In the last stages of building a supporter database for a fundraising client. The platform is internet-based software-as-a-service (SaaS), so the infrastructure cost is tiny, there’s no hardware. Almost all of the value is in the intellectual property – the way it’s built, the user guide, the thinking and experience that informs it, and the programming ability to make it work.
Another project for a financial servcies organisation provides an online collaboration tool for viewing and approving proofs. The cost of the software (again it’s SaaS) is just a few hundred dollars a year; for this client the real value lies in i) finding it for them and showing them how it works so much better than their current process, and ii) tailoring the implementation for their own situation.
It’s not long ago that the total cost for these projects would have been a multiple of the purchase cost of some expensive software. Now it’s the cost of some very specific intellectual property. For the client, the value is in those parts of the project that make it work in their own office, now, with as little risk as possible, and negligible long-term financial commitment.
It’s a very different mind-set, both for the client, and for the service provider.
Picture: James Cridland
A mailing arrives from a company that wants to sell me B2B data. Fair enough, except …
1. The design bears not the slightest resemblance to the company’s website
2. The imagery in the brochure is perfectly designed to cheapen and discredit the company’s business (see Wieden & Kennedy’s blog for more detail)
3. I get two copies, one for each of the Directors, which is fair enough; the second copy has someone else’s company name in the address. Brilliant.
Jane Holmes, if you really are the head of this company, honestly, I can help.
Just added a new case study to the Neon Nelly website. We’re working with SolarAid and their agency Whitewater on a new approach to donor retention. Our part of this has been to provide the personalised URLs and landing pages, and we’ve used this as the base for developing a whole new way of reporting that brings together online and offline responses at a personal level. Powerful stuff.
Picture: SolarAid blog
OK, so there might be a better name for this, but …
One of the big challenges for marketers who want to understand and drive integrated marketing activity, is how to join up offline and online response analysis. Both sets of reports can be detailed and illuminating. Generally though it’s incredibly difficult to work out where the overlap is. You know that 4.35% of your mailing responded, and you know who they are. You know that you had 47.3% more hits on your website in the days after the mailing landed, and you know an awful lot about what they did on your site. If only you could join the two sets of information …
… then you could really tell the incremental impact of your offline marketing; you could prove the difference it makes to use on- and off-line communications together in the same campaign; you could link directly to the call centre for more meaningful follow-up …
After a bit of thinking and a lot of testing, it turns out that you can do this. And you can do it without having to spend a lot of money for fancy tracking tools. In fact, the technology is all out there, open source, free. All you have to do is use it. I’m showing this to clients now, and it’s really exciting.
Now all I have to do is think of a clever name for it.
Picture: IBM events
Lots of conversations about QR codes.
That’s not so much a headline, it’s the content of the barcode image here (if you need a code reader for your desktop, you could try this one from QuickMark ).
As often seems to happen, most of the conversations are about technology, cost, or how to incentivise a print salesperson to sell them (really).
There are some more useful discussions about how relevant they might be to a particular market (in Japan most mobile phones have a QR code reader built-in; in the UK they are standard on iPhones, but you have to find and install the software for most other smartphones).
And just occasionally there’s talk about how to use QR codes to make a marketing campaign more effective.
Guess where the value is.
I’m following a particular development in direct mail which could be very important to its future. I’m talking to people about it, and trying to stay in touch with what’s happening. That means I’m talking to other stakeholders too, and some of them might be people I would work with, or recommend to others. One of those stakeholders has emailed me a few times in the last couple of months. The last email was from a ‘business development manager’, who asks me “by return”, to indicate “whether I would be interested in a quotation…or would like to be removed from the mailing list”.
It must be nice in your job sir, where the world breaks so clearly into ‘those who would like to buy from me now’ and ‘everyone else that I can wave goodbye to forever’.
Picture: Binary Birds on Wires by Third This
Been working with the nice people at Whitewater on a campaign that we’re getting really excited about. There’s more on their blog here. It’s about finding more powerful ways to connect donors with the work they help to fund. Meanwhile, here’s a more conventional ‘thank you’ to Steve, Richard, Brad and Celia at Whitewater for the opportunity. Good luck to Nick and colleagues at SolarAid too.
There are important parts of what we do, that do not have an end. When we talk about building a website for example, the implication is that the job is complete once it has been ‘built’. Except things change (see Bryony Thomas’s nice take on treating a website as an employee). Customer service isn’t a one-off project either, it’s an attitude, structure, and way of working. As someone who is instinctively a ‘destination’ rather than a ‘journey’ person, that can be a hard lesson. What’s made me think about this particularly? Well, actually, the household laundry. Not helpful to get frustrated that ‘it’s never finished’ or ‘I’m way behind’ – it never is and you always will be – maybe better to enjoy / tolerate / learn to live with the journey.
Photo: Trixibell
Amazing and beautiful mailing from Prada on my doorstep on return from holiday. Beautiful – naturally, that’s what the brand is all about. Amazing, because what you see in the picture here, is the whole contents of the pack. Four words, of which two are the brand name. A strip of gold ribbon on a textured white 3.5mm board. 6 more words on the reverse. That’s it. The outer envelope was equally simple, and they got my name and address right.
This seems to break most of the rules of direct marketing. I think it’s perfect. I have got the message.
I suppose you might be wondering how I get to be on their mailing list, but that is another story.
Met an ex-colleague yesterday. An unexpected pleasure, and a quick catch-up. She has been working for the same company for the last twelve years. It would be fair to say the company has been successful in this time. The company has decided to shut its UK operation, and she is being made redundant along with all other staff.
The redundancy package is exactly the legal minimum, which is a fixed, and relatively small, amount of money for each year of employment, and in her case is equivalent to little more than one month’s salary.
Then, just before the notice period was due to begin, head office asked her to take on a new project, as there was noone else available with the appropriate skills or experience.
Aside from the rights and wrongs, there will be a lot of people – like me – whose picture of this well-known and hitherto well-respected company, will be completely altered by the story we hear from people we know and trust. The company’s reputation in this country is toast, and it really would _not_ have cost a lot of money to have prevented that happening.
picture: net_efekt