E-marketing Mama's "User-friendly Web World" blog

Can Podcasting Help Your Brand?

2012-01-08T07:43:00.001-07:00

Ever since my chat with Soundcloud founder, Alex Ljung, I've been thinking again about the value of podcasts as a way of marketing. You can get marketing value from podcasts in two ways:

By sponsoring a podcast that targets a similar audience to yours, and/or
By hosting your own podcast.

Many podcasts can be sponsored quite inexpensively. The big challenge, typically, is getting verified audience demographics. There are a few companies that specialize in this, such as Podtrack and Blubrry. I'm just starting to explore what they have to offer for you, and will report back soon.

The benefit, of course, is that podcast audiences are typically quite engaged with what they are listening to, so if the audience demographic matches yours, this can be a very effective place to advertise.

As to option 2, hosting your own podcast, that's a lot of work. For most small businesses and non-profits you are better off tapping in to someone else's podcast, as a guest and/or as a sponsor.

What can retailers learn from the holiday season just past?

2012-01-05T05:29:00.002-07:00

The sales leading up to Christmas are now long gone, but there are still some valuable lessons that can be learned from them. Software Advice, in this article, Five Strategies to Increase Holiday Retail Sales, by Michael Koploy, makes several good points which can be used at all times of year.

I was particularly intrigued by a campaign he mentioned by Uniform Advantage. They offered to give discounts on holiday shopping based on how many Facebook Likes they got, at a rate of 1% per thousand. If you wanted to buy their type of product, this would give you good incentive to Like them and to encourage your contacts to do so as well.

I just checked their page, and they are up to 8,830 likes. I don't know where they were at the beginning, but if they had just set up their site, that's pretty good.

Startup Interview Series: Soundcloud

2011-12-14T01:32:00.003-07:00

I discovered SoundCloud when trying to find a good place to upload the interviews I'd done with people during LeWeb'll. Turned out that my teenage kids were already quite familiar with it, and my music-buff son was pretty impressed that I've now met and interviewed its founder, Alex Ljung.

Alex is a really interesting guy. Unlike so many web-preneurs these days who are obsessed with video and music-sharing, he's convinced that "the record button will by the next QWERTY" and that audio will be bigger than video.

His well-structured argument notes that, because we can consume audio while doing other things (such as driving), we can consume about four times as much of it each day than we can of video or written text.

"To send a tweet you have to click 140 keys; to send an audio clip you just have to press the REC button," he notes.

As an avid podcast listener, I was delighted by his thesis, particularly his complaint that we are "missing the sound forest by staring just at the music trees."

I think you'll find this interview interesting. Here it is. (Be patient; sometimes it takes a few seconds for the audio bar to appear. I'll have to discuss that with Alex!)
Interview with SoundCloud founder, Alex Ljong by Tema Frank

Startup Interview Series: Beetmobile -- saving money on wifi

2011-12-13T05:32:00.010-07:00

I interviewed several start-ups while I was at LeWeb'll in Paris last week. I'll link to them here as I get a chance to.

Cool idea: Beetmobile aims to save you on the costs of accessing wifi away from home, but letting you share your wifi connection with others nearby.

Fatal Flaw (unless they figure out how to overcome it): No way to ensure your privacy while sharing.

Interim Solution: Legal agreement when you sign up (I doubt that will do much to reassure people) and letting you meet the folks with whom you are sharing so there will be a social bond.

eMarketing Mama's Verdict:They've got to figure out the security if they want to have a hope. I don't see this as a situation where people are interested in being social. They are likely to be busy people on the go; they've got enough friends already.

Here's my Beetmobile interview (It might take a couple of seconds to load). Beetmobile by Tema Frank

Evolving Web Trends & Groupthink -- LeWeb'11

2011-12-12T01:53:00.001-07:00

It was impossible to attend all the things I wanted; there was so much! Here are notes on some of the sessions I attended. I'm also posting some of the interviews I did at http://soundcloud.com/temafrank. There will be more to come over the next few days.

The Freemium
In the "old days" everyone planned to fund their offerings through advertising. The current version of that is called the "freemium" model: give the basic functionality away free and charge for an upgraded version. This can work (e.g. Evernote, Dropbox), but I suspect far too many of these entrepreneurs are counting on it but won't get nearly the volumes required for it to work. Even the biggies find that it is a fairly small proportion of users who convert to the premium model. Think this through in your financial projections, folks! What is the minimum uptake you'd need to make a profit?

