There’s something every marketer should understand when launching a project:  Things happen.  Occasionally deadlines might get nudged due to unforeseen challenges.  Try as we might to overcome all impediments and not break a sweat in front of our clients, chances are that that some difficulty will arise.  The more complex, the greater the likelihood – especially when budgets are tight.

My best advice to project managers is something my dad taught me when I was 20 and have tried to practice my entire career:

Report bad news immediately

In 1987, I was 22 when the stock market crashed and had about $20 Million under management.  Lots of money was lost.  But those at my firm didn’t hide from our clients.  While the bad news didn’t change, our professionalism, and therefore our client’s trust remained intact.

Those that ran away were chased down by clients who took their investment dollars elsewhere, or worse.

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Today’s entry from your humble blogger will be short and sweet – because of an unexpected resource problem.

While feeding our firm’s beloved dog Tag a meaty bone, our cat Chester got really jealous and wanted to snatch it away.  Not good.

Luckily, we had a two pack so I tried to slice off a cat-size hunk of bone.  The picture below will show the unfortunate outcome.

My right index finger has unexpectedly taken a leave of absence.

There it is.  It happens.

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The good news is that all the hard work (and billions in tax incentives) expended supporting the “Tech Valley” dream is looking pretty good for the Capital Region’s long term prospects.

The bad news is that you’re probably not going to get a piece of it.

In the strategy sessions we hold with clients at our office, we spend lots of time defining the target market.  Discussing distribution strategies.  Brainstorming tactics.  We argue and debate and ultimately whittle down all the possibilities into a finely honed formula for producing more sales and profits.

And then a client asks one final question; “how will we monetize Global Foundries?”

I get it.  I really do.

The Albany – Schenectady – Troy market is #58 (source: The Nielsen Company) and the transition to a more diversified private sector in our economy has been hard fought.  We have a right to feel good about our wins.  But are we entitled to get a little piece of the action?

No.  No we’re not.

It may not be a popular notion, but as big a win as landing Global Foundries promises to be (along with GE’s planned job growth, Sematech and others), that tide will not lift all boats.  Most of us are still going to have to do the hard work of marketing and selling to our usual customers and pursuing other growth opportunities.

To that end, keep your eyes on the prize – your core customer.  We use a specific tool – called the Audience Decision Matrix – to create the laser focus needed to capture their attention as the economy warms.  Do the work needed to get inside the head of the decision maker and who has their ear.

Learn their routines.  Where they hang.  What they think is important.

Don’t let the Malta miracle distract you.  Stick to the fundamentals.  If you’re meant to get a share of the winnings, then good planning will bring the opportunity to do so into focus.

Here’s one selling a conservative newspaper. Simple design with a focus on a bold headline, teaser copy and a token -

Having seem my share of inter-office envelopes, this one’s caught my attention -

Here are some more envelopes featured on the blog:

Services like Constant Contact or iContact make it pretty easy to start up an email program.  Just enter some names in a list, drop some content into a pre-designed template and send out that e-newsletter.  Easy right?  Well yes…but no.

Yes – it’s pretty easy to do.  No – it’s not so easy to achieve results.

That’s why I love seeing and learning from great work and  On occasion I’d like to share examples with you.  Here is the full case study text from a case study I saw on MarketingSherpa.com recently:

Case Study: Roku customer referral program

Following is the full case study text from MarketingSherpa.com.

SUMMARY: Customer referrals are a powerful way to pull in more sales and leads. Some companies offer rewards, but you can push results even higher with a few simple tactics.

See how this consumer electronics company sent an automated email to encourage new customers to refer their friends and contacts. This email generated 75 percent of all registrations in the referral program

CHALLENGE

Marketers at Roku, a video-streaming device for television, knew that word-of-mouth helped push sales. About 25 percent of their customers said they had first heard of the company from a friend or family member.

“Our goal was to try to increase that because word-of-mouth and referrals are one of the most cost-effective ways of acquiring customers,” says Lomit Patel, Senior Director, Direct Marketing, Roku. “Even if they don’t translate directly into sales, it helps create a positive image and a positive awareness of Roku.”

In response, Patel’s team launched a great referral program. It offered rewards to customers who sent referrals via email, Facebook or Twitter. But the team needed to get more customers to participate.

CAMPAIGN

Patel planned to send triggered emails to Roku’s newest customers to ask if they’d like to tell their friends about the product. Email would be central to the program’s promotion.

Here are the steps his team followed:

Step #1. Establish a program and relevant rewards

Customers could visit Roku’s referral landing page to suggest the product to friends via email, Facebook, Twitter or another channel. The page generated a customizable default message and referral link. Each link included a tracking code which tallied sales made through each customer’s referral.

