These Are A Few of My Favorite Things

From time-to-time I’m asked what information I keep in touch with.  A few of my favorites include:

Web Sites

Advertising Age – http://adage.com/

AdWeek http://www.adweek.com/

Creative Magazine http://www.creativemag.com/

Marketing Week http://www.marketingweek.co.uk/ 

DMA Organization News http://www.the-dma.org/news/

B toB – The Magazine for Marketing Strategists http://www.btobonline.com/

Chief Marketer http://chiefmarketer.com

Direct Marketing News http://www.dmnews.com/

Ad News http://www.adnews.com/

Campaign Magazine http://www.campaignlive.co.uk/go/news/

PR Week http://www.prweek.com/

CNET  http://www.cnet.com

American Marketing Association  http://www.ama.org

WSJ CMO Today  http://www.wsj.com/news/cmo-today

CMO http://www.cmo.com

HubSpot  http://www.hubspot.com

Engadget    http://www.engadget.com

Tech Crunch   http://techcrunch.com

eConsultancy   https://econsultancy.com

Chief Marketer   http://www.chiefmarketer.com

Social Media Examiner    http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com

Talent Zoo   http://www.talentzoo.com

Twitter

@wsjcmo

@cmo_council

@britopian 

@pkfletcher

@TimHanlon 

@siriusdecisions

@rishad

@mmaglobal

@charlenli

@tedtalks

@timsuther

@sesamestreet

@bogusky 

@mckquarterly

LinkedIn Groups

Digital Marketing

Marketing Communications

eMarketing Association Network

Executive Suite

Marketing & Communications News

Apple vs. The US Government

The Justice Departments filings demanding Apple unlock one of the San Bernadino Gunman’s iPhone is a challenge for CEO Tim Cook and the Apple team.  Cook addressed customers in a letter  describing Apple’s strong views of customer privacy, etc.  Google, Yahoo! and others in Silicon Valley are standing with Apple on this important issue.

All of this got me thinking about how this could impact Apple’s marketing.  From my view, it’s nothing but “goodness.”  Think about it…

Apple is known for putting customer needs, preferences and privacy first… this stand supports this messaging.  Keeping customers privacy at the center of the marketing equation does nothing but strengthen Apple’s messaging.

Apple vs. Government — with all the political discussion around how broken Washington is, this fight shows corporate America will take on the US Government.  Again, strong messaging with little downside.

Losing the Battle — if Apple loses the legal war, it still looks good in that they “fought” for customer privacy.  Again, strong customer privacy messaging… little to no downside.

The Government is painting Apple as the bad guys by not fulfilling their request.  They’ve picked a moment and an opportunity to exploit the privacy issue.. Apple just happens to be the defendant in the trial.  But with new product shipping shortly, Apple’s name stays in the press and as we know… any PR is good PR.

Scott

Chat Functionality

Companies love to jump into chat — the next frontier in customer touches and service.  It sounds great, but there are things to consider, such as:

