February 2013
1 post
RT @WSJ: Breaking: An 8.0 magnitude quake struck off Santa Cruz Islands, triggering a tsunami warning for islands in the Paci… http://wsj.com
January 2013
3 posts
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December 2012
2 posts
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July 2012
2 posts
2 tags
Harnessing Social Data? →
I’m actually making a argument to throw out the data you harness, because you are sounding mechanical, like someone who, obviously, gathers data. Talk to your customers and potential customers. Advertising has to constantly fight to be effective, but conversations have been effective for millenniums.
3 tags
A Twitter-Free Twitter?? →
It seems almost inconceivable, but could Twitter have actually jumped the shark? The social service that has captured the attention of both the very private and the very public has apparently cut ties with third-party developers. A dangerous move. But not totally unexpected, as Twitter has a history of angering the community it helps connect, like it did when it acquired Tweetdeck and seemed to...
June 2012
6 posts
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“Have you ever tried to ___________? If so, you’ll know that it’s...”
– - Hubspot blog http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/33295/The-Foolproof-Formula-for-Writing-a-Solid-Blog-Post-Template.aspx#ixzz1yNSOc0ty
I usually think a template is a bad idea because the results always seem so… templated… However, I acknowledge that writing every day is a LOT...
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USPS EDDM Telemarketer Call
I just got an odd call from a telemarketer calling on behalf of the U.S. Postal Service to let me know about their Every Door Daily Mail (EDDM) program. Here's how the call went (paraphrasing for length):
Telemarketer (TM): Are you the head of advertising? What is your first name?
Me: Yes I am*. My name is David.
TM: Hi I'm calling today on behalf of the USPS to see if you know about our free service, the EDDM?
Me: No, I don't know what that is.
TM: Oh, well if you could just go to gateway.usps.com and click New User Registration.
Me: This looks familiar. I think I've already registered before when I went to order Priority Mail envelopes for my company.
TM: Oh, well just go ahead and click the link and fill out the form and it will tell you if you are already registered.
Me: Ok, I'll fill out the form.
Me: The form said I'm already registered.
TM: Oh, ok. Well, now that you're logged in, do you have time to demo EDDM?
Me: Uh, sure.
TM: Ok, do you already do any direct marketing?
Me: Oh, yes of course.
TM: Oh, well do you typically mail in amount larger than 100?
Me: Uh, actually we usually mail 100,000 or more at a time...
TM: Oh, that's quite a few. Well, let's do the demo. Please click the link for Every Door Daily Mail.
Me: Ok, and it asks me to take a demo, so I clicked that. I got to a new page that asks me again if I want to take a demo, so I clicked that.
TM: Great! Now fill in your location.
Me: Uh, OK.
TM: Great! Now just uncheck boxes in the form below the map until you get under 5,000 names...
Me: Ok, now what?
TM: Great! Now you'll see the cost to do what we call a saturation mailing.
Me: I know what a saturation mailing is. This would be great if I were a painter or a plumber looking for local contacts, but my company markets nationally and internationally.
TM: Oh, I guess this wouldn't work for you, then. Well, have a nice day!
Come on, USPS! Yes, you have to work on new offers and the EDDM thing is probably a great tool for a small, local business. But then you hire a large call center, give them inaccurate or incomplete data, and pay them to call individuals and waste their time and your money on a product that does not help them. Your web portal is terrible, and you poorly train your callers. You are trying to SELL LISTS and you have a woefully and painfully obvious bad call list to market them. Is it any wonder at all that you're having financial trouble? Does anyone there think??
* Note: I am not really the head of marketing or advertising, that distinction belongs to another. But I've learned that if I tell a telemarketer I'm not, they repeatedly request that I blind transfer them to the head of my department. If I ask them what they want, they always refuse to tell me, or give me a very vague answer, and they take an attitude that I'm some junior staffer who can't understand what they're offering and is generally a waste of their time. I'll listen to any telemarketer and whatever they have to say because I respect the profession, but you can't just throw a bunch of untrained folks in a room with telephones and a CRM with incomplete and incorrect data and expect it to work. This happens a lot in scams; it saddens me to see the USPS doing this...
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“The Penguin’s philosophy is not as terrorizing as the sentiment of lost...”
– - Todd Bailey in The Philosophy of the Penguin and its Sense of Smell on SearchEngineGuide.com
I’m a sucker for philosophy stuff, and loved this article on SearchEngineGuide. It is along slightly similar lines as my blog post Is Google an Altruistic Company, and is also timely. The thing...
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“As for those not involved with these programs, but who are involved with the...”
– - Danny Sullivan in The Verge’s “Scamworld” Profiles “Internet Marketing” Schemes You Should Avoid.
I just got finished reading the latest post on The Salty Droid, responding to the ongoing clash between Jason Jones and Chris Brogan (Chris Brogan in Scamworld), but I didn’t want to quote that...
May 2012
10 posts
4 tags
“Marketing resilience is the art of growing and thriving in an unpredictable...”
– - MarketingResilience.com post.
I’m part of a unique generation of marketers that is growing and developing at a time of immense change in marketing mediums. In a way, that’s a real privilege I’m thankful for, but it’s also a time of confusion and frustration. Being...
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“we are building a product for humanity”
– -Bradley Horowitz quoted in an interview with The Verve editor Dieter Bohn.
Of course, Bradley is responding to the criticism of Google +, but in a way he’s revealing something fundamental about Google philosophy. Does Google believe it is in a quest to save the Internet and, by extension,...
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“The Edelman study shows that, due to the economic crisis, US citizens are...”
– from: Cynthia Boris on her Marketing Pilgrim article “Consumer Acceptance of Cause-Related Shopping is on the Rise”.
It’s a conundrum all right. But an unexpected solution seems to be arising: cause-related shopping. It’s not necessarily new… Many products have gone...
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New blog post on MarketingResilience about seeing... →
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“Ecommerce transactions now dominate the multichannel retail mergers and...”
– Ecommerce Transactions Dominate Mergers and Acquisitions
Read more: http://multichannelmerchant.com/ecommerce/ecommerce-mergers-acquisitions-0522jt9/#ixzz1vb52wI5V
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AdWeek: Industry Reacts to GM's Decision to Pull... →
GM’s announcement has obviously caused ripples, maybe more than it deserves. I like the different perspectives on the news on AdWeek.
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Why social business makes marketing better →
ibmsocialbiz:
One outcome of social business, which isn’t talked about much, is how it can enable better marketing — from creating content that matters and the creation of a cross- functional command center for real-time moitoring… to a collaborative analytics framework for consistent metrics. Another benefit: the creation of centers of excellence for management of communities and policies. Via...