Roku tested several different rewards to offer. Once Patel’s team realized that more than 80 percent of Roku’s customers were also Netflix customers, they settled on free one-month Netflix memberships.

- No limit on rewards

Customers received coupons for a free month of Netflix for every sale made through their referral links. There was no limit on the number and rewards were not based on the number of referrals sent.

“The program really started to go forward after we changed the reward structure,” Patel says.

Step #2. Design referral landing page

The referral landing page had two goals:
1. Get customers to register in the referral program
2. Get customers to send referrals

After arriving, visitors were shown an overlay that requested their first name, last name and email address. Once information was submitted, the overlay disappeared to reveal the referral page (see creative samples below).

The referral page emphasized the Netflix offer as well as:

- Email form

Visitors could type contacts’ email addresses or import them from a Hotmail, Yahoo!, Gmail or another email account. Recommended text for the email was included and could be removed or altered. The text:

“Try Roku – Brilliant device for streaming HD Movies from Netflix! My link gets you 10% OFF the Roku XDS.”

After visitors clicked “send,” the system generated emails for all listed contacts and included the referral link.

- Other sharing buttons

Visitors could use the page to share similar messages on Facebook, Twitter and Blogger. A unique referral URL was also offered, which visitors could copy and paste anywhere they preferred.

Step #3. Design email for new customers

Roku needed a systematic way to encourage new customers to send referrals. The team designed a triggered email to automatically reach out after a purchase (see creative samples below). The email included:
o Image of a TV with Netflix on it
o Large text: “Get a free month of Netflix for each friend who tries Roku”
o Description of three steps to getting rewards
o Button to visit referral landing page

- Test the timing

Roku has a 30-day money-back guarantee and Patel’s team wanted to avoid asking for referrals during that period. Likewise, he did not want to wait too long to send the email, since customers would likely discover the program through Roku’s other channels.

The team tested sending the email after three different periods: 35 days, 40 days and 45 days after purchase (results are below).

Step #4. Promote in additional channels

In addition to the automated email to new customers, Roku promoted the referral program in the following areas:

- Launch emails

The automated emails described above would not reach Roku’s older customers. But older customers still needed to be kept in the loop.

The team twice promoted the referral program in dedicated emails to its house list. It sent the first email at the program’s launch, and the second about three months later. These emails were similar to the program’s automated messages.

- Email newsletters

Roku’s monthly email newsletter typically reserved its upper right-hand portion to advertise for the referral program.

- Links on website

Links to the referral program were also included in Roku’s website footer and in a button on the website’s “reviews” section.

RESULTS

“Email has been the biggest way to promote this,” Patel says. “The newsletters definitely help, but these individual emails after purchase have had the most effect.”

After launching the referral program:

o 75% of registrations for Roku’s referral program are driven by the triggered emails to new customers

o 30% more customers report that their decision to purchase Roku was influenced by a friend or family member

o 5% of all Roku customers participate in the referral program

By testing, Patel’s team discovered that sending the triggered emails 45 days after purchase worked best. The results of those tests:

Forty-five days after purchase:
o Open rate: 33.4%
o CTR: 14.7%
o Conversion rate: 22.4%

Forty days after purchase
o Open rate: 23.7%
o CTR: 12.1%
o Conversion rate: 17.7%

Thirty-five days after purchase
o Open rate: 19.8%
o CTR: 6.4%
o Conversion rate: 13.5%

- Page tweak surged conversions

After these tests, the team tested a change to the referral landing page. Instead of using an overlay to request visitors’ names and email addresses, visitors arriving from these emails had their information pre-loaded into the form.

This increased conversion rates for these emails to 55 percent, Patel says.

- Emailed referrals beat social referrals

Of all the channels through which customers could send referrals to contacts, referrals sent via email drove 70 percent of all sales in the program, Patel says.

“Our customer demographics tend to be in the 30s to 50s range, and that could indicate why they are more comfortable using email versus using social media.”

Then your Mom would throw this classic at you;  “so if everyone else was jumping off a bridge, would you do that too?”

End of story.

Today though, if a mob of people told you that jumping off a bridge could solve a particular problem, you might actually have to give it some thought.  That’s because of one theory for solving complex problems:  Crowdsourcing.

Crowdsourcing, as defined in Wikipedia, is the act of outsourcing tasks, traditionally performed by an employee or contractor, to an undefined, large group of people or community (a crowd), through an open call. I feel that using information and resources from the crowd can help me make better decisions and be more productive.

Ebay knows we’re on the way back

Crowdsourcing can be a way to build something.  Firefox, one of today’s most popular web browsers, is an open source product – built by an unknown “crowd.”  Users of crowdsourcing can build new software programs and sales teams, design buildings, and even help create new drugs by plugging into the collaborative nature of crowds.