1. Where you put the chat button — the top?  the bottom?  My preference is the lower right hand corner.  It’s usually the standard on most sites, so why break the trend.  And, it stays out of the way of the left rail and top navigation areas.
2. Training — chat is not like picking up the phone.  Communicating clearly, with brevity are key aspects of chat.  And, reps should be able to carry on 2-3 sessions at the same time so juggling multiple conversations is important  Spend a great deal of time and money getting your reps trained… use a 3rd party training company.
3. Customer service skills — chat is at it’s core customer service which helps drive sales.  Your reps need to clearly be trained and compensated based on service level not sales.  Goaling on sales will create aggressive reps who will push your customers away from the purchase funnel.
4. Metrics — always measure the results.  How many sales can you confirm were made by the chat?  Customer service requests?  How many no’s for help?  How many never responded?  You must understand if you’re getting any type of return.  Don’t necessarily be concerned about sales only… cost avoidance in helping online is a benefit as well.
5. Time of day — go back to your analytics and staff based on the level of traffic you’re getting during specific times of the day.  
6. Geography coverage — are you ready to work with customers in different countries?  Should you?  Take a look at where your web traffic is coming from and staff appropriately.  Plus, if you aren’t concerned about international business, limit your chat to those country’s you are interested in.
7. Language — this is a big one.  Do you have staff who are skilled in more than one language?  If your web site is only in English I’d only use English as the language supported.  If you have a translated site, then look at the traffic on those translated pages, where are your sales coming from and decide whether the investment in multi-language support is warranted.
8. Privacy/Legal — ALWAYS have your legal department draft the appropriate language informing customers of their rights and of your policies.  
9. Where you want to chat — put the chat button the high traffic areas, vs. your long tail pages.  Staffing everywhere is inefficient and your staff is probably not going to understand all of your products, so stay where customers gather. 
10. What results do you want out of chat — define what you want upfront.  Sales?  Customer service?  This is critical as other numbers might look great - number of chat sessions are up!  The time per customer is dropping!  All sound great, but keep your original goals in mind to determine success/failure.
11. Sales expectations — keep your expectations low.  You’ll probably do more customer service type of work with chat.  But you will certainly help your customers through the sales funnel by answering questions, directing them to areas on the site and most importantly help a customer in the sales checkout process.
12. The creepy factor — personally, having someone abruptly and without warning open up a chat session with me creeps me out.  It’s a big brother thing.  Chat might actually drive customers away from your site.  Measure this as well.
13. Expect the craziest stuff —What are your hours?  How do I get in contact with Accounting?  Where’s my shipment?  Your product is terrible.  Will you donate to my kids baseball team?Do you know Bob in Marketing?  He’s my nephew.  This and more will come through your chat.
14. Trial — start small.  Put the chat button on just a few pages when you first start.  If successful, gradually expand to other pages.  This will allow you to find out how many “pages per rep” can be managed, making staffing a bit easier.
15. IT — don’t make the mistake of not including your IT staff in this process.  Security protocols could be impacted, your site will need to be modified and you need someone to help manage any technical malfunctions.

There’s a number of additional tips, but I’ll leave it here.

Scott

My Daddy is Bigger Than Your Daddy

The latest article regarding chest thumping between the AAAA’s and the ANA reminds me of two kids playing on the playground and proclaiming their Daddy is bigger than the others.

The continuing saga of transparency whether media agencies have received financial compensation from media properties has clearly drawn a line between clients and agencies.  Each seems to have taken a strong stance for each organizations constituents.  The AAAA’s issuing transparency guidelines and publicly naming clients and the ANA expressing displeasure  of the client names being released and setting up a confidential reporting hotline.

This entire situation is all about money — plain and simple.  The word transparency is just a substitute for whether agencies or clients receive the proposed media property compensation. 

At this point in the saga, I wonder if any results which come back from the auditors will be accepted by both sides of this issue.  My gut tells me this situation is far from being over…

