Jobs with Long Vacations

Serious marketers be fore-warned! I'm veering WAY off my normal direct marketing topics today.

I have the mid-Summer blues. Too much work; too much worrying about this dreadful economy; not enough fun. So, when the leading headline on my Yahoo home-page was: Jobs with Long Vacations, I just had to read more.

To set the stage and, possibly, to get you more disgruntled and stir-crazy:

"Compared with workers in other countries, Americans work too much. We take little time off for rest and pleasure. More than half of us don't use any vacation time at all, adding up to more than 421 million unused vacation days a year. We're workaholics.

Most Americans only earn on average 14 vacation days a year, compared with our Italian counterparts (42 days a year), the French (37), Germans (35), and Canadians (26). Even the Japanese--long considered the most over-worked people on Earth--average 25 vacation days a year. No wonder American job burnout is common from coast to coast."

So, what are the five miracle jobs that can save us from our workaholic state, those with the most time off?

1. Teachers and School Administrators. OK, I can buy that. But, after months of dealing with screaming brats, they need the rest, right?
2. Holistic Health Professionals. Such as massage therapists. Hmmm. Not for me--too touchy-feely.
3. Freelance Game Designer. Oh, if only I were so technical, and imaginative. I think I'm too old to learn these new tricks. Darn.
4. Convention and Tourism Planner. Now this one sounds like fun! Right up my alley.
5. Business Consultant. Oh no--wait just one minute! This sounds like my very own profession. What the heck am I doing wrong????

In all seriousness, I DO have a vacation planned late September (Maui for my honeymoon!). It's important to balance work with fun. Workaholics definitely are NOT fun...

Watch out for those Gamma Women!

I'm thrilled! There's another new segment for us direct marketing practitioners to target: The Gamma Women.

"Gamma women share and exchange information, ideas, opinions, contacts and recommendations with their wide-reaching network using multiple media and channels of communication. This is in sharp contrast to the ‘Alpha’ style of communication – a top down model of selectively passing along information. While a Gamma’s sense of self is guided by her internal beliefs, passions, and priorities, an Alpha is driven by external social hierarchies or other indicators of status or popularity."

This quote from an EarthTimes article about a study recently released by Meredith Corporation, the media and marketing company that targets American women.

I think they're on to something. Women typically are 'sharers'. If we (and I know I'm part of this bold group!) find something (a product, a service) we like, we talk about it. We tell our friends, our family--we become the biggest advocates. Of course, the opposite is also true. If we have a bad experience, we'll spread that news, too.

The traits of this newly defined 'gamma woman' lend themselves almost perfectly to social marketing. The study shows that we like to communicate, and we don't like to be sold to. We look for relevant content and we're all about building networks to share our info with. Yep, we Gammas are a social marketer's dream.

Not only are these Gamma Women perfect for the world of social media, they're a large group (55 million women!). What an opportunity!

"The report forecasts that, as the social and technological environment in which they exist becomes more and more suited to their communication and interaction styles, Gammas’ influence in the marketplace will continue to increase."

Moral of this story--don't forget to include specific programs and tactics that will appeal to these Gamma Women as you develop your direct marketing strategies.

Marketing Case Study: Email and Segmentation

Last week we had a nice discussion about the new environmental guidelines for direct marketers, just introduced by the Green Marketing Coalition. One of my suggested additions to their guidelines was to incorporate marketing channels that do not require paper. Another suggested addition was to better target mailings, again to reduce the amount of paper used.

Well, this case study, coming to us from BtoB Magazine is an excellent example of doing both of these things--moving from DM to email marketing AND using segmentation to better target campaigns. Thought you'd be interested.

Background and Initial Results:
E-mail marketing has been a boon to Analog Devices, a manufacturer of semiconductors and supporting products for signal processing applications. Five years ago, the company started testing e-mail marketing against direct marketing and saw an instant winner, said David Kruh, direct and database marketing manager for Analog Devices.

“It cost us about $1 per piece to print and mail a brochure, but it only costs about one cent to send an e-mail,” he said. “Furthermore, e-mail is trackable. ... When we tested e-mail versus direct mail, we found we were getting hundreds-of-times-better response rates for e-mail marketing.”

Fine-tuning the Program:
But as successful as e-mail marketing had been for his company, Kruh knew he could do even better. Working with e-mail service provider Experian CheetahMail, Analog Devices revamped its program, focusing on list segmentation, extensive testing, personalization and the use of affinity analysis, a graphically based data analysis tool that uncovers common behaviors, relationships and characteristics of people who buy specific items.

