Hacker Group Blog

How much do you test?

Carolyn Hansen — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 10:09:57 -0800

Digital and direct marketers talk about measurement. We like to brag about measuring everything we do at every step along the way. We’re hearing more about “big data” every day. The implication being that we have more information than we know what to do with.

Some marketers forget that we can do so much more with the data when we have a good idea what it means. We need a point of comparison. A benchmark.

The best way to get that is a head-to-head test.

Hacker Group has a proven methodology for testing multiple variables all at once that we call PowerTest®.

Of course, you don’t have to create an elaborate test matrix and test multiple variables. But a simplified process is not going to prove very much very fast.

What won’t work is not testing at all. If you simply launch a campaign and measure the results, you’ll have data – but it won’t tell you much. You might be able to compare to past campaigns, but the big variable of timing will muck up your analysis.

Make testing a priority in all your marketing plans and budgets. It’s the only way to learn what’s truly happening in that avalanche of data you collect.

Forrest Gump's momma was right

Carolyn Hansen — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 12:47:36 -0800

I have a teeny-tiny rant. More of a crank, really. It's this: Many media and marketing articles online have a quirk I find annoying. It's the pop culture headline reference. You've seen it.

What I Learned from <Inception, Sun Tzu, my dog, Indiana Jones, Bridget Jones, Alice in Wonderland> about Social Media Marketing

7 Things <Captain Kangaroo, Game of Thrones, Bar-Hopping, Owning an iPad, Beavis and Butthead> Taught Me About Sales

What <Steve Jobs, Stephen Colbert, Stephen Wright, Stephen King, Steven Seagal, Kim Kardashian, Regis Philbin, Goldilocks and the Three Bears> Can Teach You about Email Marketing

Everything I Need to Know about Content Marketing I Learned from <Watching Survivor, Fantasy Football, Newt Gingrich, The Muppets, Anna Karenina>

Enough already! What does this tell me about the article you want me to read? A hodge-podge of thoughts pasted together by a few well-known moments in a famous person's career? Yeah. Clever.

I don't click because I'm not sure what I'm going to get. Just like that famous box of chocolates. (See what I did there?)

I admire great headlines. I wish I always wrote brilliant ones. More than that, I believe headlines are a promise, and I wish everyone wrote headines fulfilled by the content those headlines point to.

Segmentation is for cockroaches. Sort of.

Steve Rosenblum — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 14:19:02 -0800

You’d be amazed by what you can learn about direct marketing in your neighborhood grocery store, or even under your kitchen sink.

Take, for example, oh I don’t know… pest control products? Your relationship with said items may not be as intimate as mine was when I lived in a tiny studio apartment in a Hell’s Kitchen walk-up, but back then I didn’t appreciate what I could learn from my tiny 6-legged roommates.

Most of us prefer not to live in close proximity to pests of any kind, six legs or fewer. But the infamous periplaneta americana, the American Cockroach, is probably at the bottom of the list of desirable co-habitants, just above Paris Hilton and Jeffrey Dahmer.

But here’s the interesting part. As much as these critters are universally reviled, the methods by which we consumers choose to eliminate them are completely different — and an outstanding example of the value of good customer targeting and segmentation. Hunh?

I submit to you the following example: A Cockroach Case Study

Products A & B are both very effective solutions for eliminating household pests. They sit right next to each other on most store shelves, and they are about the same price. What they do is practically intuitive and identical in terms of result: They kill cockroaches.

And yet they are so completely different – not just in their mechanism but in their marketing—that if you believe in the laws of segmentation, you can bet the farm that members of one segment would never buy the product intended for members of the second. Let me explain.

Studies show that buyers of pest control products self-direct into two distinctly different groups.

First—Segment A—are folks like me, who take a very Rambo-like approach to any insect problem. We are part of the segment called “Cockroach Commandos”. We will engage any means necessary to eliminate them from of our consciousness no matter what path of destruction (or CFCs) we leave in our wake. We want their death with extreme prejudice. Want proof. We want bodies. We want it known that we are in charge of this situation. And some of us might get a little secret satisfaction knowing that our chosen method of elimination is so lethal it’s not really safe to have pets around. It’s a nasty business, this pest control.

We buy Product A. It’s called Raid. And it “Kills Bugs Dead”.

Then there are the rest of you. You are non-violent by nature. Perhaps even a little non-confrontational. You belong to a segment identified as Pest Control Pacifists. You may think you have the same reaction to roaches that we Cockroach Commandos have, but you really don’t. You’re too sensitive. You simply want the little buggers to go away quietly. You don’t want to see them, think about them, you certainly want no role in their demise. Or in the resultant clean-up. You just want a quiet and danger-free solution that allows you to pretend that they were never a problem in the first place.

You buy Product B. It’s called the Roach Motel, where “Roaches Check In but they Don’t Check Out.”

No mess, no lingering smell, no need to put Fluffy in the back yard for a few hours. You just put the little motel out of sight, in the dark for a few days, then, later, pick it up and throw it away. You don’t even have to look at their forlorn little carapaces as they writhe in throes of death while they suffocate in noxious glue, their tiny screams too small to be heard by the human ear.

A few years ago, the Roach Motel packaging featured a little cartoon of Mr. and Mrs. Roach on the side (she was the one with long eyelashes and a fancy hat, he carried the suitcase) while the Raid can had a drawing of a gender-neutral roach lying belly-up on the front of the label, dead as a doornail with eyes X’ed out and swollen tongue hanging out of his mouth. Need I say more?

