Fly on the E-Commerce Cyberwall

The Problem With Personalization
Have you noticed lately? Personalization is everywhere.

Yet that personalization seems more IMpersonal than ever.

You get an email that displays your name in the subject line. You open it and find your name sprinkled repeatedly throughout the text, as if the writer had written the entire thing specifically to you.

You know, though, that they didn't. You know they inserted a little snippet of code at those places where your name appears. You know that that code had pulled your name from the company's database and inserted it for greater personalization.

And, if you're like me, you feel a little manipulated to know all that.

I found someone else today who feels the same way and has some interesting insights on personalization done manipulatively. He suggests what marketers can do to go beyond thinking of personalization as just slapping people's names all over their emails and, instead, to give people a personalized experience that they actually appreciate.

Enjoy!
Jeff

Labels: customer service, email marketing, persuasion

Lemmings vs Common Sense
Did you get a lot of "bad news" last week?

It seems that Internet marketing mastermind Frank Kern reopened his membership site for about a half hour a week ago and new members have been falling all over themselves using the techniques he suggests.

Most of them, though, missed the entire point.

One of Kern's key points to his marketing is that people are more likely to open an email if the subject line gives them cause to worry than if offers them the world on a platter.

The principle is true. People act more urgently if they fear that they will lose something than if they have an opportunity to receive something of value. It's part of human nature.

So what happened last week is that scores of new Frank Kern disciples went out and blithely sent emails to their lists with the title "Bad News" (copied directly from a case study that Kern did).

So other than a lack of creativity, what's wrong with that?

Here's what.

The vast majority of these new Kernites sent emails that had absolutely nothing in them that even vaguely connected to the subject line.

The only bad news in them was that the recipients who opened them were deceived by marketers who believed that simply writing the subject line "Bad News" would magically transform their sales emails into incredible winners. Think it increased those marketers' sales?

I think it's more likely that those lemming-like marketers instead experienced record unsubscribe rates on those emails.

This whole fiasco is a good reminder, though, of an important fact. Just because something works well in a specific situation in connection with other campaign elements that are painstakingly matched to work in concert with that one thing, doesn't mean it will automatically work just as well in any situation.

There are no magic wands, people.

With any strategy, tactic, or tip you learn, it's essential that you take it apart and understand WHY it works and not just plunk it in and expect it to work magic for you.

The magic is in understanding thoroughly how your customers think and matching your message to their needs.

No strategy does that all on its own.

No tactic does that all on its own.

No tip does that all on its own.

Relying on a tool to work magic in any situation is like hearing that a hammer is a good tool and therefore expecting that it will be the right tool to use to install a piece of glass.

Understand why a tool works and exactly what it's good for before you try to plug it in.

And even more importantly, understand what your customers want and need. Then you can pick out the right tool for the job.
Jeff

Labels: email marketing, successful business

Labels: aWeber, building relationships, email marketing

Building Relationships with an Email Newsletter
One obstacle many businesses encounter when they consider ongoing contact with their potential customers is the feeling that their business isn't of sufficient interest to customers for them to want to receive communication from them on an ongoing basis.

That thought comes from the mistaken idea that if your business is about water purifiers, every newsletter must speak about technical specifications of water purifiers. That's not the case, though. The focus on any newsletter is not to sell your product, but to build relationships with your potential customers.

In other words, you're not trying to get one sale from each person now; you're trying to nurture an army of loyal repeat customers who will buy from you again and again.

As such, instead of focusing on technical specifications of your product, you want to focus on the needs and concerns of those whose needs and concerns position them potentially to use your products.

A good example of building a newsletter around the needs and concerns of your potential customers can be seen in an analysis done in aWeber's blog of a travel planning site.
Enjoy!
Jeff

Labels: aWeber, building relationships, case studies, email marketing