Apps, Apps and More Apps
Despite research that shows that people actually prefer to do most things (except for games) via their browsers (even on mobile phones), everyone is developing apps. I see the value of apps for things you will use regularly, but how many screens of apps do you want to scroll through? someone needs to develop an app to help you get to the relevant apps quickly! Appsfire at least helps you find apps to download in the first place, but I think someone needs to develop an app to help you get to the relevant apps on your phone quickly!

Everybody's Doin' It
The theme of the conference was social-local-mobile, so I should not be surprised that there was a skew, but I still can't help thinking that the whole world is evolving towards groupthink. There were dozens of apps presented that are all about discovering and doing what your friends are discovering and doing. Are we all becoming junior-high school students again? Will original thought be able to surface? Or will the social media stars simply replace the traditional media stars?

Google+ Ripples: The Promise of Shared Intelligence | Social Media Strategy for Nonprofits and Businesses

2011-12-12T01:38:00.000-07:00

Google+ Ripples: The Promise of Shared Intelligence | Social Media Strategy for Nonprofits and Businesses:

Worth reading, to help you understand the potential uses of Google+ for promoting your organization.

What's next for the Web?

2011-12-07T10:04:00.001-07:00

I'm here in Paris at LeWeb, a huge conference that is the launching pad for many European start-ups.

Mea Culpa (Maybe)

A few years ago, I predicted, quite wrongly, that Twitter was just a fad. I still find it frustrating, because you can't say much in 140 characters and it can be a huge time-sink. It seems to have become, to a large extent, a place for link sharing and self-promotion.

So why does it endure? I think it is thanks to so many other companies that have taken up the challenge of finding ways to make it more useful. Like HootSuite, which won my early support because it let me see a conversation view; I didn't have to go hunting to remember what somebody was replying about.

Several startups here at LeWeb are trying to filter comments so the most "valuable" ones will pop to the top. Many of them are using geo-location to identify "valuable". That makes sense if you use it in a casual "where are my friends/Foursquare" kind of way. Not so useful if you are using it mainly to discover interesting articles.

______________________________________________________________
Here's my unedited interview with EchoLabs about their Echoer app this morning
______________________________________________________________

Quite a few of companies are trying to set up new systems altogether. For example, Echoer, which concluded that it was too difficult to cut through all the "noise" on Twitter, so they are trying to set up a fresh system. I suspect they'd be better off working harder to find a way to make it work with Twitter, given its market dominance. They use a system of colourful bubbles that float across your screen. The more people click on a bubble, the more prominence it gets on the screen. Neat idea.

Ideas for textbook publishers

2011-11-29T11:45:00.000-07:00

I'm teaching a class of marketing students at the Universite de Pau et des Pays de l'Adour about e-mariketing. We discussed the challenges facing textbook publishers. I've noticed that none of my students here in France are using textbooks. At 50 or 100 euros a pop, can you blame them?

One of the challenges of textbook marketing is that you need to get students to pay the money, but until now the textbook marketers have relied on professors to pressure their students into buying the books. So the pubishers have been adding on all kinds of freebies for the profs, but even if you like the resources they are offering, you still wonder if it makes sense to rely too heavily on the textbook. You know that a lot of students will refuse to buy it. So the current model is no longer working very well.

What if we turned the paradigm on its head. Instead of working through the profs, how about marketing directly to the students. The class came up with some neat alternatives for how this might work. For example:

Make the download a chapter at a time model profitable by using a subscription model. In this way, students could have one subscription that would allow downloads from several different books or even subjects by the same publisher.
Use branding to your benefit. Take the " ... for Dummies" concept to the university campus. Sell textbooks marketed at different levels of students. If they were eager beavers, they might want to buy texts in your " ... for Geniuses" series. Others might want the Coles Notes version; the "... for Newbies" series.

I haven't noticed any publishers taking this approach. Opportunity out there for you!

2011-11-07T07:09:00.000-07:00

With the explosion in the use of mobile phones/devices it is becoming increasingly important to do usability testing not just on the device itself, but also on the software and applications that will run on it.

Unfortunately, usability testing cell phones is much trickier than testing of desktop devices and software.