The lesson in Targeting and Segmentation is that if the fine folks at Roach Motel spent time marketing their product to the Cockroach Commandos among us, they were probably wasting their money. And I wager that people who are not inclined toward violence, mess and danger are not so likely to buy Raid no matter how much they dislike insects. So if you can save half your budget by not marketing to people whose profile suggests they’ll never buy your product in the first place, you can be a marketing hero.

Remember, there’s a good reason that the words “kill” or “dead” appear about ten times on the Raid can. It's so people like me will buy it. And if just one of those nasty buggers rears its ugly head in the vicinity of my home or family, he’s going down. With prejudice. Roach Motel is for wimps.

Note to HR: I am a non-violent person. I am not a threat to myself, my co-workers or my immediate surroundings.

I am a Keynesian beauty queen

Paul Ford — Wed, 28 Dec 2011 12:09:21 -0800

Turns out, every day as a creative professional, I’m in a Keynesian Beauty Contest.

I think we all agree that an artist is someone who seeks the beauty of truth, someone who, by exploring and expanding his or her own perceptions of the world, enriches the lives of those who experience his or her art. That’s what we creative professionals do all day long.

Only we don’t.

That would never be enough to produce great creative work for our clients. We’re not in the business of simply arresting and elevating our audience. We’re in the business of arresting our audience and taking them on a journey to develop a relationship with a brand, a product and/or a service. So, my most effective work won’t necessarily be about what’s going on in my soul and how that connects with the larger world around me. It’s about what will arrest the target audience of my client and move him or her to action, measurable action. As a creative, I use my own perceptions to predict what my audience will respond to, but it's not the overriding factor.

That’s where the Keynesian Beauty Contest comes in. The economist John Maynard Keynes used the analogy of a beauty contest when trying to describe how rational people think in a stock market where value often depends on how many investors choose to buy stock in a company not the company’s actual worth. (Trust me, this connects back to creativity pretty fast.)

Imagine a newspaper contest where entrants are shown pictures of beautiful faces and asked to choose not the one they find most attractive, but the face they think most people would find most beautiful. That changes your judgment by a few degrees. You’re now not thinking about yourself — though you’re using your own view as a starting point. You’re running a simulation in your mind of another person’s perceptions. That added dimension changes the result of the contest.

That’s what creative professionals do every day. We conduct a kind of Keynesian Beauty Contest.

I’m not claiming there’s no art in creative work. There is — lots. But it’s in service to the client and our marketing goals. And really great creative work arrests, elevates and achieves business objectives. In other words, outstanding creative doesn't just win beauty contests, it gets the job done.

If you’d like to see a Keynesian Beauty Contest in action, NPR’s Planet Money did a fun practical demonstration here.

The Why and the What … but NOT the How

Michael Goerz — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 09:16:41 -0800

Kill me (no pun intended) if I spent too much time at a two-day meeting sequestered in a windowless casino conference room in VEGAS discussing the topic of Deathcare (how AWESOME is that?!?!?! It makes me sound like a character from some indie film), where part of the conversation included timeless management discussions about the Who (not the band), the What, the Why, etc., etc.

It was a great experience on all fronts and I came back with a mélange (cornucopia? horn o’ plenty? plethora?) of takeaways and DEEP THOUGHTS (not by Jack Handy) – and I serve it up to you here in one cup of blog stew (bisque? chowder? pottage?)

I talk about WHY things are important in the work we do. It could be my Catholic guilt complex that feels the need to explain WHY I’m being demanding OR perhaps it’s just important to understand the WHY – the motivations behind the things we do. The WHY (which I will continue to consistently capitalize and italicize throughout) is important!

It’s most evident when you’re raising kids: They don’t want to do what they’re told and if all they do is what they’re told, they might grow up to be mindless order takers who can’t think for themselves (and where does that leave us)? So the alternative to just saying “do this because I said so,” is to explain WHY to do it.

That’s why I talk about the WHY (plus I like to hear myself talk … and I think that these types of conversations are important in “learning the ways of the Force, if you are to come with me to Alderan”).

The WHAT is the end result – whether that be hitting a ridiculously large number of leads, delivering a low SAC (“subscriber acquisition cost” – although it’s fun to say “low sac” – huh, huh), or in more general terms in “gettin’ s*** done!”

WHAT do we want to achieve? Sometimes we focus on the WHY and the HOW so much that we can lose sight of the WHAT, which quickly slips into a different WHAT … the WTF?

Define the WHAT and write it down! Tack it on the wall! Look at it before you go to bed! Make it the first thing you look at when you get up! Ask yourself, am I going to get the WHAT? If yes, continue. If not, get back on course! And in the end, the WHAT gives you something to measure against. Did we achieve WHAT we wanted to?

