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Category Archives: Telemarketing

Your Marketing 101 Guide by the Numbers…

20 Tuesday Aug 2019

Posted by Malcolm Auld in Advertising, B2B Marketing, Branding, Content Marketing, Digital marketing, Direct Marketing, Email marketing, Marketing, Marketing Automation, Media, Mobile marketing, Remarketing, Sales, Sales Promotion, Social Media, social selling, Telemarketing, Viral marketing

≈ 12 Comments

Tags

advertising, B2B Marketing, branding, catalogue marketing, contact strategy, content marketing, data-driven marketing, digital marketing, marketing, selling, social selling

Hello again. I’m currently writing a book on B2B marketing – adapted from my training courses. The B2B category has a lot of executives in marketing roles who have no prior marketing qualifications. They have sales, product or technical backgrounds. Some even call themselves social sellers.

So, I’ve put together a little “Marketing 101 Guide by the Numbers”. Keep these in mind when planning your marketing executions, as they’ll keep you focused.

The three goals of your marketing communications – and there are only three…

  • Acquire new customers
  • Get customers to spend more money with you more often
  • Get customers to keep spending with you for as long as possible.

If your marketing communications are not helping you achieve one or more of these goals, you’re probably wasting your money, regardless of the media channels or vanity metrics you use.

The two ways of marketing – and there are only two…

  • Mass marketing
  • Direct marketing

Mass Marketing – you communicate with as many consumers* as possible for the lowest media cost, to position your brand in the mind of the consumer, so they consider it when they are in the market to buy – online or offline. Generally used in broadcast, print, outdoor and some online channels.

Direct Marketing – any marketing communication delivered directly to individual consumers* or to which they respond directly to you. All responses are measured and there is always an exchange of either data or dollars – online or offline. Generally used in broadcast, mail, email, telephone, print, events, social, search, mobile and online channels.

*Consumers is generic for both prospects and customers

The two reasons people use the internet – and there are only two…

  • To save time
  • To waste time

That’s it. You need to design your website, landing page, email, social channels, apps etc to make it easy for your customers and prospects to either save time, or to waste time, depending upon their reason for visiting.

Saving or wasting time?

There’s no such thing as a customer journey – just two contact strategies…

People don’t go on customer journeys. This is a marketing buzzword designed to make the user sound sophisticated – it’s complete bollocks. There are only two contact strategies to use, and they’re linked to the most relevant touchpoints. After all, a prospect isn’t a customer until they buy something:

  • Prospect contact strategy – to generate new customers
  • Customer contact strategy – to keep profitable customers and generate referrals

Marketers determine the most appropriate touchpoints to reach prospects and customers, then communicate as necessary in the most effective channels for those touchpoints. These touchpoints can be mapped for easier visual interpretation.

For example, a prospect may identify themselves by responding to an advertisement by telephone, downloading a white paper from a website, or at a trade show. This is the beginning of the prospect contact strategy designed to get them to either request a presentation (if required), to trial the product/service, or to buy. This can involve lots of channels, some of which can be automated.

Once the prospect becomes a customer, they join the customer contact strategy. This involves communicating with personal messages designed to create a positive customer experience, encourage loyalty, obtain referrals and generate further sales.

The customer contact strategy can also be divided into two separate executions. One execution is linked to the date the product or service is bought and includes messaging around warranty, service, renewal, upgrade and the like.

The other execution is linked to time of year and includes messaging such as monthly newsletter, seasonal offers, event invitations and more.

Obviously, the customer contact strategy uses more personal media channels including; face-to-face meetings, mail, telephone, email and social channels. And all the while, there is the 24/7 continual flow of marketing content on blogs, websites and social channels, as well as advertising.

People DON’T go on customer journeys…

The numbers that matter when budgeting…

There are a few key numbers to understand when budgeting your marketing activity:

  • Lifetime value – how much revenue you customer is worth over their lifetime of buying from you
  • Cost per lead – how much you can afford to spend to generate a qualified lead
  • Cost per sale – how much you can afford to spend to generate a sale
  • The advertising allowable – what you can afford to spend to generate a sale at either break-even or a pre-determined profit percentage

When you know how much a customer is worth, you can determine how much to spend to generate a qualified lead and therefore how much you can afford to spend to get a sale – based on conversion rates. This helps you determine the most appropriate media channels to use, as they are defined by your advertising allowable.

