Janet Lee Johnson | The Art of Marketing

I have had a morning full of meetings, and (in a dangerous move) am drinking my second cup of coffee this morning. I am way early (almost an hour) for a meeting with my friend Katherine, at Albina Press in Portland. I thought I’d get here early and take advantage of their free wifi and work.

Once comfortably installed at a table, I rocketed through email, answered a couple of direct messages (DM) on Twitter, retweeted (RT) one, and posted this:

Not one minute later, my phone rings, and it’s Katherine. “We are meeting at 10:30, aren’t we?” She saw my Tweet and hoped she wasn’t late.

Talk about immediacy of conversations…

With the new administration in Washington comes a hope I can feel and see with my own eyes.

1. One of my favorite positions on the Obama team is that of Director of New Media, headed by Macon Phillips.
2. He’s one of the new contributors to the Whitehouse.gov blog  - which is (according to Macon) about Communication, Transparency, and Participation - after all, “Just like your new government, WhiteHouse.gov and the rest of the Administration’s online programs will put citizens first.”
3. According to the contact form (!) on the site, “President Obama is committed to creating the most open and accessible administration in American history.”

My tiny nit is that you can’t comment on the blog posts, but throughout the Whitehouse.gov site, there are statements that lead me to believe we’ll be able to participate online for the Obama administration to see that participatory government (voting often on issues, expressing our feelings, opinions and fears) will be just what this country needs to “get back to leading.”

Yes, we can!

Here’s a little cautionary tale for those who’re interested in selling online. I was staying with friends this weekend and witnessed (almost) first hand the frustrations of a poorly implemented web site design for shoppers. It went like this (with only the names and addresses of my friends altered to protect the innocent):

Setting the stage: two of Sam’s granddaughters are 4-year-old twins, and she delights in Christmas gift giving - always equally. When the family was packing up from their Christmas visit, someone discovered that one of the girls’ Disney Fairies Queen Clarion Porcelain Dolls was broken.

Sam, being the generous and thoughtful grandmother that she is, went online to find another one. And the first result in her Google search was a listing from Toy Store Inc. offering the doll. When you follow the link and arrive on their site, they look fairly legitimate, so she gave them her VISA card and filled out the billing information and the shipping information, all of which they requested. And she enthusiastically waited to hear that her order had arrived at Mary’s.

And the first email arrived.

Sat, Jan 3, 2009 at 1:36 PM, ::Toy Store Inc.::  <sales@toystoreinc.com> wrote:

Thank you for your recent order. Below is your confirmation that  we received your order. Please review the information below and notify us immediately if you  have any questions.

Customer Service ::Toy Store Inc.:: sales@toystoreinc.com

————————————————————–
ORDER CONFIRMATION                    Invoice No. 7978

Bill To:
[Sam]
[Sam's address]

US Ship To:
[Mary and the Twins]
[Mary's Address]

US Order Date:        1/3/09
Payment By:        Visa
Confirmation No:   []
Shipment Tracking:  ::Toy Store Inc.:: Items
1 Disney Fairies Queen Clarion Porcelain Doll 10″  @  $39.99 = $39.99 Sub-Total: $39.99
Shipping:  $12.00 (Standard) Sales Tax: $0.00 ::Toy Store Inc.:: Total: $51.99   .      –
http://www.toystoreinc.com
where your toys get delivered

(JLJ: Notice their tagline: where your toys get delivered)

Another email arrived just a few days later:
To: Sam
Subject: Fwd: Order Confirmation  Begin forwarded message:
From: “Toy Store Inc” <sales@toystoreinc.com>
Date: January 8, 2009 12:02:21 PM PST
To: Sam

Subject: Re: Order Confirmation

Hello,
We do not ship this item other then the billing address. We have  cancel your order and give you a full refund. Thank you
Jennifer

(I had a look at their policy page here: http://smub.it/janet/toystoreshipping, and nowhere does it state that they do not ship items other then the billing address.)

Well, then Sam had a bit to say:

Friday, January 09, 2009 6:24 AM
To: ’sales@toystoreinc.com’
Subject: RE: Order Confirmation

In all the hundreds of times that I have ordered items through  the internet, I have never heard of something so ridiculous; YOUR  SITE HAS BOTH BILLING AND SHPPING SECTIONS TO COMPLETE.  And in  any case, if you insist that you must deliver items only to the  billing address, why wouldn’t you ask whether I would like the  item shipped there - which I do - Send it to me and I’ll mail it  myself.  I do not want the order cancelled.  I want the item.   Please process and confirm.
Thank you.

January 13, 2009 5:42:13 AM PST
To: Toy Store Inc <sales@toystoreinc.com>
Cc: Sam

Subject: Fwd: Order Confirmation

Will you please advise whether you are processing my order - I  want this item.

January 15, 2009 5:39:35 AM PST
To: Toy Store Inc <sales@toystoreinc.com>
Subject: Fwd: Order Confirmation

ARE YOU PROCESSING MY ORDER, OR NOT?  (JLJ - Sam had forwarded the email string)

January 16, 2009 6:57:13 AM PST
To: Toy Store Inc sales@toystoreinc.com
Subject: Fwd: Order Confirmation

Okay.  I give up.  This was the worst ordering on-line experience ever.

January 16, 2009 10:25:37 AM PST
To: Sam
Subject: Re: Order Confirmation

[Sam]

Your order has been cancelled and its been refunded for a few days already. We been scamed too many times and on the website we clearly stated that we reserve the right to cancel unauthorized transactions and yours is one of them.
Thank you
Jennifer

Oh, Jennifer and Toy Store, Inc. Yours is a sorry tale of not thinking like a customer. No wonder you get scamed. You set yourselves up for it by not revealing your true intentions with ordering and shipping policies and forms that don’t match your actions!