You are dealing with some 6,500 different makes and models, including a wide variety of operating systems, screen sizes and input methods.
People use their cell phones in many different types of locations, with different needs in each place. The way you might use it sitting on a bus would not be the same as standing in the bus while holding on to a rail so you don't fall over, nor would it be the same as using it while driving a car.
The limited computing capacity and memory of most devices means that loading extra software to track user interactions with the phone would seriously skew the results, as it would slow down performance of the machine.
Lab testing is not even close to the real-world conditions in which people will be interacting with the mobile device, but there is no easy way to track and film their behaviour on the go.

Usability testing of cell phones and other mobile devices is still an emerging field. Usability testers are experimenting with a variety of techniques. In the slide presentation below, discusses some of the challenges, and a partial solution.

DIY mobile usability testing - IA Summit 2011

View more presentations from Belen Barros Pena

No wonder I have trouble keeping up with social media!

2011-11-05T05:11:00.000-06:00

Came across these stats while preparing a class for International Marketing MBA students in France:

Every 60 seconds there are:

695,000 Facebook status updates
79,364 Facebook wall posts
98,000+ tweets
1500+ blog posts

The website I got this from, apparently run by Dr. Dave Chaffey, has a lot of good information for digital marketers.

The first year I taught e-Marketing at the University of Alberta I was asked to teach the course about two weeks before it started, I was on holiday, and there was no outline nor course materials ready for me to use. So in a panic I checked out textbooks, and his was the best I could find. I must confess, though, that since then I've pretty much stopped using textbooks, as it is impossible for them to stay up to date in such a fast-moving field.

The textbook publishing industry is in a time of transition and has not yet figured out a model that works well for them, for professors and for students. It will be interesting to see how it evolves.

LinkedIn - New advertising approach

2011-10-20T07:50:00.000-06:00

We've heard for a long time about how companies are using things like our Facebook information to target "relevant" ads to us. Today I was on LinkedIn and spotted the most direct and clever application I've seen of that recently for promoting business services.

An ad appeared that looked like just another box on a Linked In page. Because it had my photo in it my eyes were naturally drawn to it. The company it was promoting was not related in any direct way to the person whose profile I was looking at. But it was a potentially relevant company for me. Presumably some sort of algorithm looked at my interests and those of the person whose profile I was viewing and concluded that this might be a good connection. Interesting.

France vs Canada/U.S. in the World of the Internet

2011-10-12T11:36:00.004-06:00

When I lived in France in 1998/99, it was still largely stuck in the Minitel era, so there was very little interest in the Web. That may explain why France remains about a decade behind countries such as the U.S. and Canada when it comes to the sophistication (or lack thereof) of its websites. A few examples:

Inflexible Forms
When we tried, from Canada, to find a house to rent in France, we were pleased to find that there are now several French realtors who advertise their properties on the Web. Sadly, contacting them was another matter. Several of the big-name sites would not let you enter a non-French phone number in the telephone field, and you could not submit the enquiry form without it.

So I, cleverly, thought I'd simply enter a random French phone number. Easier said than done, because the sites also failed to tell you what format they wanted the numbers in. No spaces? Spaces between every pair of numbers? Other?

You don't know where we are?
We found a store (Norauto) we wanted to go to shortly after moving here. The store was apparently in the neighbouring town of Lescar. The only address shown on their website was "Route de Bayonne, Lescar". As it happens, that is a long Route, that traverses several small towns. And it changes names regularly. When we did a map search for the store, it shows one alternative that is on what one map labelled as Route de Bayonne, but in Biliere, not Lescar, and a second alternative that is in Lescar, but not on Route de Bayonne.

The green dot is what Google labels as Route de Bayonne

Sure, we're open at lunch
After a few days we'd learned that many French stores (and even restaurants!) close for lunch, often from noon to two or three in the afternoon. So before heading out to Castorama late one Saturday morning, we checked its website. It clearly indicated that they were open from 9:00 a.m. - 8:00 p.m. (see screenshot). Wrong. We got there moments after it had closed for lunch.

Another address issue
Not to be confused with the above-mentioned Castorama, there's another big-box store called Conforama. On its website, if you drill down through the map to find the stores near us, you end up with this:

There is no way to click from there to any information about those stores, such as hours, address or phone number.

User-friendly cell phone tutorial?

2011-04-11T12:09:00.003-06:00

Ever tried teaching a total techno newbie (in this case, an 80-year old) how to use a cell phone? It is a lot harder than you think! I got her the cheapest one possible, because it will only be for emergencies (7-11's Speak Out plan is great for that), but cheap does not mean simple!