Remember:

Marketing creates the need, while sales fulfills the need…

Your marketing activity helps to create the need for your brand by building desire for it and reinforcing your decision after you’ve bought. Your sales people use selling techniques to fulfil the need and complete the sale.

Your direct marketing activity can both create and fulfil your prospect’s needs in a single execution. It also integrates your marketing and sales teams to ensure they both work together successfully.

So now you know, what you need to know, about you know, that thing that everyone thinks they know – marketing…

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The most powerful word in marketing, it’s not a keyword, nor an AdWord…

08 Thursday Mar 2018

Posted by Malcolm Auld in Branding, Content Marketing, Copywriting, Digital, Digital marketing, Direct Marketing, Marketing, Sales Promotion, social selling, Telemarketing, Thought Leadership

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

copywriting, digital marketing, marketing

You’ll have probably noticed dear reader, the cancerous spread of fake marketers promoting their thought leadership, has resulted in an increase in the use of adjectives, particularly in headlines.

You see them everywhere. For example, you no longer need normal marketing tools, you need “killer” marketing tools. Or you can download “mind-blowing” secrets for your online success. Don’t you love how these aren’t just secrets, they’re mind-blowing secrets? How mind-blowing is it to sell something to someone who wants to buy it?

The problem with much of this digital dross, is that it rarely focuses on you, the customer – except the spurious claim about blowing your mind. The content is nearly always about the self-centred thought-leading internationally-published super-effluencing, fake marketer and their miracle secret sauce for digital success.

It’s never about you.

And “you” is the most powerful word you can use in your marketing messages.

The “You Rule“ is simple. Always use more of you, your, yours, you’re, you’ve than I, our, ours, us, we, we’re, we’ve, my and mine. People are only interested in one thing – themselves, so write from their point of view, not from yours.

There has always been some debate about whether “you” or “FREE‘ is more powerful.

When I was National Marketing Manager at TNT back in the dim dark 1980’s I ran a split-run test. I wanted to see which was the more powerful word for helping to generate a response.

This was the time in life when fancy digital calculators and branded business card holders, were all the rage as corporate gifts. I’m sure anthropologists in future centuries will just look at marketing incentives to determine a specific time in history. Digital calculators & Business Card Holders = 1980’s. iPods = 2000. USB sticks = 2005. iPads = 2010. Fidget spinners = 2015 and so on.

The test was in a direct mailpack, flogging the first-ever payroll software for desktop computers. It was in the heady days of disruption – when mainframe computers were being replaced by desktop computers. Sorry, that can’t be true – disruption was only invented by cyber hustlers and fake marketers in the last decade.

But I digress.

Heady days they were folks. The mailing had an insert. It promoted the incentive you would be given if you responded for a demonstration of this innovative and disruptive software.

The test was in the headline. We tested two different headlines, but kept the image and copy the same on both inserts.

Headline 1: FREE CALCULATOR

Headline 2: YOUR BONUS FOR TAKING THE INITIATIVE

My experience told me the first headline should get a better result. However, you guessed it, the second headline generated the higher response.

It addresses the reader and implies they’re smart. They’re taking an initiative, not just responding.

Then we combined the headlines for greater impact:

Headline: YOUR BONUS FOR TAKING THE INITIATIVE
Subhead: Complete the enclosed envelope and return it today for your FREE EXECUTIVE BUSINESS CARD HOLDER

I dug it out of the archives:

What an offer dear readers – how could you resist?

We then tested different headlines for some of the other divisions I was marketing. Here they are:

That’s the beauty of testing – you don’t have to decide, the market does it for you.

You have to love that, don’t you…

You think that’s too many you’s?

You’re right…

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Would you encourage your children to work in marketing? I doubt it…

20 Monday Mar 2017

Posted by Malcolm Auld in Advertising, Branding, Digital, Digital marketing, Email marketing, Marketing, Marketing Automation, Media, Social Media, social selling, Telemarketing

≈ 12 Comments

Tags

advertising, digital, digital marketing, email marketing, fake internet, marketing, social media

Some of you may have noticed I haven’t blogged for about three months. I decided to take time out to observe the industry through rose coloured glasses and find some positive examples of advertising to share – regardless of channel. I might as well have tried to climb Mt Everest naked. Sorry for that vision folks, but that’s how difficult the task has been.

Because when you stop for a moment and take a gander, the sight is really sad.