A quick look at one crystal ball is telling us that no matter how we feel personally, the economy is recovering.  Ebay, the monster auction site (which also owns Skype, Paypal, and is part owner of Craigslist) has tens of millions of shoppers and thousands of small businesses using its auction platform.  It’s so large, that some economists think of Ebay as a proxy for the entire US retail economy.  Ebay sales are up.  So is its stock.  That could be good news for all of us.

If you want to get a strong idea if a new product or service is likely to succeed, you might go to crowdsourcing site Inkling.  Here, they use something called a “prediction market” to aggregate people’s opinions to form a prediction of the likelihood of something occurring.

Fight Disease…and have fun

Foldit combines gaming with scientific research.  One of the lessons here is: if it’s fun, the crowd will help you.  The crowd plays a simple yet addictive game ( I zone out on brickbreaker) of protein folding.  As the site explains – since proteins are part of so many diseases, they can also be part of the cure.  Players can design brand new proteins that could help prevent or treat important diseases.

At Lawnmowingonline, you can find someone to mow your lawn for as little as 19 bucks within 24 hours  (lawn mowing emergency?) just by putting it out there to the crowd.

[for a list of crowdsourcing sites from around the world look here]

Bottom line

Crowdsourcing is a tool that can help you make more informed business decisions and get more things done with limited personnel resources.  There are many sites out there to help you collect information and find people with the time or special skills to collaborate on your next project.

File this under the heading “there’s a right time and a right place for everything.”  Here’s the story:

In Washington DC , at a Metro Station, on a cold January morning in 2007, this man with a violin played six Bach pieces for about 45 minutes.  During that time, approximately 2,000 people went through the station, most of them on their way to work.  After about 3 minutes, a middle-aged man noticed that there was a musician playing.  He slowed his pace and stopped for a few seconds, and then he hurried on to meet his schedule.

Joshua Bell in DC Metro

About 4 minutes later:

The violinist received his first dollar.  A woman threw money in the hat and, without stopping, continued to walk.

At 6 minutes:

A young man leaned against the wall to listen to him, then looked at his watch and started to walk again.

At 10 minutes:

A 3-year old boy stopped, but his mother tugged him along hurriedly.  The kid stopped to look at the violinist again, but the mother pushed hard and the child continued to walk, turning his head the whole time.  This action was repeated by several other children, but every parent – without exception – forced their children to move on quickly.

At 45 minutes:

The musician played continuously.  Only 6 people stopped and listened for a short while.  About 20 gave money but continued to walk at their normal pace.  The man collected a total of $32.

After 1 hour:

He finished playing and silence took over.  No one noticed and no one applauded.  There was no recognition at all.

No one knew this, but the violinist was Joshua Bell, one of the greatest musicians in the world.  He played one of the most intricate pieces ever written, with a violin worth $3.5 million dollars.  Two days before, Joshua Bell sold-out a theater in Boston where the seats averaged $100 each to sit and listen to him play the same music.

This is a true story.  Joshua Bell, playing incognito in the DC Metro Station, was organized by the Washington Post as part of a social experiment about perception, taste and people’s priorities.

The Post’s researchers throught that one conclusion of the study was akin to stopping to smell the roses – missing the beauty around us as we rush through life.

Beauty feed the soul.  But we’re here to make money.  So as professional marketers focused on growing a business we would ask this question:

Even if you had the best product

Or the best service

Or the best price…

Would anybody stop and pay attention if they weren’t in the right frame of mind?

The old adage “Location.  Location.  Location.”  doesn’t just apply to Real Estate.  It applies to everything about how your business is perceived.

Just as a house in a good school district will be worth more to families with young children, your products and services will be worth more if they solve a particular problem for a customer or client.

Just as umbrellas sell better in the rain.  It’s about timing.  Right place, right time.

Always but always, be relevant.

This week, he received notice from his new contact that his services were up for bid and that he needed to respond to an RFP. He was given 3 days to respond!

He called the contact. No answer. Sent an email and received an out of office reply saying she’d be back the day after the RFP was due.

Our client also learned that several other firms had already responded and been reviewed, with one already chosen for a separate project. And our client, the incumbent, hadn’t even been notified that an RFP was issued to replace him.

Sounds like he’d done a bad job and wasn’t being renewed doesn’t it?

Well here’s the rub. The contact’s boss didn’t know our client hadn’t been properly included in the process. It seems as if she’s decided to railroad the project through with her own chosen vendor.

My client needed some way to fight for the business.  So not really knowing anything about this new contact, he went on LinkedIn to see if he could find out something about her mindset. Turns out one of his close friends was a 2nd level contact of hers, who also had a connection with a 1st degree contact of hers.

Turns out the 1st degree contact was her ex-boss. He did not give her a glowing reference.