The HOW is the path to the WHAT. I REALLY like the HOW, because I have done it a lot and think I’m awesome at it. Taking a step back, I recently liked “Working” on Facebook – that’s right, because I have come to accept that I really like to, umm, WORK! I think it has to do with the rigorous housekeeping regime my Dad put us through as kids. Just one example – I had to vacuum the stairs to both the basement and upstairs every weekend. My Dad did the main living and family room carpets, because he was VERY particular about the pattern the vacuum would make in the carpet. It was a PRIVILEGE to vacuum THOSE carpets and something you had to work up to. Luckily, my dear wife Veruska has helped me recover from these excessive, anal-retentive cleaning traits (we have almost NO carpet these days although we have two vacuums and one is a fancy Dyson because I like buying cool things) but I think the theme spilled over into other areas. The HOW can also be driven by each individual’s work ethic, but I won’t talk about that here – save that for another post on the importance of chroming trim on Cadillac Fleetwoods versus taking an internship for winter break. (Good times.)

But getting back to the HOW, I admit – I sometimes like to tell people HOW I would do it. I can’t help it! Going back to parenting, it’s HARD to see your kids facing a problem without telling them how to solve it. We DON’T want to witness FAILURE. When my father-in-law (Big Pete) was a young man (hippie), he wanted to build a geodesic dome. Big Pete’s father-in-law (not a hippie) thought he was nuts and casually hinted at not building the dome, BUT he sat back and let him do it anyways. The only way to learn is to have the experience, which wasn’t all bad by the way – the dome was featured in a magazine. But it was also a terrible waste of square footage for a young family. These kinds of experiences are in part what make Big Pete one of the coolest people I know (because he had opportunities to direct his own HOW).

We all know that that letting people guide their own personal HOW is HOW they learn and grow, but doin’ it and sayin’ it are two different things (James Brown, y’all!).

So anyway (I’m windin’ it up) – what started out as talking about funerals made me reflect on something totally different. The WHY, the WHAT, and the HOW are ALL very important pieces of this game we call work. We (and by that I mean “I”) need to keep talking about the WHY, stay focused on the WHAT, and (as much as possible) let others drive their own HOW. Bear with me on this journey (“the diet starts tomorrow”).

The HOW – it’s yours! I can’t wait to see what happens and in the words of our President and CEO – “Good Luck!”

Making the bitter delicious

Jill Kaufman — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 09:40:33 -0800

One of my favorite things about my job is the fact that I learn something new every single day. It's a pretty grand statement - but it's true (and often just a little bit painful).

This week, I learned a lot. And while attending a client meeting in Las Vegas discussing the subject of funeral planning, I was exposed to a new concept with great appeal: Umami. If you look it up, you find a definition like this one: Umami /uːˈmɑːmi/, popularly referred to as savoriness, is one of the five basic tastes together with sweet, sour, bitter, and salty.

But, in the context of my meeting, Umami was presented as the concept of making something bitter into something delicious. Brussel sprouts being the culinary example of something naturally bitter, that can be quite delicious with appropriate attention and bacon.

But in a more esoteric sense, we can make bitter pills sweet with our work. The insightful connection that was made that instead of planning a funeral, we can plan a celebration of life.

I think this is truly inspiring. The notion that with some love and care and a positive spin, the bitter can become delicious. Whether in our work, or in our lives. It's up to us to make it that way.

Sometimes, learning too many new things can make you feel (temporarily) bitter during tough (busy) times. On this 25th anniversary of Hacker Group, Taste the Umami, savoring the sweetness of knowledge and the satisfaction of success are delicious.

Netflix broke a cardinal rule. But they were right!

Kyle Coen — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 16:58:58 -0800

Netflix CEO Reed Hastings needs to tell all his detractors and the fair-weather fans bailing on his stock to read a book. More specifically, they should check out a paper by Jakob Nielsen in which he postulates the exponential growth of internet bandwidth every two years. Nielsen's Law claims the speed with which we can download Internet content (let’s just say a movie from Netflix) doubles every 21 months – and Nielsen has been right about this growth since 1984.

This means, if you are currently bored with your ability to grab content from the web at 25 Mbps, just wait until 2020 when your residential connection to the interweb is 800 Mbps.

Couple these increases with the annual exponential growth, both in capability and availability, of media consumption gadgets (Google Moore’s Law if you really must know) and you have the perfect environment for a wildly successful streaming business at Netflix – in the future!

That’s the problem. Netflix focused too much on the future, and forgot about the present. It bit the hands that fed it. Nearly half of its subscriber base still wants DVD’s by mail, and Qwickster was a slap in the face to those customers. As a FoxNews.com poll showed earlier this week, streaming is coming on strong, but among responders to a web-based poll, 45% said they still want DVD’s.

So how does one of the coolest companies around fix the present without sacrificing its cash flow and its focus on the future?

Step 1 – Change the Conversation
o    Netflix needs to quickly get new advertising and PR in market. Right now, the press is dominating the very public discussion of Netflix’s rapid devaluation and potential demise.
o    They need a campaign that reminds people of why they loved Netflix in the first place – Grade A content and the ease of at-home delivery.
o    In addition, they need to take back Hastings’ image. As the public face of Netflix, he is just as tarnished, if not more so, than the brand. In a year defined by hostility towards CEO’s and corporate greed, a leader like Hastings is a breath of fresh air. He’s grounded and celebrates his employees. But that hasn’t been the story.