Scott

eCommerce Tips - Part 3

1. Make if easy to get to the cart — nothing chaps my ass more than having to hunt and peck to get to the checkout cart.  And once I get into the cart, having more questions to answer and stuff to type in.  Make it easy to check out… keep the steps to a bare minimum.  Again, get em in, get em out.
2. Access to the system — an employee leaves… what if they download your customer list, credit card information, etc.?  Limit access to the system to only key staff.  And when you have the platform built talk to the developers and software company about fail safes on the system.  
3. Audit your eCommerce system — have finance audit your system for accurate reporting and integration with backend financial systems.  
4. Pay hackers to hack.  Sounds crazy, but find a security company who can hack away.  If they can get in, you’ve got a problem.  I’d also keep them on retainer to hack at intervals.  By the way, let your IT Security, Audit and Executive Management know you’re doing this.
5. Have longer term service contracts — don’t get caught without having support from your dev vendor.  Bulk up the hours you need them after the immediate release.  You’ll have issues to take care of so be sure you have those hours built in.  Put less hours on the backend of the contract as you’ll probably be in the small fix mode at that time.
6. Chat - I have mixed feelings on chat.  I love it because you can help direct and answer customer questions.  However, it can be very obtrusive if it pops up while a customer is browsing… you’ve seen it “How Can I Help You” pops up in the corner.  I get the creeps when it happens to me and I’m pretty sure others do as well. Think twice on how you implement the Chat functionality.
7. Mock Disaster Drills — just like having fire drills to prepare for the worst… do the same with your eCommerce system, processes and team.  You can determine the extent to which you want to mock a drill… get creative to stress test your system, backup servers and staff.
8. Lifetime value — ensure you are capturing all the data you’ll need to complete LTV later in the life of the eCommerce platform and business.  You won’t be able to do it when you launch but 18 months later it will be something you’ll want to do.
9. Order verification emails — it’s mandatory!  Tell your customer you’ve received the order, verify the cost, provide an order number AND Cross Sell!  Provide a coupon code, ask for more sales, show companion products they might consider.
10. Coupon codes — people love a deal.  Try different offers… 10% off, $10 off, Free Shipping, Buy 1 get the 2nd 50% off.  Provide the codes in emails, on your web site, 3rd party sites, etc.  However, you must be cognizant that your site doesn’t become the discount bin at the 99 cent store.  Use coupons in a smart way.
11. Hold the dev companies responsible — it sounds obvious, but I know company’s which do the “one and done” IT support model.  My preference, keep them on retainer for 1 year.  With the first 6 months of that having the most hours as you’ll need them to fix the launch issues.
12. Agile vs. Waterfall — Waterfall methodology will not allow you to fix issues along the development cycle.  In the end you’ll spend much more time in dev and when you launch, you’ll get a ton of surprises when stuff doesn’t work together.  Agile, will reduce the surprises at launch and keep dev moving at a solid pace.
13. Hire a full time search professional — I screwed this one up.  I should have had a search person on board full time to focus on the meta data tagging, how the search works on the site and optimizing external search.  Trust me on this… hire one early.
14. Learn to say no — you will have multiple requests for additional items to be added to your project during the dev and planning cycle.  Stay focused, say no, prioritize them later.  Get the initiatives launched successfully, then start on the other request.
15. Auto fill in — the greatest speed enhancer created by developers!  I recommend you turn it on.  Again, get them in and get them out.  The faster they can complete the information the faster to checkout.
16. Team — of everything I’ve posted, this is the MOST CRITICAL piece of the entire development and ongoing management of an eCommerce platform.  Nothing else matters, nothing will get done, it won’t get done correctly, on time, etc. without the best possible team.  I look for passion first.  If someone is passionate they’ll have the internal desire to learn, go further, drive harder and exceed any and all expectations.  Second, trust.  You must trust the team with the ability to make decisions.  Not all of those decisions will be correct… but you must have faith they’ll do what’s right given the information they have.  Third, I look for digital/eCommerce experience.  Someone who has lived through the crap it takes to pull off and manage an eCommerce platform and manage the business.  As for the incredible team I was honored to lead in the latest eCommerce business I was involved in… Colleen, Gina, Donna, Jon and Jim are my heroes.  
17. Mobile — this should already be included in the specs and dev… but ensure it’s working on day one.
18. Keep it clean —I hate sites that you must sift through to figure out what to do.  Keeping your site clean helps the customer find the product easier and get to checkout faster.
19. Worst case scenario plans — be proactive and put together your response action plans in the event your data is stolen, credit card data stolen etc.  A few key points to consider:  How do you inform management, how do you inform customers, what do you say to customers, how do you communicate with the press, hotline phone and email to answer questions, 3rd party monitoring services for free, IT development plan, etc. etc.
20. Celebrate success — you and the team might need to be medicated by the time you get the system up and running.  This is very hard and frustrating work.  The stress is intense.  Stop and celebrate along the way.

These are just a few of the things I’ve learned.  I know I’ve left some out, but I hope part 3 adds some additional tips which you find useful.  Remember parts 1 and 2 were published earlier, so check out my earlier posts.

Best of luck,

Scott

My Top Super Bowl Commercials...

It’s Super Bowl time again… when we all sit around the big screen TV and watch commercials, and a football game if actually relevant.  My top five Super Bowl Commercials of all time include:

Snickers - You’re Not You When You’re Hungry

Coke — Mean Joe Green

McDonalds - The Showdown

Volkswagon - The Force

Wendy’s — Where’s the Beef?

What’s your list?

Scott