I’ve spent most of my life working in marketing in one way or another – as a business owner, running marketing departments, running agencies and educating executives and students. Never in my experience have I known the marketing industry to be so shonky, shoddy, dishonest, artificial, delusional, self-destructive and downright on the nose.

Why would anyone want their children to get a job in marketing? It’s become an embarrassment to say “I work in marketing”. You might as well say “have you met my parole officer?”

The growth in deplorables (to steal a recent popular word) is directly linked to the rise of the digital marketing industry and all the charlatans it has attracted. It seems they’re all drinking the same kool-aid and believing their “owned media” to use a digi-buzzword. Their mantra is one of the oldest on the planet “a sucker is born every minute” and it’s easy to chant when the suckers, sorry marketers, are hooked on FOMO and fashion.

Everywhere you turn there are examples. And it’s been getting worse every year. I produced this parody video in 2011 to promote an event, partly because like many, I couldn’t find any facts to support the outrageous claims about online usage by consumers.

Then this book was a best seller in 2012. I cannot find any similar publications claiming analogue channels to be so dishonest.

The first abuse of a marketing channel was the telephone and this was countered by government and industry with “do not call” registers. The problem with telemarketing was not so much dishonesty, rather it was the frequency of unsolicited calls into people’s homes.

The spiral to dishonesty started with email marketing. The scams, abuse of privacy, illegal use of email addresses, spreading of viruses and frequency of messaging, created so many problems that governments created anti-spam laws as well as data privacy legislation. Email continues to be abused, with most people now having a daily ritual of deleting unsolicited or irrelevant messages.

Here’s a quick snapshot of the marketing industry as we know it today…

The fake internet is growing so fast it will be one of the biggest online industries in less than a decade. Bob Hoffman, another lone but increasingly louder voice in the wilderness, has been very vocal about the fraud in the online advertising industry. In a number of articles, he has revealed that the percentage of clicks on online ads by robots, varies from 30% and up to 90%. Agencies have no way of telling how much “traffic” or “clicks” are by robots, as even the publishers themselves don’t really know. Yet marketers are charged for this fraud.

Then there is the “fake profile” industry. Software can now create social media accounts for anything connected to the internet. So your grandmother’s new fridge, or your sound system running from an app, will be hacked and a profile created using the device’s unique IP address.

The fraudsters then buy fake followers, they cost as little as $2.00 for a thousand, and create a fake following. The “profile” then publishes fake content, either stolen, or created by slaves with no subject expertise, working in Eastern Europe, the subcontinent, or South America. Ad space is then sold on these “fake profile” sites to computerised advertising networks. Marketer’s ads then appear on the sites, with the marketer being none the wiser.

As the system is fully computerised and rarely has a human eye to analyse it, the ability to scam the programmatic ad networks to create fake sites and earn automatic “fake revenue” is huge.

But the digital marketing industry seems uninterested in addressing the issue. One of the drivers behind this lack of interest is that very few marketers care. They never look at their digital analytics. It’s more important to be seen to be “digital” and mediocre, than to be using digital channels profitably. An Australian report suggested more than 60% of senior marketers didn’t bother looking at or using the analytical data their digital marketing generated. So they have no idea what works or what fails.

Media companies have now admitted they have been falsely charging for online advertising and are returning $millions to clients, rather than face messy legal action. Dentsu was the first to raise its guilty hand.

I have one client about to go to court with its global media agency because the agency refuses to use the client’s programmatic advertising account. The reason is simple. The moment the client gets access to the account they will discover how much they have been ripped-off over the terms of the contract to date. It seems the agency is hiding behind a clause in the contract that says bookings must be on its account. The media agency would rather lose the client’s business across the globe than be found guilty of fraud.

Facebook admits it has overstated video viewing by as much as 80%.

Sir Martin Sorrell has called out Google for unwittingly allowing advertisers to subsidise extremist terrorist sites with their advertising.

Proctor & Gamble, the largest media advertiser in the world is threatening to stop advertising online unless the industry starts to act honestly and ditches its self-interest. P&G has already reduced its Facebook spend because it resulted in an appalling loss of revenue and market share.

While French media agency Havas has followed suit and pulled all advertising from Google and the YouTube platform until they “deliver the standards we and our clients expect”.