For list segmentation, Kruh split his list into two distinct groups: one he termed “tire-kickers,” who fall into the hobbyist or student category, and the other more influential group that includes designers and consultants. He did so to help his salespeople gain better-quality leads, he said.

“We’d send out our ‘Solutions Bulletin’ and some months get 3,000 requests for samples, But the sales didn’t follow the requests,” he said.

After digging deeper, Kruh’s team saw that the people who purchased most often were also the ones who clicked through to fewer links. “The more activity we saw in terms of clicks, the less we saw in terms of revenue,” he said. “It makes sense. Who has time to go clicking around a Web site? Hobbyists, students, and people at smaller companies or research facilities.”

Kruh ceased sending direct mail to the unprofitable group; at the same time, he started sending specific, targeted e-mail messages to the profitable group. He also tested dayparting and personalization for both groups. Doing so revealed that Thursdays beat Tuesdays by 15% across the board. He also learned that sending a message at midnight beat midday by 10%, and that sending messages at midnight resulted in one-third fewer unsubscribes.

“The way we see it is engineers come to work, have coffee and read their e-mail to get their days started,” he said. “By noon, things are piling up for them and they don’t have time to read our messages.”

Results:
Personalizing messages—a strategy that Experian CheetahMail encouraged but Kruh initially resisted—has also helped significantly, translating into 10% to 60% higher click-through rates.

The final piece to the e-mail puzzle, Kruh said, has been affinity database analysis, which helps the company figure out, for example, what other parts someone who buys an amplifier is likely to buy.

“In 2007 we ran a campaign to introduce a new sensor amplifier. We got 25% better click-through rates with the affinity populations than with the folks who were previous amplifier purchasers,” he said. “Part of what we believe is people who are already buying our amplifiers know all about them, so the information we are sending is not of as much interest.”

Direct Marketing Links

Email Trends through 2013
From our friend, Daryl Clark of Internet Search Marketing, comes this link to a webinar (and as an added bonus, a white paper from the Economist) that provides trends and best practices for email marketing. Very valuable info!

Green Direct Mail
Chris Hansen posts an excellent re-cap of the recently announced Green Marketing Coalition on his MarketGreener blog. It gave me some food for thought and is a nice complement to my post yesterday on the same topic.

Deceptive Direct Mail?
Another direct mail topic--this one from the Direct Creative Blog. They've presented an example of an official-looking package with quasi-governmental and tax implications, that, as a matter of fact is a mortgage solicitation. Blog author, Dean Rieck, poses the question--is this deceptive direct marketing or a clever sales tactic? I've posted my opinion by commenting on his blog...

Leading with Your Heart, and Succeeding in Business
Almost directly opposite from the type of misleading advertising discussed above, is this post from Lewis Green. He discusses his "business model that places people's happiness before all other business metrics, including ROI, profits and revenues." Hint--not only is this an effective way to do business, but you'll sleep great at night, too.

Real-Time Data Mining
A very interesting perspective can be found on the Customer World blog. The author, Sivaraman Swaminathan, discusses the need for companies to act quickly--and appropriately--on customer transaction information. I look forward to the day when companies use what they know about us to really serve us (and not just to sell to us, or in the case on the blog-post--collect from us).

Have a great weekend! I'm planning on enjoying some good Oregon microbrews (even though I'm a wine lover, but heck, the Brewfest is this weekend!).

Green Direct Marketing: An Oxymoron?

I'm always a bit frightened when direct marketing, as a topic, makes the NY Times. Usually, the piece will not be all that supportive of our industry. A data breach, identify theft, how to stop your junk mail--those are the usual suspect topics.

So, this article, that extends some grudging respect towards a group of direct marketers who are trying to bring an attention to the environment to the direct marketing industry surprised me a little bit. From the article:

A group of direct-marketing companies, along with a handful of their corporate clients, are banding together to make an inherently unsustainable practice at least a little bit greener.

The group calls itself the Green Marketing Coalition, and it includes Microsoft, Washington Mutual and OptimaHealth. Not all the companies involved are big mailers, but they share the sentiment that there should be best-practices guidelines for the direct mail business, which has been vilified even before global warming became a hot topic.

“This industry just didn’t have any real green standards,” said Spyro Kourtis, president of the Hacker Group, the Seattle direct-marketing company that headed the Green Marketing Coalition. “So we figured we could set some that vendors and clients and others could all live with.”

So, what exactly are these guidelines, brought to us by the Green Marketing Coalition? I'll summarize:

1. Use recycled paper, chlorine-free preferred.
2. Choose vendors with internal environmental initiatives.
3. Use UV Printing presses and comply with hazardous waste disposal standards.
4. Improve list hygiene and data management (now, that's one I can get behind!).
5. Proof and edit using PDF instead of hard copy print-outs.