She didn't want a cell phone because her previous try at one was just too complicated and didn't work very well. So, in addition to talking to her (and presenting it as a portable radio and flashlight that just happens to have the side bonus that she can be reached or reach others in an emergency) , I put together some handouts. What do you think? Any suggestions for making it clearer?

Phone tutorial for absolute beginners (revised)

View more documents from temafrank.

Toodledo Update

2011-01-12T19:21:00.000-07:00

I've been using Toodledo for several days now (see my previous post) and I like it so far. It is a little disturbing to see that I am already up to 168 tasks; no wonder I feel like I can't get everything done!

The fact that I can sort things into folders and other views is very helpful. For those who use GTD methodology, here's how I've approached setting up Toodledo to work with GTD (Getting Things Done):

I use a separate "folder" for each major project
The "context" tag is used pretty much in GTD format. Mine are computer, errands, home, meeting, pending, phone
I use Toodledo's preset options for Status, because for the moment you can't rename them
I also use their priority settings, though I can't for the life of me understand why anyone would bother inputting a negative priority!
I haven't put time estimates in for every task, but I'm trying to do so. I think that could be a useful way to pull out quickie tasks if you have a few spare minutes, as well as a way to plan your schedule to set aside big chunks of time for major projects.
I've also used their apps to download it to my iPhone and add it to my Google Calendar.

I'd be interested in hearing how it is working for others.

The best task management tools

2011-01-04T10:15:00.000-07:00

For as long as I can remember I have struggled with task overload. I have a nasty habit of taking on more than can reasonably be done in a 24-hour day, especially given that I cannot survive on four hours sleep a night. So at least about once a year I a try out a new system for keeping track of all my tasks and helping me set priorities.

Over the past several months, as my work becomes increasingly mobile, I have been relying more and more heavily on web based services such as those offered by Google. Unfortunately Google's task list system is painfully inadequate.

Yesterday I experimented with a few different task managers that claim to integrate well with Gmail and Google's calendar. The one that looks the most promising, and which I will be putting through its paces over the next few weeks, is called Toodledo. What I particularly like about Toodledo is the fact that you can sort and view your tasks in a variety of different ways. When you have a list like mine, that is several hundred items long, this really helps. It also has an inexpensive iPhone application so my tasks are in front of me no matter where I am.

What task management systems have you been happy with?

Kids Care United

2010-11-16T14:28:00.000-07:00

Home

I'm playing with social media plug-ins for Wordpress. It can be overwhelming to choose the right ones. I worry that they'll cancel each other out, or cause programming conflicts.

How can we stop child abuse and neglect?

2010-07-12T14:22:00.000-06:00

Every few months there is another story in the press about a child who has been abused. Many of these children were in situations that were already being overseen by child welfare services. I'm on a mission to learn more about why these cases get missed before it is too late, and to figure out ways to improve our child welfare-related services and public awareness and support for adequate funding to ensure all kids get treated with the love and care they need to thrive. (Whew, that was a run-on sentence!)

Came across this video which aims to build awareness. Has some typos, but makes the point well anyway.

The Make Money Online Market

2010-06-29T13:12:00.000-06:00

I've spent a lot of time (too much!) over the past several months investigating the folks who claim you can make scads of money online, either through selling affiliate products or info products.

I have a feeling that the most successful make-money-online people make money by selling others on the dream of making money online. On the other hand, when I speak to my former Web Mystery Shoppers, most of them want to make money working from home, so clearly there is a huge demand for this stuff. So my ethical dilemma becomes:

Do I simply warn people away from this concept, or do I dig more, find out which advice is worth taking and, potentially, end up joining the crowd of folks who make money online by teaching people to make money online?

I haven't got the answer to that yet. I have concluded that if I am to talk about making money online with info or affiliate products, first I have to prove to myself that I can do so without just selling the dream of making money online. I will keep you posted from time to time as I explore this.

Mobile advertisers hit barrier in North America

2010-06-29T09:31:00.001-06:00

If college kids are upset about mobile ads, North American marketers are in serious trouble, as this is arguably the group that would be least likely to object to ads:

they are more likely to have unlimited plans, so the cost of receiving an ad is non-existent to them
they don't have the same privacy concerns as older adults

The researchers suggest that it is because this audience sees their phones as highly personal, but I think most mobile users would perceive their phones that way; I'm not convinced that is youth-specific.