Step 2 – Cop an Attitude with Wall St.
o    Traders punished Netflix for focusing more on the future (streaming video) than the present (DVD’s by mail). The Netflix rate increase and rise and demise of Qwikster both failed because they were too far-sighted. Netflix wanted to move into a future for which its customers just weren’t ready.
o    As NFLX shares shed more than 30% of their value last week, investors seem to have missed the excellent Q3 earnings report that demonstrated the company’s ability to boost revenue even while getting smacked with an 805,000 customer defection.
o    Investors instead focused on the lowered Q4 guidance.
o    Netflix needs to remind Wall St. that focusing on the future rather than the present can cause undesirable consequences.

Step 3 – Get Them Back!
o    805,000 customers did not want to leave – you scared them away. Fix It!
o    Go back to each of the customers that left and apologize.
o    Give them an incentive to return, and make it worth their while.
o    Reward the loyalty of the customers that stayed. These people clearly like you – let them help you by turning them into your new social PR machine.

Netflix didn’t deserve the beating it took in the market and in the press this past week. They are a company with amazing ideas for the future of media consumption; they just got a little bit too caught up in that future. In doing so, they broke the cardinal rule. They told customers what they WILL want instead of responding to what they DO want.

Hopefully, they can fix the issue and fix it quickly. We need Netflix. We need companies like Netflix that have a vision of just how amazing the future of technology can be. And if the exponential growth predicted by Nielsen and Moore remains accurate, just wait and see what the imagination of a smart, future driven company, like Netflix, has to offer us in 2020.

True confessions: Why I love Brand

Steve Rosenblum — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 12:20:03 -0800

I confess, I love Brand. I really do.

Blasphemy, you say, coming from a Direct Marketer? Not at all! Let me tell you why.

First I should clarify: When I say “I love Brand” I don’t have a collection of shot glasses I won on eBay with my favorite teams’ logos on them; I don’t secretly flip through InStyle to see what J-Lo or Justin or Gwen is wearing today; if I had cattle I would not mark them with red-hot wrought-iron pokers; and I do not have a secret crush on British comedian/actor Russell (though I do like him a lot).

I love the hallowed Brand that marketers refer to in hushed tones while they “leverage” it for all it’s worth (yes, in Brandspeak, leverage is a verb); the intangible asset that must be tangible-ized, quantified and infused with “equity” as if it’s flavored club soda; the same one whose sacrosanct guidelines are enforced, rightly or wrongly, by legions of iron fisted experts. I should know—I was one of them. In truth, Brand is the unique essence of being in business; Brand is the link of loyalty from product to consumer. Brand is the marketing discipline’s Holy Grail.

Sweet Lady Brand, she fed me for twenty years, and now it’s time for me to give her some props.

Ask a roomful of marketers to define Brand and you’ll get a roomful of answers, complete with 3-D perceptual maps, Venn diagrams and sometimes barely intelligible gobbledygook. But one thing we can agree on is that if you’re trying to sell something, awareness—which is rightfully and inextricably linked to brand—is a great thing to have. Why? Because awareness leads to consideration, and consideration leads to trial. So what’s so great about that? Everything. Especially to a Direct Marketer like me.

You don’t have to buy a particular brand to appreciate it. I don’t shop at Tiffany very often, but I love their little blue box and the romantic, emotional power it wields the instant I think about it. I no longer wear a suit and tie to work every day but I’ll always associate Brooks Brothers with my father and grandfather, and sometimes I’ll pop into a store just to feel a little wistful, whether I need a new club tie or not. And ironically, although I have a tough time discerning between the Fairmont and the Four Seasons (especially if I’m somewhere warm and sunny with a fruity drink in my hand), I know that for comfort and quality I can always turn to either one.

The key point here is that whenever I receive communication from Tiffany or Brooks Brothers, the Fairmont or the Four Seasons, Apple or Nike, or any other brand that I like, the chances of my paying attention to it increase by multiples. I’m more likely to look at what’s new, see what they’re offering online, and even pop into one of their stores just to immerse myself in the stuff of their Brand experience. In other words, since I already know who they are, my proverbial door to buying something has already swung wide open.

Brand has done its work by paving an express lane through the tangle of synapses in my brain that usually put a choke-hold on my decision-making. Hence, their communication, no matter the medium, doesn’t always wind up in my trashcan. I’ll actually stop for a second, pause the DVR, and think about what they have to offer me this time—a victory for any marketer.

Whether they’re mainstream favorites of mine like Chipotle or Patagonia, or more obscure ones like Colnago or Panerai, Brand hustles me along, a good two thirds of the way to my decision, and onward toward my trial. (I mean, thank goodness I like diet Coke and Gatorade. Otherwise, how could I possibly decide what to drink when I’m standing in front of the cooler at the 7-11? There’s stuff in there that I don’t know whether to drink or use to take the bug splatter off my windshield. Why on earth would I buy it if I don’t even know what the hell it’s for?)

But back to my point. Awareness-to-Consideration-to-Trial is no great mystery—you know about something, you think about it, you try it. But it’s only part of the equation. Brand can set you up, but it’s my job to bring you home. And if I set the whole thing up correctly in the first place, I can capture what you did—your behavior—I can measure it, tweak one thing or another, and try it again. And at the end I have something I can sink my teeth into called predictive results. Arm me with that data and I can toodle off to build a new pro forma, call someone important and have a conversation about strategy and quantifiable, measureable performance.

As a Direct Marketer, that’s my holy grail, and the fine folks in Brand just led me right to it.