An active Twitter user is someone who accesses their account once a month – and there are more inactive accounts than active ones. #whybotherwithtwitter

FYI Google, YouTube, Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn remain the major publishers that continue to refuse independent auditing of their platforms. Whereas all the major analogue publishers have always participated in independent auditing as part of providing a legitimate service to advertisers.

How did it get so bad? I suspect that one reason is the fact so many people claiming to be digital marketers know nothing about marketing and just a little bit about binary coding. They have no respect for marketing, dismissing it as “just part of the process” for anyone who can use a keyboard. Or they’ve read a definitive guide and so have become a definitive expert.

I was in a meeting with a digital marketing manager who stated with authority; “a brand is just the logo taken to the next level“. But he did it with such conviction the juniors in the room took notes – I just shook my head and asked for more coffee, as it was the only drug available.

Creative thinking is not valued. Instead, you just need to Google “world’s best example of…” and then copy the ideas for your client or your brand. The result of following the “God called Google” has been a devaluing of creative talent.

And while BIG DATA is the latest trend, most marketers and their media agencies don’t analyse data. They don’t know what works and what doesn’t. They talk about data and even produce spreadsheets, but they don’t study the data to gain knowledge. Instead, they worship at the social altar of “likes” and “followers” and some nebulous term called “engagement”.

The digital channels allow you to predict the future, so you can make more money, or earn the same amount for a lower spend. They put more knowledge in the palm of marketer’s hands than any other channel. Yet nobody seems to care.

Though here’s what some major advertisers say about social channels after analysing them:

Unilever has said its social media results are about 50% as good as traditional POS advertising and other retail promotions. While Coca Cola ran its usual metrics through its social media and saw no difference in sales as a result of social content. Westfield shopping centres stopped social media advertising, as results and research revealed its customers preferred printed catalogues.

As Bob Hoffman published recently: in a study by the American Marketing Association, Deloitte and Duke University, more than 88% of marketers surveyed said they could find no measurable impact from social media marketing. While Forrester Research reported that only 0.07% of one major brand’s Facebook followers ever engage with one of its posts.

It can probably be best summed up by Coca Cola’s Head of Global Marketing, Marcos de Quinto who said; “Social media is the strategy for those who don’t have a… digital strategy.”

Yet in a recent industry debate with Mark Ritson about social media, Adam Ferrier, one of Australia’s brightest advertising talents, said “…These other two businesses – Uber and Airbnb – would not exist without social media.” I can only assume he said it because he was forced to support his side of the debate, as nothing could be further from the truth.

Uber has mainly used traditional public relations in mainstream media, plus social media to create awareness. Though as revealed here, Uber’s secret new business tool is good old-fashioned print. While Airbnb is a major user of TV advertising, email, network marketing, print and most recently talk-back radio targeting pensioners. The radio ads use pensioners to encourage other pensioners to top up their pensions by becoming an Airbnb host – strangely it says nothing about tax implications? Just as Airbnb pays no tax in our country.

So Uber and Airbnb cannot exist without analogue channels. Social channels are just a sideshow in the scheme of things.

Rumour has it, Unilever is removing the term “digital” from all marketing job titles, as they’ve finally woken up to the fact the job functions are about marketing, not about channels. After all, nobody ever called themselves a “Male Urinal Advertising Manager” just because they placed ads in the specialist channel of troughs in public and commercial toilets used by men. If you’re female and confused, ask a male colleague.

Smart marketers are realising that just sticking solely with digital marketing channels is more often than not, a mistake. For the best results, you need to promote across numerous proven channels, and run tests to determine the best ROI – just as marketers did prior to the internet.

Have to go now and prepare to teach young university marketing students. Might recommend they look for an internship at Long Bay Correctional Centre if they want a successful career…

 

Let’s connect https://www.linkedin.com/in/malcolmauld/

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Does Marketo believe all marketers are idiots…

02 Tuesday Feb 2016

Posted by Malcolm Auld in B2B Marketing, Content Marketing, Copywriting, Digital marketing, Direct Marketing, Email marketing, Marketing, Marketing Automation, Social Media, Telemarketing

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

B2B Marketing, content marketing, copywriting, Dave Chaffey, digital marketing, direct marketing, email marketing, marketing automation, Marketo, telemarketing

Some of you may have seen this subject line recently. It’s a Newsflash so it must be important:

Capture 5

It’s from Marketo and it’s close to being the most insulting subject line ever written about marketers. Either that or it reveals the Marketo team is comprised of fools.