I hate to say it, but I have to agree with this NY Times commentary on the guidelines...

So far, the coalition’s guidelines are long on earnestness and short on truly new ideas.

The cynical side of me is also a little mad that the group called the following "guideline" a guideline.

"Companies can benefit from the tax savings associated with going green. Go to www.cted.wa.gov/site/974/default.aspx for more information."

I'd like to propose that more guidelines (real guidelines!) be added. Here's my start:

• Make sure that you've explored all channels, with an emphasis on those that don't require paper. Social marketing, e-marketing, telemarketing, mobile marketing, etc. all have a place in the direct marketing strategy. Get out of that direct mail rut.
  
• Get a handle on customer preferences--try to find out if someone absolutely hates receiving postal mail (you might actually ask them). If they don't want junk mail, stop sending them stuff, immediately.
• Do a better job of targeting, and commit to it. Make it your goal to cut out 1/3 of those you're mailing, just by targeting the right people. We've built models that cut out over 30% of non-responders, with no lessening of responses/sales. Yes, it can be done.
  
• Test smaller, less elaborate formats. Do you really need the letter, the brochure, the call-to-action card, the response envelope (does anyone use these anymore?) etc?
• Let your people tele-commute. Do they really need to be sitting in your cubicle to do their job? Let them save on gas and stress by working from home.

I love the fact that this industry is looking for ways to be more environmentally-friendly. Every little bit helps, right? My hope is that this is just a start and that we'll see more initiatives, with quantifiable goals.

Direct Marketing Employment News

Just yesterday, Bernhart Associates published their quarterly survey results that gauge the state of the direct marketing industry, in terms of hiring and employment trends.

No surprise--the news isn't great. From the press release:

The direct marketing employment outlook has taken a turn for the worse with employers planning more cutbacks in hiring this summer, according to the latest Bernhart Associates employment survey.

According to the survey, 47% of the companies responding said they plan to add to staff during the current third quarter, a decline of 7% from last quarter and the first reading below 50% since 2002.

But, for those analytically-inclined specialists, and those in sales or e-commerce, there is some good news:

"We always ask companies to list the positions they expect to fill during the coming three months," said Bernhart (Jerry Bernhart, President). "This time around the list was top-heavy with analytics, with both sales and e-commerce related openings a close second."

I'd love to hear if these survey results mirror what you're seeing out there.

Case Study: Small Business Website Optimization

As a small-business owner, I thought I would focus today's case study on a common challenge for small businesses. How does a small business boost website traffic, hence boosting overall visibility?

Your company website is the best way for prospective customers to get to know you. Plus, an informative and well-designed website can be a great equalizer. A small business is lucky in that if they are clever enough, and if they spend their time and money wisely, they can build their web presence to make them compete very effectively against huge corporations.

Today's case study is brought to us from Marketing Science, a marketing consulting firm that focuses on helping small businesses realize success. This case study and others can be found on their website. I like this story because it provides practical advice about how a small business can boost organic search results.

Client: Paage Et Cie Ltd.

Industry: Personal Management & Organization Services

Business Problems: Although a highly successful small business for 15 years, the 3 year old company website was receiving near ZERO natural (organic) search traffic.

The company's Internet presence was invisible to prospective clients. The website infrastructure (Meta tags, headings, keywords, etc.) was poorly designed from an Online marketing standpoint and was not optimized at all for search engine traffic or search engine marketing effectiveness.

Problem Summary:

• Site was designed to be visually appealing , but unknowingly at the expense of marketing performance
• No Meta Tags
• Used One Title tag for all 25 pages of website - a major "no no"
• Traffic was poor, only receiving referral visits by word-of mouth from a few friends and associates
• Very low keyword density

Goals: Management wanted to maximize growth potential Online by adding PPC (pay per click) search marketing and SEO (Search Engine Optimization). Client also wanted increase sales of a booklet Online from the website.

Marketing Solution: Marketing Science implemented a full service Search Engine Optimization and Search Marketing Campaign. Setup and optimized Google AdWords and Yahoo Search Marketing accounts for pay per click advertising, including:

• Create and implement a website marketing plan (SEO, article marketing, content development strategy, etc.)
• Create website content that uniquely positions client
• Keyword research, keyword selection, keyword optimization
• Search engine optimization & search engine marketing techniques
• Integrated ecommerce shopping cart in client website to sell booklets from website

Results to Date: The results since the late summer of 2007 have been impressive. Website went from receiving roughly 50 unique visitors per week to an average of 42 unique visitors per day! Booklet sales have also increased by 330%.