If you’re anywhere near the discipline of Direct Marketing, and you don’t appreciate what Brand does for you, you’re missing a good two-thirds of the big picture. Call me lazy, but I’d hate to spend my days trying to sell something about which there is no awareness. Some marketers quite literally live for that challenge, but I sure don’t. Fighting the awareness battle in this day and age, unless you have gazillions to spend (and/or really want to project your logo on the surface of the moon), is a rocky and treacherous climb, straight uphill. And I don’t have enough Starbucks in me, or the right pair of Nikes on me, to even attempt it.

My true confession is that I am grateful. I love Brand because it does a good chunk of my work for me.

Which, of course, gives me more time to bid on that Toledo Mud Hens shot glass.

If we were Siri

Carrin Johnson — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 09:15:37 -0800

by Carrin Johnson and Tara Wingo

We both recently upgraded our 3g and 3gs iPhones to the new iPhone 4s. Our lives are forever changed. As project managers we rely heavily on our iPhones to tell us where to be, what to do, what to say, what to eat, where to look…OK, so we’re exaggerating, but seriously it would be hard to live without this thing now that we’ve experienced increased efficiencies! And our new best friend is Siri, who has taken our iPhone experience to a whole new level. And although Siri can answer the really important questions, like “where is the closest Starbucks?”, we’ve also been fortunate to get to know Siri on a personal level. “Siri, will you marry me?”, “I love you, Siri!”, and believe it or not, this little thing has a witty sense of humor. So, in channeling Siri, here are our responses if we were Hacker Group’s own personal Siri. (And yes, we are both happy AT&T subscribers.)

Q: How many people can fit into Nirvana conference room for an All Hands Meeting?
A: Fire code is 20, but Hacker Group squeezes them in like sardines.

Q: Who is our favorite client?
A: We love all our clients equally.

Q: Who is better at ping pong – Project Manager Tara Wingo or CEO Spyro Kourtis?
A: On a normal day, Tara Wingo. However, if she has a wicked headache, I would say Spyro Kourtis.

Q: How many estimates would Estimating estimate, if an Estimator could estimate estimates?
A: I estimate that an Estimator would estimate as many estimates as Estimating could estimate.

Q: Do proofreaders ever fall asleep while proofreading?
A: It’s ben knowen to happen.

Q: What happened to the good snacks in the 20th Floor Café?
A: What do you mean by good? These are healthy. That’s good, right?

Q: What really happens on the 28th floor?
A: The scary Santa in the storage room comes out to play.

Q: What kind of beer is Hugo serving this Friday.
A: It depends on who’s sponsoring. If you’d like to sponsor, I’ve found 8 breweries close to your location.

Q: Who is Erik Hostetler and what does he do?
A: Why does everyone keep asking me that? I still don’t have an answer at this time. Try again later.

Q: Can you tell me three things Rick Astley would never do?
A: Give you up, let you down and run around. Get back to work.

Taking a page from manufacturers: Efficiency wins

Jenifer Joyce — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 16:19:56 -0800

My 12-year-old is onto something. When shopping at a mall retailer whose name prominently includes the word “American,” my son observed their clothing ironically was manufactured overseas. This didn’t make sense to him, and it doesn’t to me. But I’m encouraged by a new Boston Consulting Group report, showing the American manufacturing sector stands to win back over 3 million jobs that have gone overseas. The push behind the growth is simple: efficiencies.

According to the report, Boston Consulting Group found three reasons why America stands to win: labor costs are rising overseas; American workers are more productive; and distributing American-made products here at home cuts down on transportation costs. Some companies like Chesapeake Bay Candle, NCR, Whirlpool and Ford are already tapping into these efficiencies by re-opening plants and hiring new workers. I applaud these companies that are making changes now and helping Americans get back to work.

Marketers need to pick up this banner. We can do more. I’ve blogged before about struggles other industries are having and shared ideas to get the economy moving. At the risk of over-simplifying, marketers need to make better use of available resources, both internal and external, to find efficiencies. Programs must work harder and produce greater ROI. If that’s lacking, find a partner that can help. Don’t settle. It’s not surprising to see restlessness in my 12-year-old. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.

They dead.

Andrew Holland — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 10:03:52 -0800

With Halloween here, I’m reminded of an incident that took place about this time last year at the previous company I worked for. One of our suppliers was located in Mexico and Karen, one of our sales reps, called the Naucalpán office asking the Spanish-speaking phone operator to speak to Carlos, our contact there.

“Sorry, Carlos no is here. They dead.”

“What?! Carlos is dead?” Karen cried.

“Very, very sorry,” the phone operator sighed. “Carlos no is here. They dead.”

We had developed a very close relationship with Carlos over the years, and by the time I arrived at the office Karen was in tears.

“Andrew, we called down to Mexico, and Carlos is dead,” she choked. “Can you call them and find out what happened? They just kept saying “he’s dead, he’s dead.”

“Excuse me,” I ask the operator in Spanish. “I understand that Carlos passed away and we are all in shock. Is there a place we can send flowers or a card?”

“Carlos? Oh Carlos is out of the office,” the operator explained. “Today is Día de los Muertos. He’ll be back tomorrow.”

“Oh!” I say, relieved. “Our sales rep said you told her he was dead. What did you say to her in English?"

“I told her ‘Carlos no is here. Day Dead.” I laugh and thank her for the help.