Hands-up all of you who thought email was dead or gravely ill for that matter? Who among you no longer uses email to communicate with customers, because you thought email was dead?

emaildead

Were you as relieved as I was to discover from Marketo that “email is not dead“? I suspect very few of you even believed the headline. It’s the equivalent of saying “the atmosphere still exists around planet Earth“. Of course it does and of course email is not dead – what fool would make such a claim?

cxg9kk

Here’s the supporting paragraph:

Marketers are spoilt for choice when it comes to digital marketing channels. Programmatic, social, mobile apps… the list goes on. Despite all the latest and greatest, tried-and-tested tactics still have their place in any marketing strategy this year: when it comes to true audience engagement, email is still king.

It’s true, marketers are spoiled for choice – and tried and tested tactics still have their place in any marketing strategy. And when it comes to true audience engagement (whatever that even means) nothing beats face-to-face selling, telephone, direct mail and then of course email – the science proved it years ago. So while email may not be king, it’s certainly close in the pecking order beneath the throne.

Curiously Marketo is addicted to email – it’s the primary way they communicate directly with subscribers. They certainly don’t call their subscribers on the phone – despite the obvious profits in doing so.

images

So let’s consider why they published such a headline.

Option 1 – They believe all marketers are idiots and stopped using email for marketing purposes. As you and I know dear reader, marketers have never stopped inundating inboxes with marketing messages and won’t stop any time soon, so it can’t be this option.

Option 2 – The Marketo team members are stupid, as they thought email was dead and they stopped using it for their marketing purposes, when every other brand in the world continued to use it. I don’t think they are stupid and they certainly haven’t stopped using email if my inbox is anything to go by, so it can’t be this option.

Option 3 – Maybe a junior with no experience wrote the headline? As you can tell, I’m grasping for explanations. There is no sensible reason for making such a nebulous claim – unless the Marketo marketing team is just plain lazy and decided to be sensationalist to sell their webinar? I’m leaning toward this option.

The problem with using a sensationalist headline, is it must be believable if it is to work – like the headline in this blog. And given most marketers, including Marketo’s team, don’t believe email is dead, this headline makes no sense whatsoever and insults even the most mediocre marketer.

If you are interested in catching up on the latest in email marketing then you may want to join the webinar. Dave Chaffey is well worth listening too – he’s a very smart marketer. Though I suggest he would have written a different headline. Here’s the link to the event – so my good friends at Marketo get a free plug:)

But the headline does reveal the number one truth of content marketing – any fool can type crap and sadly many fools do…

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Woolies CEO resigns, but sales are the least of their problems…

17 Wednesday Jun 2015

Posted by Malcolm Auld in Advertising, BIG DATA, Branding, Customer Service, Digital, Digital marketing, Direct Marketing, Marketing, Social Media, Telemarketing

≈ 12 Comments

Tags

advertising, B2B Marketing, branding, Coles, customer service, marketing, online marketing, social media, Woolies

Is it any wonder the Woolies head checkout operator is resigning? It was announced in the press today the CEO is falling on his sword after a deterioration in sales.

But the sales are the symptom, not the problem. You may have seen this article about a major data breach.

Apparently a human caused a computer to send an email to more than 1,000 customers – because computers don’t just send emails like this of their own accord. The problem from this simple error, is the email included an excel spread sheet with the names and email address of thousands of customers and a downloadable link to 7,941 vouchers, worth a total of $1,308,505.

If you read the article you’ll see how some customers had purchased their vouchers, but when they went to use them at the check-out, they had been cancelled by Woolworths, leaving the poor customers publicly humiliated and a tad upset.

Here’s what one customer said: “They took my money from my credit card and told me I was using stolen cards. I could not take the trolley of groceries home as I did not have enough money to pay. I tried to call Woolworths but no one picked up the phone. I have had a very very horrible day.”

To say this data breach is a disaster is an understatement. And it demonstrates how managing your small data – let alone your BIG DATA – can be very costly if you get it wrong.

It also reflects another problem of modern business. The attitude of big brands: it’s one of complete disrespect and disdain for customers. They refuse to provide humans to serve customers when those said customers require help. You’d think these brands would know a customer – those people who pay the salaries of the executives, like the CEO. Why don’t these companies get it?

customers

I was in Woolies, or was it Coles last week? I struggle to remember because they are identical in design, have the same soulless atmosphere and a complete lack of service.

