[Tags: spam marketing]

3 Comments »

Gevalia has a practically irresistible deal. For just a few dollars, they’ll send you a quite nice electric coffee maker, and some coffee. They also enroll you in their automatic coffee delivery program, but you can opt out any time.

So, we didn’t resist. The coffeemaker is fine. The coffees that we’ve tried are mediocre and over-priced, imo. So, after three shipments, trying different flavors — I’m too old to do take the come-on and run, which, by the way, is how I got my copy of the Oxford English Dictionary in 1971, and I still feel bad about it — I decided to cancel. The Gevalia Web site lets you manage your account. You can select coffees, change the delivery schedule, suspend service … but not cancel.

So, I wrote an email to the support address they list. I got a robo-reply saying they’d get back to me in 12 hours. They didn’t. Two more messages later, and they still never acknowledged my email. So, I gave in and used that thing with the buttons and the speaker that you hold up to your face. What do you call those things? I got through quickly and was told that my account had already been cancelled.

Two lessons for retailers on the Web: 1. Acknowledge your flipping emails, or else we’ll eat up your time, money, and good will sending the same email over and over again. 2. Always always always give us a button to allow us to do the worst thing you can imagine. The alternative is that we’ll end the relationship and then blog our complaints about you out loud, no matter how petty it makes us look. [Tags: marketing retail gevalia ]

6 Comments »

Jeneane wonders how online and real world retailing are linking our desires across the realms.

Watching tweens on Webkinz and Bella Sara, I started wondering how smart companies will find that same sweet spot with adult consumers—a place where real-world point-of-sale drives the online experience.

This sort of borderless transaction is one-way when it comes to information — the article you read in the paper leads you online, but once online you’re unlikely to have to resort back to the real world. Retailers clearly would like two-way relationships. And, as Jeneane says, they’re going to come up with every reason they can to get us get our passports stamped. [Tags: jeneane_sessum marketing retailing business ]

1 Comment »

I’ve posted a long piece at Huffington Post that tries to put together the strongest, most coherent version of Andew “Cult of the Amateur” Keen’s argument against the Web…and then critiques it. Tags: andrew_keen web_2.0 everything_is_miscellaneous ]

8 Comments »

Although I disagree with Chris Heuer‘s overall conclusion that the phrase “conversational marketing” debases conversations, I think he puts well the concerns we should have about how marketers are going to respond to the growing recognition that markets have indeed become conversations. Here’s what I said in my comment on his post:

Marketing has to change. It has to recognize that market conversations are now the best source of information about companies and their products and services. It has to recognize that those conversations are not themselves marketing — you and me talking about whether we like our new digital cameras is not you and me marketing to each another. Neither is our conversation a “marketing opportunity.” But the temptation to see it as such is well nigh impossible for most marketers to resist.

Fortunately, the people leading the thinking about this generally do honor the conversation as the thing that must be preserved. How the meme gets taken up, however, should worry us. We need to help marketers resist their deeply bred urges. We need to make preserving the integrity of the conversation as central a marketing tenet as is not lying about product specs or prices. [Tags: chris_heuer marketing conversational_marketing cluetrain business ]

2 Comments »

The box of the HP Photosmart R847 digital camera advertises that it’s “A powerful, easy-to-use 8-MP camera with pet-eye fix and slimming feature.”

Yes, the camera removes the “white eye” that steals all our love for our pets, and lets us shave off those extra pounds that steal all our love for our loved ones.

These are the features that sell cameras? We are doomed.

Pretty nice little camera, though.

3 Comments »

According to the Center for Media Research:

A recent survey on current attitudes towards customer ratings and reviews by Bazaarvoice and Vizu Corporation, shows that about three out of four shoppers say that it is extremely or very important to read customer reviews before making a purchase, and they prefer peer reviews over expert reviews by a 6-to-1 margin.

Of couse, Bazaarvoice provides customer review capabilities to vendors. [Tags: marketing bazaarvoice ]

Be the first to comment »

After the tenth time in my life calling T-Mobile because I was unable to get their site to create a pay-as-you-go wifi account for me — I know how many times because I use a little numbering scheme when making up my new account name (and, no, you won’t guess it) — and after being walked through it by a very nice support person, I was in no mood to receive the ritual sign-off, “And thanks for being part of the T-Mobile family.”

Is there anyone who hears that corporate-mandated sign-off without feeling cheapened? Where I come from, joining someone’s family requires more than buying an hour of services from them.
(My plane is late, they’ve run out of the one veggie sandwich at the stand, so, yes, I am feeling a little cranky, thank you. Aaarrrgggghh.)

4 Comments »

Joe Andrieu has an excellent post explaining Doc‘s Vendor Relationship Management meme (vrm blog). Provocative in the best sense: Stimulating lots of thoughts and questions. For instance, how does VRM (or Joe’s vision of it) differ from federated identity schemes in which the user has control over her personal info? [Tags: vrm joe_andrieu doc_searls id ]

2 Comments »

Bill Griffith’s automotive column in the Boston Globe today has a nice quote from Saab USA’s new general manager:

“A blogger, I think he was from Tasmania, immediately made a post on behalf of Saab owners,” Shannon said. “The gist was, ‘You’re working for us now, and you better take care of our baby.’ “

Evidence? Nah. An anecdote that expresses a whole bunch of themes? Yup.

[Tags: marketing cluetrain saab]

3 Comments »