to chase the richest Wall Street market in history. In fact, you could argue that the CEO that doesn't chase this market isn't serving shareholders or the Board of Directors very well. But that temptation needs to be tempered by customer-centricity. Shareholders are people who stand to get rich from your company's share price. Customers are the people who will provide the value that pours the concrete for the
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