I was trying to find a particular product, but couldn’t find any particular staff to help me. Like an explorer in uncharted territory, I searched aisle after aisle for someone who was obviously an employee, who could provide directions. I did find a bloke stacking bread, but he said he said he wasn’t an employee, he just put the bread on shelves. Obviously some sort of volunteer, slave, intern or work experience lad?

I tried the checkout but the queues were too clogged to attract attention. Eventually I found someone who suggested I try three quarters of the way down aisle 19 – supported by a “good luck mate” comment.

Play swap the logo

woolies 1

Woolies or Coles – they both look the same?

coles

Spot the customer service staff…

Just like real estate agents, you could swap the logos between the Woolies and Coles stores and you wouldn’t notice a difference.

The data disaster was followed closely by the Woolies Website Wreck

You can read about it here. Unlike the majority of humans, marketers get excited about marketing – which is understandable but rarely fruitful. The language gives it away. Woolies spent money telling the public how excited they were about a new website. Life must be dull in grocery land if that’s what floats your boat.

woolies FB

The problem for Woolies was the lack of response to the feedback provided by customers – despite encouraging it.

woolies FB 2

The best they could manage was to reply with a social media post:

Woolies FB 3

Worse still was the comment to the media:

“Woolworths online serves thousands of customers every day. We have been making changes to our site and gradually rolling them out across the country… these changes also mean customers pay exactly the same price in store as they do online.”

This demonstrates a complete disconnect with their customers. The problem Woolies caused, had nothing to do with cost of goods. It had everything to do with the cost of convenience – the website wasn’t working, so any convenience gained from shopping online was lost. Bugger the price of beans.

You know you’re scraping the bottom of the customer service barrel when you rely on social media for customer relations. But it’s not surprising that senior executives have been duped to rely on social media – they offer nothing else.

So many companies force you to DIY problem solve, by searching and hunting on appallingly designed websites (where ‘contact us’ is almost hidden from view). The only way you can solve a problem is submit an email form and hope you hear back in a few days.

customer service

You can never find a telephone number to contact companies at any time of day. These companies want you to do business with them 7 days a week, either in retail stores or via websites, but they don’t want to provide customer service. Or if they do provide telephone support, you have to talk to a computer, press buttons, go around in circuitous loops and eventually get put on hold for ages listening to advertisements.

So those who can be bothered start trolling on social media and marketers mistakenly believe that’s where they need to be focusing. I’ve owned a supermarket – not the size of Woolies or Coles – but the principles for serving your customers do not involve remote random social media posts.

'Your call is important to us...but not important encough for us to hire additional staff to talk to you.'

Maybe Woolies and Coles should just merge and become Coolies? It’s a rude and disparaging term for cheap labour. But given both stores are too cheap to provide labour to serve customers, neither give you a discount for self-serve checkout and all their ads brag about how cheap they are, it seems quite appropriate.

Gotta go – need to do the week’s grocery shopping. Online or in-store? I think I’ll support small business…

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Two marketers walk into a bar and tell conference call jokes…

01 Friday Aug 2014

Posted by Malcolm Auld in Customer Service, Telemarketing

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

conference calls, customer service, meetings, telemarketing

We’ve all sat in them – conference calls. They can be the most non-productive meetings ever conducted. Attendees spend their time doing everything but focus on the call – stare at their phone screens, do their emails, chat to others, read stuff, dose off and more.

This video – a conference call in real life – gets it spot on.

Avagoodweegend…

Dilbert-Conferencecall_000

60-6004-5XDB100Z

'Nobody?! Well, since we're all stuck in traffic, we may as well do this by conference call.'

phd080206s

MjAxMi1iNzM4OGFkODEzZWNiZTAw_52432bd252f40

images

index 1

'It's not easy to eat breakfast, text, conduct a conference call and drive at the same time...but I did it!'

1af93ce62a3ec97a5d70ec028b9fc7d4a661b42cb5c11ec9bf77bbe1b54f5024

butt

 

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The mailings that caused building evacuations, again…

30 Friday May 2014

Posted by Malcolm Auld in B2B Marketing, Branding, Direct Marketing, Marketing, Telemarketing

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

B2B Marketing, branding, direct marketing, marketing

Part 1

Earlier this week a PR stunt for a new video game resulted in the Bomb Squad being called to Ninemsn’s offices. Apparently a black safe was delivered anonymously to the publisher’s office accompanied by a “suspicious” letter which told a reporter to “check your voice mail”.