Marketing messages are not welcomed on students’ most intimate device

Fully 100% of college students in the US have a mobile phone, and they use them constantly to communicate and connect. ...

Their reactions to ads were highly negative. More than 40% were annoyed to get an ad, compared with just 1.2% who were pleased and 17.6% who were neutral. Even more dramatic, nearly three in 10 said they were less likely to purchase a product after seeing a mobile ad for it. Slightly fewer reported their purchase intent was unchanged, but only a small number said mobile ads encouraged them to purchase. ...

Example of good content on an e-commerce website

2010-06-25T08:43:00.002-06:00

I decided that it is high time my teenage son took over from a paid gardening service in caring for our yard this summer. Our lawn isn't huge and I'd heard that today's push mowers are way easier to use than the rusty old thing I was forced to use in my childhood, so I went online to figure out what brand to buy.

I came across a great comparison article by Reel Mowers Canada. It starts with this comment:
"We were at the supermarket recently and saw a reel mower for $119, and realized that many people wouldn't be able to differentiate between that inexpensive mower and one of the premium mowers we sell. Read on and find out what sets our reel mowers apart, and what would be best for your lawn."

It goes on to describe, in plain, simple English, what features to look for and how to assess quality. It worked: I scrapped my plan to buy the cheapo version, and ended up getting the NaturCut from them, even though it was remarkably difficult to figure out how to find the pricing and place an order on the site. (I've contacted the owner and recommended that he add pricing and "buy" links to his comparison chart, as well as adding a page in the top navigation that shows all prices and has buy links. Not everyone will be as determined as I was to find that information and place an order!)

The point is, though, that great content is within the reach of any vendor: just write about what you know and your customers want to know.

Should non-profit executives be paid as much as private sector execs?

2010-06-24T13:48:00.001-06:00

Until working for the Alberta Cancer Foundation I was like most donors -- reluctant to give to organizations with high overhead expenses. Then two things happened:

An inside look at events like the Weekend to End Breast Cancer (now the Weekend to End Women's Cancers) made me realize that it costs a lot of money to provide even minimal (tent-based) accommodation, food and toilets for over 1000 people participating in a two day event. But without providing such grand-scale events, they'd struggle to raise $3 million in a year, let alone net it in a weekend! So overall, the charity's recipients benefit more from some high-expense events than from continuing to struggle with small events and/or repeated letters requesting donations. The reality is that most people simply won't make substantial donations without special events.
I read Dan Pallotta's book Uncharitable: How Restraints on Non-Profit Organizations Undermine Their Potential . His arguments are very compelling, though they do require a shake-up in how we think about non-profits.

He notes that non-profits are competing for dollars not only against other charities, but against the likes of Apple, Nike, and Coke. With their multi-million dollar advertising budgets, it is far easier for them to get known and to convince the public to spend their money there instead of on causes that will make the world a better place. Not even on causes that will make their own communities safer and healthier.

He also argues that by expecting people working for non-profits to make significant salary sacrifices we deprive charities of the best talent; of the very people who may be most able to help make major breakthroughs.

"We allow people to make huge profits doing any number of things that harm the poor, but prohibit anyone from making a profit doing anything that will help them. Want to make a million selling violent video games to kids? Go for it. Want to make a million funding the cure for childhood leukemia? You are a parasite."

He cites a report for the Morino Institute on Community Wealth Ventures:
"Non-profit organizations exist in a culture of dysfunction - limited capacity and modest outcomes pervade critical organizational elements such as strategic planning, staffing, training, management, financing and performance measurement. This dysfunction makes success highly improbable and calls into question the sustainability of organizations unable to adequately capitalize future growth"

Although we do hear about the occassional non-profit CEO who makes over a million dollars, the reality is that they are extremely rare; the vast majority earn far less than they would in a similar sized for-profit organization.

The low salaries and obsession with overhead costs also hobble the organizations by leading to burnout and high turnover in non-profits.

Fundamentally, we need to start focusing on the return on investment rather than simply the percentage of donations that go to overhead. Would our charities not be better to get 50% of a million dollars than 90% of a thousand?