When I explain that “Day of the Dead” is Mexico’s holiday to celebrate the lives of the deceased, tenseness in the room subsides and we all go back to work, happy that our friend south of the border was merely enjoying a day off from work and not actually gone for good.

As the global market continues to broaden and our audiences demand more multilingual options, it’s important to remember that good communication starts with a good foundation of knowledge about culture. If you’re not careful, someone could end up dead, or on holiday, depending on the context.

How politics will impact how we mail in 2012

Randy Weiler — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 07:47:40 -0800

Postal officials have said that, without help, the USPS will default on several payments to the federal government and will be $10 billion in the red as of September 2011. They have already stopped contributing to the Federal Employee Retirement System account and are now targeting 120,000 jobs for layoffs by 2015. The Postal Service also wants to increase postage rates, reduce delivery days, increase delivery time and adjust its network infrastructure to respond to declining mail volumes.

What does this mean to those of us who send mail?

First off, we don’t know how many of the USPS proposals will come to fruition or the timing of their implementation. However, with the recent support by President Obama for a phase out of Saturday mail delivery in 2013, staggered early retirement of postal employees and partial forgiveness and alteration to the USPS funding of its retirement plan, it is a safe bet that significant change is coming.

Now the USPS wants to lengthen mail delivery time for First Class Mail from 1-3 days to 2-3 days. Coupled with a drastic size reduction of its distribution network, this could have a huge impact.

If First Class Mail doesn’t move overnight, the delivery time of other classes of mail will also lengthen as they often share transportation. With fewer trucks to transport mail, fewer machines to sort mail and fewer employees in general, it is reasonable to believe that delivery time for Standard Class mail and periodicals will increase by 10-20%.

Our take: Plan on slower mail delivery by the Postal Service in 2012. Standard Mail delivery time could lengthen by as much as three days; First Class delivery by a day.

USPS files for Postage Increase Effective January, 22 2012: As expected the United States Postal Service filed to raise Postage Rates effective January 22, 2012 The price of a first class stamp will increase from $.44 to $.45.

Standard mail letter pricing will increase on average 1.9% increasing rates from $00369 - $.00519. First Class letter pricing will increase on average 2.133% increasing rates $.00725 - $.01.

Elimination of Saturday Mail Delivery: This USPS agenda item has been gaining steam. Despite new support, it would require an act of Congress to happen. The potential of Congress to pass a bill allowing the USPS to eliminate Saturday delivery is becoming more likely, but, if this happens, implementation probably would not happen until 2013.

Distribution Network Consolidation: This USPS proposal will study mail volume at all USPS Mail Processing Facilities and, if implemented, could decrease the number of facilities by more than 300.The volume studies will take two or three months to complete. Implementation of this proposal will begin shortly thereafter. Once implemented, this plan may result in slower mail delivery.

5 Minutes Inside the Mind of a Hacker Group Project Manager

Tara Wingo — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 07:59:20 -0800

Where is my TC with those LMs?
My phone’s ringing…answer it or ignore? Ummm…voicemail for sure.
What color pen should I use today? Green, Blue, Pink, ORANGE!
Did I update my schedule for status? It’s in 5 minutes…
Print status
Oh, something shiny…
Print status!
Is that a shiny paperclip? What does THAT belong to? Everything should be clipped together.
Really, where is my TC?
Printer down. Shocker. Call IT
Why is SHE calling me? She never calls me. I’ll call her back after status.
Seriously, what does that paperclip belong to?
What’s the point of having a TC if I need to go get my LMs myself?
I have a package upstairs, apparently. Pick it up after status.
Why hasn’t the vendor called me back with that schedule? Doesn’t she know I have status in 3 minutes? They’re going to ask. They always ask.
I need those LMs for status. Where IS he?
The other printer is down, too???!?! Ok, troubleshoot. Use yesterday’s status and write the updates by hand.
Why isn’t the vendor picking up? I need the new schedule!
WHO REMOVED THIS PAPERCLIP?!
Is this coffee from today or yesterday? Oh well, down the hatch.
EWWWW! Yesterday. Definitely yesterday.
Get coffee after status.
Where is my TC?!?!?! I’m about to lose my $^@*# mind!
I can TOTALLY straighten this paperclip all the way out…wonder what other shapes I can make?
1 minute till my meeting. Do I have everything?
Yes, everything but my LMs. This is ridiculous. Now I have to run around and look for them myself?!
Unreal!
Oh, wait, what’s that right here on my desk? How long have these been here? Why aren’t they clipped together?
(Aloud) Does anyone have a paperclip?

The other side of evangelism

Jill Kaufman — Tue, 11 Oct 2011 10:49:56 -0800

Evangelical; adjective. Also, e•van•gel•ic. 1. pertaining to or in keeping with the gospel and its teachings. 2. Marked by ardent or zealous enthusiasm for a cause.

I am evangelical about Netflix. I am a loyal and enthusiastic member. And they have been a great client to Hacker Group. One of the things that is core to any strategic discussion about Netflix is the passion among their member base.

These past few weeks since Reed Hastings sent his email to members that started tongues wagging, we’ve seen the other side of evangelical.

Netflix is a brilliant company, and Reed Hastings is a founder who changed the way that we think about movies. Not so many years ago, watching movies at home meant driving to Blockbuster, or before that, to a local video rental store. Movies ran $3 a day, and late fees abundant. The value, convenience and consumerism that Netflix advanced were revolutionary and sparked passion. And they just kept getting better.