Pull down your “Ship to:” form if you never ship to an address separate from a billing address. Update your shipping policy to match your real intentions. And change your tagline, please!

Your About Us section clearly states:

In business since 2006, our mission is to provide the best & highest customer satisfaction.

If this is your standard and your customers (like Sam) experience different results, my bet is you’ll be out of business by year’s end, which is exactly what she said, in her final note to them:

January 17, 2009 11:52:33 AM PST
To: sales@toystoreinc.com
Subject: Re: Order Confirmation

I’m sure that you will be pleased to know that I was able to get my item through Amazon.  It’s just amazing that you people can actually be in business; your incompetence is overwhelming.

Inspired (in part) by a post on ReadWriteWeb on how enterprise RSS is dead (really Marshall?), I thought I’d show how I use RSS every day. I think RSS is a critical business tool - especially for marketers - and it’s a free tool that can save time, increase your awareness and improve your productivity.

What’s RSS?

There’s a great 3-minute video called RSS in Plain English by Lee Lefevre of Common Craft on YouTube: http://smub.it/janet/rss. Watch it first, then pop back to me.

See you in a few.

Welcome back - wasn’t that a great, simple explanation?

So to me, RSS is about two things:

1. Subscribing - like my own custom magazine subscription, subscribing to RSS feeds is basically a way to have news and blog posts that you’re interested in come to you, vs. going out and searching for them.

For example, I like to read my friends’ blogs, and keep up with my clients’ blogs. I set up subscriptions every time someone announces they’re blogging, and every time I get a new client who blogs. I also like to read top technology and marketers’ blogs. So every time I find another interesting one, I subscribe to it.

To subscribe, you generally just right click on the RSS Feed button, which looks like this:

Copy the URL that’s there, and paste it into your RSS reader. Since every reader is different, I’ll show mine here - Attensa - where you click on the Add Feed button, and paste the URL.

Immediately your reader will start ‘listening’ to the web for you. I can read all of my subscriptions all in one place, my RSS feed reader. It looks like this: (Click on the thumbnail to get the full picture!)

2. Search - like an indefatigable watchdog, “persistent searches” alert when subjects I’m interested in (like my clients’ products, brands and names) are talked about online.

I set up searches in my RSS feed reader for every new client that I have. That way, if there’s something being said that I need to be aware of, I’ll know, and be able to either respond to it, or let my client know about it. I also keep a persistent search on my own name. I think it’s important to have early knowledge of anything being said about important topics and brands, and it’s incredibly easy to use RSS to do all the work for me.

To use RSS, you need an RSS reader, and there are tons of them on the market, tools from Yahoo!, Google, Portland’s Attensa and NewsGator… a list of RSS readers is here: http://smub.it/janet/rsslist.

Regardless of what you use, start experimenting with RSS. Start by doing what I do -

• Subscribe to your favorite blogs - read them from one place at one time…
• Set up persistent searches for yourself, your brand, your product names, or your clients’ brands.
• Set up persistent searches for keywords of interest to you - I keep my antenna looking out for “health 2.0″ and others.

Forget Google Analytics. Forget landing pages. Forget a fancy email system. Sorry all my agency friends - this post is all about guerrilla marketing!

For those of us who are lucky to have a blog, use our own email accounts, and Tweet or use Facebook for fun or business, there are some pretty cool, free tools to test messaging and user engagement for our products and services.

(Never has it been more important to break through the noise online with your messages, and never has it been more important to keep marketing during an economic downturn.)

Say you want to test messaging into several different market segments. You can do so quickly with some pretty simple tools.

Hypothetical Scenario: Reaching Moms during the Holidays:

You want to reach moms during this busy holiday season with a special offer of some lovely bath products just for them.

You recognize the differences in the motivations and life patterns among moms:

• some prefer to stay at home
• some work outside the home
• all work inside the home - some for profit, some volunteer, some run the family

Subtle differences in anyone’s lifestyle, attitude and preferences are best served with subtly different messages.

Consider these (unscientific, on the fly, illustrative) examples:

Message 1: Stay at home mom - “Escape inside your own home - even for 30 minutes - and refresh your attitude! http://smub.it/jlj/escape” 104 characters - Tweet worthy! (Twitter limits you to 140 characters)

Message 2: Stay at home mom volunteer - “You give so much to everyone else - take just 30 minutes - and be good to yourself… http://smub.it/jlj/ahhh” 103 characters - Another winner for Twitter!

Message 3: Mom working outside the home - “Relax in the comfort of your own home - take just 30 minutes - and find peace. http://smub.it/jlj/peace” 103 characters - yes!

So Tweet these (assuming you’re following your market - moms who Tweet) and you can see how many times people follow your links using Smub, a tool to personalize and share links. (disclaimer: Smub is a client of mine, and there are other URL shortening tools that allow you to track links, but not personalize them.)

Your personal, secure MySmubs page will show you the number of “hits” you get from people who follow your Smubs (see the right-most column, below):

As those of you with REALLY good eyesight might see, I can easily track the number of click-thrus on any Smub. 

Want to test these messages in your blog, or send these messages in an email, or post them on your Facebook page (or your mom group’s Facebook page?) Go ahead. You can see the results immediately, and watch them over time.

The messages that are resonating (or interesting or…) are going to show up quickly in clicks.

So go ahead… take this time to test some messaging. Spread the word simply, and see the results. Without help from a web programmer, an agency, your IT guy or anyone else, for that matter.

Your guerrilla (free) marketing will be more effective as a result.