But the reporter didn’t have voice mail. The staff entered a pin code supplied with the safe, but it started to beep and did not open, so they thought it was an explosive device. You can picture the rest – or read about it here.

In 1982 we caused a similar problem in the security industry. I was National Marketing Manager for a number of TNT companies – one being TNT Security Guards. The (legitimate) security industry was union-dominated with high labour costs and the only difference between the different brand of security guards was the uniforms they wore. The pain of change was enormous and given the tight margins, the cost savings weren’t that big, so convincing prospects to change suppliers was not easy.

We decided the best way to demonstrate the strength of our security guards, was to demonstrate how useless the incumbent guards were. This turned out to be easier than we thought.

sleeping-guard-440px

We conducted what is now called an omni-channel campaign – telemarketing, followed by 2-step direct mail, followed by telemarketing and a face-to-face presentation.

Once we had qualified our prospects by telephone, our sales representatives hand-delivered to each company an anonymous black box about the size of a small chocolate box. The box was handed to the security guard at the front of the building with instructions to deliver it personally to the security decision-maker. The security decision-maker’s name and title were labelled on the outside of the box.

tn_TNT Security Guards Outer

The security guards dutifully obliged and delivered the boxes to the decision-makers. Upon receipt of the box, the decision-maker asked where it came from. The security guard was unable to answer, except to say that it had been delivered anonymously.

When the decision maker opened the box the message on the lid stated ‘Seeing is not necessarily believing’ and inside the box an optical illusion included the message ‘What you see isn’t necessarily what you get’. Reflecting the lack of security that let the box be delivered in the first place.

tn_TNT Seeing is not...

tn_TNT What you see...

The following day our sales representatives delivered a similar box following the same procedures, except this box had a different optical illusion with the message ‘Looking closely at the facts makes sense’.

tn_TNT Looking closely at the facts...

By the time the second box was delivered to some companies, all hell had broken loose. In a number of cases our representatives were frisked or held for questioning. Our competitors rang us to ask what we were up to, after they had tracked the number plates of one of our sales representative’s cars. Some offices had even been evacuated while the box was investigated for explosive devices.

But we had achieved our objective – proof that the security guards were not providing the service they were contracted to do. How else could an anonymous box arrive on the security decision-maker’s desk two days in a row?

The day after the second box was delivered we telephoned the security decision-makers for an appointment. Prior to this campaign we couldn’t get past the secretary. The follow-up calls resulted in a phenomenal 86 per cent appointment rate, for business worth millions of dollars. A hugely positive ROI.

Interestingly, about 14 years later my agency was asked to do some work for TNTGroup4. We conducted some informal telephone research and discovered there were still some people in the industry who were around when the above mailpack was delivered. Not only did they remember the mailpack, they also remembered that it came from TNT Security Guards — testimony to the power of direct marketing for building brands.

Since 9/11 the practice of delivering anonymous packages has all but disappeared – though as proven this week, the odd young marketer who hasn’t studied history will still make a naive mistake.

In Part 2 (my next post) I’ll share where a senior executive wanted to stick a laser gun as a result of direct mail gone wrong. It certainly wouldn’t have helped my posture…

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Teams don’t send emails, individuals do…

01 Thursday May 2014

Posted by Malcolm Auld in Branding, Customer Service, Direct Marketing, Email marketing, Marketing, Telemarketing

≈ 7 Comments

Tags

branding, customer service, direct marketing, email marketing, marketing, telemarketing

Have a nice day,
The Team at Big Brand

You’ve probably received one of those email messages? You know the ones.

They are delivered usually by auto-responder and the signature file claims the message has been sent to you by a team.

Picture it for a second. There’s the whole customer service team excitedly gathered around a single keyboard. All pointing one of their digits at the keyboard together, like one big connected finger, waiting in anticipation of pressing the send button.

The team leader starts the cheer: “On the count of 3, 2, 1…send” they hit send as one team, and then go back to their individual jobs.

"3, 2, 1... send"

“3, 2, 1… send”

Possible? Not Likely. Does anyone really believe a team sends an email to an individual?

I know they don’t, because I’ve tested it. Yes folks, I received a message from the team at a big brand in financial services.

So I immediately rang them. When I eventually connected to a human I asked to speak with the team.