It was pretty surprising to see how many news media, blog posts and newsletters took to harping on the Netflix news. The day of Reed’s email was the crescendo of bashing Netflix buzz. But it didn’t stop there. While they only dominated the news one day, stories and opinion pieces have persisted for weeks. And that’s what got me wondering about the other side of evangelism.

A few years ago when Blockbuster took their business online, critics were ready to rule Netflix out. The offline and online combination of Blockbuster combined by their low monthly rate seemed unbeatable. Not to mention their million dollar Super Bowl attack on the iconic red DVD mailer. Netflix took the high road. And won. This was just one of several times that the conventional wisdom seemed ready (and wrongly) to predict Netflix failure.

They tripped. The Qwikster decision and announcement were mistakes. Reed had a strong belief that the two sides of their business really should be split. Think about how often he’s been wrong in the past. Not often, if ever. People were simply too passionate about the core Netflix offering and brand to support this big of a change. They’d survive, but with tarnish. So, they changed course again and now Netflix will remain Netflix.

Maybe all of the criticism was a healthy and virtual intervention meant to be constructive. It sure didn’t feel that way. It seemed more like an opportunity to criticize success.

Either way, my money’s on Netflix.

I’m glad you asked

Spyro Kourtis — Wed, 05 Oct 2011 06:27:51 -0800

I had a great time talking with the people who attended my session at the DMA!

I always find I learn more by preparing to speak and then discussing the topic than I ever would by attending even the best possible sessions. So I’m very grateful I had the opportunity to present.

Since I was talking about multi-channel marketing, it’s not surprising that I got a couple of questions about attributing results to specific channels. Sometimes this is a bigger issue than it needs to be because getting credit is a political problem within siloed organizations. But, regardless of the politics, it always seems important to know exactly who did what and got what result. You need to know if you’re spending too much or too little in a particular area.

My answer is always to establish the rules before the campaign so you don’t get bogged down in an ugly fight afterward. You may not be 100% accurate – in fact, I guarantee you won’t be completely accurate – but over time you’ll figure out what’s having an impact and what isn’t.

People were also interested in our ability to measure each channel on its own. (This is a different issue from attributing sales to a particular channel.) If you’re delivering a DRTV campaign with mail follow-up, you need to measure which one drove which phone calls or web visits. Don’t aggregate by response channel. This is how you can learn what’s driving response and what isn’t – even if you can’t completely track one responder all the way through to the sale.

Session attendees also seemed surprised to learn that mobile display ads CAN drive leads in a multi-step campaign. It’s not just a click to call idea. But you have to think through where you’re going to send your responders. Make sure your landing page is mobile-ready.

If you attended the session, thanks! I learned a lot.

An extended brand aura for direct marketing

Jenifer Joyce — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 10:22:20 -0800

The “convergence marketing” session at DMA 2011 by Richard Rosen reminded me of a tweet I read yesterday that said “it looks like direct marketers are more concerned about brand than general agencies are.”

Rosen is talking about taking the best of brand and direct and converging these two disciplines.

The Rosen Velocity Scale that shows the convergence is a "process tool to drive and measure the speed in which the communication stimulates an interaction between the individual and the brand via all media."

So, on a scale of 1-10 with 1 on extreme brand side and 10 as extreme direct, you can build brand anywhere from 1-10. The higher the number, the more “velocity.” Rosen’s example is the Chrysler new launch of the 300 that’s just pure visual, no copy. He ranks it a 1. With a little more copy it could be a 3.

That’s a metric for you. Am I being too snarky? It’s not “measuring the speed in which the communication stimulates an interaction.” It’s a subjective label.

Rosen showed the Chrysler 200 Super Bowl ad evoking empathy and called it amazing, but it cost $9 million. “Can we, as evolved brand and evolved direct marketers, find a way to do something better?” Demonstrating the next step in the sales process, he flashed a website with pages showing cars and prices. This is "classic stuff to sell a car" – but not in a good way.

The job of the commercial is to take me from point A to point B in the sales process. (Or point 1 to 2 on the velocity scale.) Then the next job is to get me from point 2 to point 3. It’s all very linear. Very much like the sales funnel we’ve all seen.

And that leaves me wondering . . . if you always have to start at 1 and move through this continuum, how do you know where your customer is? And do you stop when you start getting results? (Side note: Later in the presentation, he seemed to advocate starting at 3 and running campaigns through 7 because performance decreases at levels 9-10.)

Rosen’s examples provided what he calls an "extended brand aura" – the extra things brands do to get positive attention. Triscuits distributed postcards with seeds embedded in them to help show that they aren’t necessarily the big, processed food you might have thought. Pedigree dog food created the Pedigree Foundation that donates dog food when you click on a link in their website.

It seems to me that this demonstrates branding . . . but where was the sales success? What’s the convergence here?

I still don't understand how you can do more with less in Rosen’s process. I guess I’ll find the “velocity” side of his scale elsewhere at the DMA.

If you saw this session and disagree with my opinion, I hope you’ll let me know in the comments.

What's working in email now?

Jenifer Joyce — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 08:27:33 -0800

Who doesn’t love “what works” articles, books and conference sessions? The yes or no. Do this. Don’t do that. It appeals to our need to draw a line somewhere.