How to become a linchpin - review of Seth Godin's book

2010-06-08T11:01:00.001-06:00

Just finished reading Seth Godin's Linchpin . It gets a bit boring/repetitive at the end, but the main points that stuck to me from the book are:

Creativity counts. Don't be afraid to be different
Be helpful and be nice. Linchpins become indispensable partly because people like them. They like them because the linchpin helps make their day more pleasant.
No stalling -- get things done and out the door. A key differentiator is the ability to actually "ship" products (or ideas) in a timely way. Getting them out the door is more important than getting them perfect. This is a biggie for me, as I have to constantly fight my urge to study more, read more, think more, plan more ... with the result that I do less. Get over it, Tema!
Get input early; refuse it later. The closer you get to the due date for a project, the fewer people should be allowed to have input.

On page 148 (of the hardcover edition) he proposes this approach to overcoming "resistance" to getting things done:

Choose a due date and post it on your wall. "You will ship on this date, done or not."
Write every idea, thought, sketch, plan to do with the project on a separate post-it note, index card, or whatever note format works best for you. This is the time to collect input from others.
Periodically review the cards (with your team, if you've got one) and add more as needed.
Enter each idea as a separate item in a database. Play with it. Last chance for team input.
Use the database to put together a blueprint of what you are going to do/build/create. Get input ONLY from those who have sign-off control on the project, and get a commitment from them that if you deliver what they've agreed to here, on time and on budget, they will ship it.
Once you have the approval, DO IT! "Ship on time, because that's what a linchpin does."

Why pay extra for .ca domain names?

2010-05-31T14:46:00.002-06:00

It has always cost a bit more to register a .ca name than a .com, but in recent years the price difference has narrowed quite a lot. So I was astounded today when I went to register a domain with Canada's first domain registrar (Internic, where I'd originally registered my .ca names) and saw that they are charging $50!!!!

Recently I've been using NetFirms for my .ca domains. They only charge a very reasonable $9.95. And I've never had a problem with them.

I guess Internic doesn't want to be in the domain name registration business any more.

Don't let a prospect keep you dangling!

2010-05-28T13:19:00.000-06:00

Ok, so this is one I've learned the hard way (and with a little help from Colleen Madsen at Sandler Sales). If you have a prospect who keeps meeting and talking with you but never seems to be ready to ready to seal the deal, sometimes you just have to force the issue. Here's one approach:

Say, "Can be frank with each other?" Then briefly review how long you've been discussing this and what you've done in those meetings (e.g. the pain points you've uncovered, the ways your work could solve them).
Then say something along the lines of: "But this doesn't seem to be going anywhere. Sometimes people just don't want to hurt my feelings by saying no. But if this isn't going anywhere, I'd really rather that you just told me that now. I'd be OK with that. What do you think? Is there any point in us continuing?
(a) If they say that they DO want to continue, ask what would need to happen to make it a buy decision. What can we do to make that happen in the next two weeks (or some other specific time frame)? So if [what they said] happens, you'll be ready to sign a contract? OR (b) If they squirm or say no, thank them for their honesty. Ask if they would like to stay on your newsletter list. They'll probably say yes. Then that gives you a way to keep your business in front of them over the months to come and if their situation changes, they'll remember you and know how to reach you. (If they say no to the newsletter request, you know it was totally dead!)

And if you don't have a newsletter, you should start one. That's a whole other topic.

Should consultants guarantee their work?

2010-05-28T09:14:00.001-06:00

There's an interesting conversation going on at the LinkedIn Consultant's Network about free consulting and guarantees. I noted that the main reason people end up doing "free consulting" is to lower the fears the prospective client may have about hiring you; to reassure them that you will provide value.

I suggested that another way to lower that barrier to purchase is to offer a guarantee. If you implement all our recommendations within six months (or whatever is a reasonable time frame) and do not see a sales increase, we will refund your money. One advantage to that is that it forces them to (a) implement, and (b) track results.

One of the consultants asked what sort of contract you would use to offer such a guarantee. Here is my reply:

Keep the guarantee simple. Use plain English and avoid legalese. When I was a marketing manager for a national bank in the 1980s we offered a very simple guarantee: "Open an account with us. If you are unsatisfied for any reason within the first 90 days just tell us why, and we'll close your account and give you double your fees back."

The great thing about that was that it forced them to tell us why they were dissatisfied. Invariably, we were able to resolve the problem, and when we offered the refund they were so thrilled with the resolution that they actually refused the money! They didn't want to close the account any more, and they felt a personal relationship with the staff member who had solved the problem.