The person was confused, “which team sir?” I explained the team that just sent me the email. I suggested she gather them around, as I had some questions I needed answering before I bought.

She became confused, “but I can’t connect you to a team…”. I replied “but the team just sent me a message and asked me to contact them if I had any questions, so here I am – go get the team for me please?”

Then she hung up, thinking I was some kind of nutter.

But I’d made my point. Email is a personal media – so treat it as such and write from one individual to another, not from a team to an individual. Unless of course you put each signature of all the individuals in the team, into the signature file of the message – which really only works with a small team.

And use more text than images in your message. Apart from the spam filter defaults that block messages dominated by images, most email systems also require the recipient to right-click to view images. And given humans are the laziest species on Earth, it’s all too hard, so we don’t click, we delete. See more email marketing tips here.

Curiously I received a letter this week from Telstra. The writer says “My team had recently tried to call you blah blah blah…”.

At first I was flattered – a whole team at Telstra tried to call little old me? How disappointing I’d missed the call.

But I hadn’t missed the call – it was never made. I’ll cover this in my next blog – the rise and rise of lying as the new benchmark for customer service.

Oh look I’ve just received an email. The “From Line” says it’s from “Telstra Team”.

I’m off to make a call:)

 

 

 

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Call-girl centre or call centre?

04 Wednesday Sep 2013

Posted by Malcolm Auld in B2B Marketing, Direct Marketing, Telemarketing

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Tags

B2B Marketing, direct marketing, telemarekting

What makes a good outbound telemarketer? It’s a question I’ve heard asked for years, with some fascinating answers.

One manager claimed outrageously that a person’s weight was a factor in their telemarketing skills.

telemarketer rebel

The smart people at Cellarmasters Wines found that actors were some of their best telemarketers. There were a number of reasons for this:

  • All actors have three words in front of their job description: “out of work” – so there were plenty available to work, who lived locally in the eastern suburbs of Sydney.
  • They preferred part-time work as they needed the flexibility to go to auditions at short notice.
  • They saw the job as an acting role and weren’t afraid of rejection, it was just part of the act, so to speak.
  • They felt they were benefiting from the job in two ways – it helped their acting skills and it put food on the table (along with wine I assume).

Quite some years ago, I opened my first telemarketing division, as part of a B2B sales lead process in our marketing team. One lady (let’s call her Liz) stood out above all others in terms of closing appointments. After Liz had been with us for about a year, a staff member suggested that Liz was working another job – as an escort at a well-known city brothel. I had no idea how this person knew this, but she swore it was true.

The brothel was one of those illegal ones that operated in full view of the public, because the Madame threatened to reveal her client list if it was shut down – and that would have been catastrophic for the government and certain businesses who had accounts at the establishment.

After some deliberation, I took Liz for a coffee and a chat. This was not an area in which I’d had any management training and couldn’t find anything in the “101 HR Manual” to assist me. So I just winged it.

Liz admitted she did have another job (her primary job) and in fact her employment with our company was her secondary job. I was a tad disappointed. But our job provided legitimacy for her to justify her income. And it was only 4 to 6 hours per day, 3 days a week.

She explained how she came to work as an escort, working only for diplomats and politicians – and only on call-out from the brothel. She’d never worked the streets, only the ‘premium’ end of the business. And she was married to one of her former clients.

Liz was not embarrassed about it and obviously made good money, because in the early 1980’s she drove a sports car with personalised number plates and a car phone – this was when the only people with car phones were the security services.

Liz said candidly, but with a grin; “Malcolm, I can talk the pants off anyone – it’s why I’m so good at telemarketing”. I wasn’t sure how to respond, so I just nodded like one of those toy dogs in the back of cars. It was one of the few times an “open-mouth expressionless gawk” served as the best management tool.

Liz worked with us for a few years. I have no idea where she is now – I suspect retired and probably in good financial shape.

These days it’s even harder to get telemarketing to work, regardless of the skills of the staff, because people hide behind technology. They use voicemail to filter calls and given that good manners are not part of management training any more, most people don’t bother returning unsolicited calls. The right-party hit rates are declining as telemarketers spend more time talking to machines than to humans.

People hide behind voicemail

People hide behind voicemail

Maybe this will change when every phone call is a video call – that will make for interesting recruitment policies.

Gotta run, there’s the phone. Or should I let it go to voicemail?

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