That was the DMA 2011 session with Jay Schwedelson on email. I took a ton of notes.

Here are some highlights:

Pre-headers: Do they matter? Emails that utilize the first line of a preheader for an offer generate a 19% higher open rate. You can use preheaders for offers or for extensions of your subject line. Lands End says: plus free shipping. Best buy does it too – for example, giving a new offer for Xbox.

Jay advocates A/B testing. I don't think that’s enough.

Multiple touches doesn’t mean multiple messages. Multiple touch is about different extensions of the same offer. For example, a reminder that the offer ends today will build a sense of urgency.

Personalizing the name in the preheader increases the open rate by 12%.

Deactivation emails deliver an average 54% open rate! Try putting “we miss you” in subject line or preheader.

Forms have an 85% abandon rate. It seems some of us are overly obsessed with the click. We should focus on the landing page.

Trigger or behavioral emails are based on how customers behave after abandoning their carts. Unfortunately, 24% of cart abandoners are gone for good. Remarketing emails will not have an impact here. On average, shopping cart emails generate a 600% increase in click activity vs. regular emails. However, if you send your email within an hour of the “behavior,” unsubscribe goes up 1000%. Don’t creep them out!

Here’s a B2B trick: Having a photo of your report or white paper boosts click activity by 21%. And keep that image consistent on the landing page, too.

You have to love a session that keeps the promise of its title! I got the facts – with the data to back it up.

What the DMA taught me about the Twitterverse

Matthew Knuth — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 08:04:34 -0800

Let me confess from the beginning . . . I’m not a power Twitter user. So Biz Stone’s presentation at DMA 2011 was pretty interesting to me.

Here are a few ideas I got:

Twitter will become more prevalent for evaluating products and services. I never would have thought of it that way. I think of it as more of a broadcast medium. But, it’s absolutely true that you can go on Twitter and search for a company and hear everything that people think about them. Good and bad.

People are using Twitter to connect with companies. Again, I suppose I thought people followed companies kind of like they follow celebrities, just to see what’s up. But consumers actually expect (or at least hope) they’re making a connection. When they direct a tweet to a company, the assumption is that they’ll get a real response.

Companies are becoming more adept at using Twitter to solicit information and responding to customers. This follows from the evaluation idea, above. If people are talking about your products, you need to be there clearing up the misinformation or making amends or saying thank you. You can also research yourself and your competitors, just like consumers do.

People comment because they care. If they didn’t care, they wouldn’t say anything. Don’t be discouraged by negative comments. It’s easier to spin negative into positive, because you have an engaged customer. It’s the customers who don’t tell you when they’re not happy who are the problem.

What can Facebook do for marketers?

Matt Witter — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 07:09:03 -0800

I previously wrote a blog post in which I was skeptical of Facebook’s ability to acquire new customers. Rather, I thought Facebook was a pure retention and loyalty play.

Based on last night’s DMA 2011 Keynote, Facebook is fine tuning its pitch to demonstrate an ability to acquire new customers and to help businesses grow.

Grady Burnett (who really wants you to know he played tennis at Michigan), Vice President of Global Marketing Solutions for Facebook made three important points:

*The new Sponsored Stories helps companies tap into its loyalist to recommend and sell. In fact research shows that consumers are 4X more likely to purchase from a company that they see a friend endorsing

*He unveiled new Page Insights which provide better tracking (sounds vaguely like ROI to me)

*Finally, he showed a series of case studies which demonstrated the power of Facebook to drive new customers for brands like 1-800-Flowers and Levis.

So, was I wrong originally or just prescient?”

Lifecycle modeling in a dying industry

Jenifer Joyce — Mon, 03 Oct 2011 14:29:05 -0800

Jennifer Schulties, Senior Marketing Manager at Martha Stewart Living and Keith Bergendorff of Publishers Clearing House Analytical Services talked about predictive modeling solutions in a single model in a DMA 2011 session I attended today.

They call it lifecycle modeling across channels for acquisition and retention.

My take? They are in a difficult place.

Schulties laid out the problems: poor payment on sweeps, deteriorating bottom tier response on direct marketing, shifting renewal behavior, unfavorable insert response. Ouch.

She tried a daily giveaway and got more traffic and subscriptions, but at lower value. So, she created a model around what products customers paid for and how often they paid and learned that 45% of sweeps players paid 2x more than bad payers.

It’s always helpful to learn who not to market to.

Then she tried a 32-page bookalog, with a very compelling offer: free trial with a premium. Of course, with a free trial, payment is delayed. Could a “megamodel” help determine what offers will make low responders respond? The answer is “yes, but we still have problems.” They can get a 25% lift over the control, but the premium is more trouble than it’s worth. So they may cut marketing to this tier altogether.

It’s also helpful to learn what offers not to make.

What about testing those reply cards that flutter out of magazines you buy at the newsstand? Unfortunately, it takes a year to find out what worked, because it all really depends on annual renewals.

Is there any good news?

Both Schulties and Bergendorff spend substantially more on acquisition than renewals. Schulties targets primarily magazine subscriber lists, but what with all the magazine closures, the list universe is diminishing. So now she must find new list sources and score them in advance to help improve results.

Bergendorff evaluates list sources by customer lifetime value – so he knows a list is a success after 24 month period. Yikes!!!

My perception: these publishers have to wait too long for results and haven’t really mined the data the way they could.