With this information in hand and a printed record of how he’d been treated, our client now feels comfortable going over his contact’s head to her boss – someone he’s always had a good relationship with – to find out if he’d done something wrong to warrant such treatment.

The answer should be interesting. Especially for the new contact if her boss isn’t happy with how she’s handled this long-standing relationship.

I’ve protected the names for privacy here. But if you can connect the dots in this story – you’ll see even further proof of how powerful – and personal – social media sites can really be.

Mention the DMV and instantly images of gargantuan lines pop into your head and your eye begins to twitch.  More recently however, the DMV had made some improvements by adopting common sense operational efficiencies and online tools.

Many locations will give the poor motorist an appointment window to respect their time.  Online renewals and payments further helped ease frustration.

But there’s a hole in the DMV donut – the locations don’t necessarily coordinate with the website.

This may sound familiar to those who’ve shopped at WalMart.com.  After finding a great price online, you run to the nearest store to snatch up your bargain – only to find the store price isn’t the same as the online price.

Reason?  They’re run as two separate business.  Frustrating and sometimes angering.  But many retailers have the same arrangement, confusing and inconveniencing their customers.

This morning I heard the DMV has a trap lying in wait.  If you should move during the time of your vehicle registration – and do the right thing by dutifully going down to DMV to file the forms – it won’t change a thing as far as DMV is concerned.

That’s right.  Go down to your DMV office, file the change of address, affix the stickers to your license and registration – and they never even update your file.

You have to CALL their customer service center to let them know or they don’t change your records.  Imagine how you’d feel when your renewed registration was sent to the wrong address and you got a ticket for an expired registration.

Then they charge you a fee to send a duplicate!

Check the forms and the website.  It’s itting right there amongst a sea of words.  In type so big that only those who’ve eaten 3 carrots a day can read is the instructions…you must call the customer service center to change your address.

So, DMV offices, online service, and the customer service call center don’t communicate on a simple, yet important function.  And you’re the loser.

Moral for business.  Embrace technology and efficiency.  Be thorough.  Be clear.  But be sure you’re actually helping those you want to help.

Did you know that Albany is the #1 test market in the United States.  Correct-a-mundo.

According to Acxiom’s  last published study in 2004, Albany, NY was the market that best represented the United States population as a whole.

In other words – we’re the most average market in America.

That holds some real advantages for you as a marketer – especially if you market to consumers.  Rolling out new mass-market products in Albany is an excellent place to start.  The test results could well translate to the national market, and “amped-up” ROMI (Return on Marketing Investment)

If that’s you – be thankful we’re so average.

My partner Dave recently had trouble with his iPhone.  As great a gadget as the iPhone is, neither Apple nor AT&T Wireless offer insurance on the iPhone.  Best Buy stepped in offering the only insurance available on the product – serviced by its Geek Squad.

Oh oh…dead cow!

After 2 years of paying $11+ per month, Dave needed service.  He dropped it off at the Geek Squad – “it’ll be ready and back here by Friday.”  Friday comes…and an hour of voicemail hell later…”sorry, maybe tomorrow.”  Saturday…no answer at the Geek Squad all day.  He left a message with the store’s customer service to please call him back.  Sunday…another hour of the run around, “sorry, there are no deliveries on Saturday or Sunday.  Maybe Monday?”

“I didn’t even get a call from you guys, isn’t there a message for you?”  “Truth is we’re really busy, and there’s a whole pile of messages sitting on this desk.  We don’t look at them.  We just wait for the customer to call back.”

Okay – get the picture?  Now ponder this:

Best Buy is in the electronics business.  Why can’t they put your order status online for you to check?  Or shipping status?  Especially when the Geek Squad desk is too busy to even look at the pile of messages on their desk!

Best Buy promised a service that made them unique – but the promise turns out to be pretty empty.  That’s a dead cow.  That’s utter brand destruction.

He’s a retired physician with an inquiring mind and he shared with me an unsettling observation.  Watching coverage of the tragedy in Haiti, he recognized that people got more and more desperate as it passed the 3 day mark following the event.

The human body can go without food for quite some time before it really breaks down.  But without water, it’s only a matter of 72 hours and brain function is significantly affected.

“9 meals”, he said, “that’s all that separates us from our daily lives and a complete breakdown of society.”

Hours later, while working on a marketing blueprint, I thought about my cousin’s “9 meals” anecdote.  Our bodies need to be sustained with a continuous supply of H2O for survival.  We need food for sure, but in terms of our hierarchy of needs, water is king.

What’s your client’s hierarchy of needs?  What’s the one thing that your customers can’t live without?

Price?  Service?  The hottest technology?  Relationship chemistry?

Now think about it in terms of a marketing campaign.

What’s the one thing you need to monitor to know if you’re on the right track?  It’s different for everyone.

Regardless, it’s a fine line between survival and extinction.  Be sure you know where it is.