The Marketing Observer

emails that damage customer loyalty

The Marketing Observer returns!

Today I received an email with lots of nice shiny looking gadgets on it.
I liked the look of one of them so I clicked on the link.

I was then dumped unceremoniously onto the homepage of the emailer's website.
The product that I was interested in wasn't featured on the homepage.
And I couldn't immediately see how to reach it via the navigation...

How many times does that happen?

What a waste of marketing time and resources to send that email out!
Even, worse, they risk damaging any feelings of loyalty towards them.

All it takes is the marketers and emailers to communicate properly...

A transitory world

This is a post of contrasts!

The other day I resolved to get my blog back up and running and then I found that TypePad wouldn't let me upload anything.  This has been well documented... here and officially here

This occured after I was talking with a chap from be the brand experience - an MRM provider - about this blog.  The call was due to an ancient post I made on e-consultancy (www.e-consultancy.com).  What is surprising is that I am one of only 2 people to actually post on MRM on e-consutlancy. 

For those of you who don't know MRM stands for Marketing Resource Management and is the term to describe the marketing back office systems that larger organisations need to make marketing work effectively.  It is a growing field of software and services that probably hasn't reached the critical mass it deserves within the marketing community.

• An aside here about the use of URLs and branding - I couldn't remember the URL for be the brand and tried looking it up on Google, yahoo, MSN etc - couldn't find a thing.  Eventually found the URL - http://www.be-thebrand.com/ - not exactly intuitive chaps - and  no PPC or SEO effort to make sure it came up when I searched for "be the brand" on the search engines.  Morale of the tale - if you cannot get the right URL then change the company name.
  

The other thing to mention is that due to my inability instantly to sate my desire to post on my blog (albeit after a long layoff), I have lost the transitory point I wished to make.  You cannot imagine how frustrating that is!!!!   Must have been too many beers with Freddie on Friday night.

o2 turning away customers

You know when organisations start to spurn customers for no good reason that things are not going well.

O2 recently turned down someone I know on completely spurious grounds it seems to me. Deciding she wanted an o2 phone because they offered the best reception at  work, contact was made with o2.

After going almost the whole way through the application process, o2 then stated that the address was incorrect as it wasn't on their database.  This was an address that had been lived in by this person for 9 years!  However, unlike every customer service person I have ever had dealings with, they refused to overwrite the address data.  They stated that they had to email Royal Mail for them to update the PAF file.  After about a week the data should be updated an another application to be a customer could be made!!!!!!!

This seems bizarre to me - what company outsources its marketing data to the Royal Mail.  Bless 'em, they try hard but the PAF file is, at best, 90% accurate.

To compound the general misery of this tale, a quick check on the Royal Mail website would have shown o2 that the address was prefectly valid.

A customer turned away unnecessarily, due to poor process.

Further note: this situation applies whether online or by telephone.  At least they're consistently crap!

whither Ocado customer service?

I have to confess I like shopping.  I know this is unusual in a man, but I do!  Probably something to do with shopping in the market in Salisbury when small...
With supermarket shopping I feel the need to select my own vegetables and meat and not just pick the first pack of whatever ready meal comes to hand.  However, with no car we have to rely on online supermarket delivery services.
Having used J.Sainsbury (for commentary on their fall from grace look at 173drurylane) and Tesco in the early days, we switched a couple of years ago to Ocado.  As many have said Ocado is the best of the bunch.  Indeed they may be a victim of their own success - they are apparently the leading online vendor in the London area.
Recently the operations director has left and, maybe coincidentally, the customer service has plummeted.  Things are damaged on delivery, the range has shrunk (I don't believe I have eclectic tastes) and worst of all is the customer support.
Over the last few weeks I have tried to ring them a number of times and found the call waiting times
running at 7-20 minutes! This is worse than BT and the cable companies, and that is saying something.  So you might think, what about email - they can answer that in quiet periods so you'll get an answer inside 24 hours.  WRONG! - the last one took over a week because I sent them an HTML formatted email (the default outlook setting)...
Roll on the new Waitrose store in Bloomsbury, so I can abandon Ocado..

London gets a mile of free Wi-Fi

As an Islington resident, albeit not one close enough to benefit, I am really pleased that the local council has set up a mile long wi-fi zone on Upper Street - also known as restaurant alley.

A while back whilst working for TBWA\GGT (now Tequila\London) I investigated the possibility of advertising on splash pages provided by Wi-Fi hot spot providers.  I wonder how this market has moved on, as I could not find a provider who would do such a thing, although it was deemed feasible.  Maybe now's the time?

 

Now my bank is spamming me - on my phone

I have been a long standing customer of First Direct and recently signed up to SMS alerts in case anything untoward was happening to our account there.  At the same time I asked First Direct to stop sending me so much irrelevant junk mail.
As a consequence of this I am now getting spammed on my mobile phone by the bank.

Why can they not understand that I did NOT GIVE THEM PERMISSION to abuse me in this way when I signed up to the bank balance by SMS programme.  Another call to them will be required and another bit of goodwill has been lost. 
Furthermore they are not following best practice  as I cannot even unsubscribe by SMS...

Is First Direct thinking I might want a relationship with my bank...
As if!

At least I am blaming the sender in this instance.  Apparently SMS spam is a major reason to change mobile phone providers.  As ever, thanks to the Register!

Blogging Invaded by advertisers!

I am in two minds about the news that Carat has launched an advertising service specifically for blogging (see article in Brand Republic , or the Clickz equivalent).  It takes the form of a "blogger starter kit";  - Clients of Carat Interactive will get help with "blog advertising, blog creation, and blog monitoring" pretty much all of which I would have thought TypePad would fulfil quite easily, but there we go. 

A new role

I have been busy on the job front and am now the new business partner at Logan Tod & Co!  Hence the lacking of posting to the blog.

Logan Tod & Co specialise in what I would call "website conversion optimisation"!   This means that we work with clients to maximise the value they derive from their website, by improving the number of actions (eg brochure request or purchases) that the site generates.  This is done by using top notch analytic tools like Hitbox and running A/B testing to constantly improve responses.

I am delighted to join them and think it will be both great fun and an intellectual challenge.  Watch this space!

Ocado CRM email almost works

Just received what I guess would be called a CRM email from Ocado.  They are offering me £5 off if I order over £75 worth of shopping for delivery tomorrow. Great in theory, but they clearly don't understand the nature of shoppers...
I haven't stopped using them because I have gone to Tesco.com, but simply because I like seeing stuff I buy before I buy.  So, I went to Waitrose at the weekend.  The CRM systems there obviously don't link up with Ocado, unlike Tesco's integrated system.
This means that whilst I like the idea of £5 off, I don't need £75 worth tomorrow.  They should allow a longer time window for this type of promotion...
Unlike many companies with which I deal, I am happy with the idea of a relationship with Waitrose/ Ocado but there is no way for me to reply to their automated email and let them know what I think of their offer!
Having said this - Ocado do have a fantastic level of integration between DM and email.

Curriculum Vitae

Have just added my CV if anybody needs it

http://mark_pinkerton.typepad.com/Curriculum_Vitae/markpinkerton_cvm_mar05.doc