Technology for Marketing Show

Last week I managed to attend the Technology for Marketing show at Earl's Court in London. There were some challenging moments queuing for some of the seminars which were over-subscribed but the keynote speakers were excellent. Tim Faircliff from Reuters struck a chord when he described how one of their managers out in the field recently used Twitter to send the latest news report instead of their own newswire service! It just shows how the way we send and receive news is really changing. From a PR viewpoint it's great that we can do everything at speed but also frightening the number of media now available to use/follow and recommend to customers.

The other things that I took away with me were to watch out for more mobile applications, particularly using gps, like Google's Latitude and keep on eye on the new music social network spotify.

There's certainly no danger of anything standing still in marketing.

Karen McNulty
www.marketingplanwiz.co.uk

Discount for the New Year!

We couldn't start 2009 without our own January sale so we're offering a 10% discount on our marketing plans at MarketingPlanWiz, until the end of February. To use it, when you register or sign in, opt to buy your plan and enter the code in the discount box presented when you enter your payment details.

Here's the Code: MPLAN09

We think that's extreme value for money but as we're (sadly) passionate about planning, what else could we do?!

Happy Marketing Planning!

Karen McNulty
www.marketingplanwiz.co.uk

Direct Mail

I've been out at a business networking event today, and along with a colleague of mine, gave a presentation on cost effective marketing, using your database. Because at the moment results are important and we want to get the best return from any marketing we do.

The interesting thing about database marketing is that if you have a list of contacts (past customers, current customers, prospects) you've got a few choices on what you can do with it. Direct Mail, Email marketing or telesales are the 3 most likely ways that you can use your contact list to good effect. Direct Mail for a long time has been frowned upon because of the whole "junk mail" image. But now here do you see most "junk mail"? Yes, in your Email Inbox.

So while good Email marketing works very well (and it really does), a good direct mail shot will also now get you better results than ever because there's less out there so it's easier to stand out!

Karen McNulty
www.marketingplanwiz.co.uk

A Really Quick Marketing Plan

I'm fortunate to know and work with other people in marketing but it always takes me by surprise when I'm reminded of something simple that I had either forgotten or perhaps not thought of before.

A case in point, when a marketing associate of mine, who these days is also a well known marketing speaker (www.geofframm.com) came to my area recently to present at a local business network. I always enjoy listening to Geoff and every time I see him I'm reminded of one of those gems. This time he had a great tip for marketing planning.

Marketing Plans are what we do best of course, so I'm always interested! But this tip is a such an easy way to get started...

Buy yourself a wall planner, a pack of felt tip pens and some gold stars. On the planner, choose different coloured pens for different areas of your marketing. Red for PR, green for events etc. and put the relevant marketing activity against specific dates. Use the gold stars every time you win some business and add them to the date that you won it. An excellent way to motivate the team and an easy way to follow a plan.

Karen McNulty
www.marketingplanwiz.co.uk

Poor Marketing Amex!

I know that times are hard and we've got to be ever more creative to stay in business and more to the point, continue to make money. But, there's the right way to increase your marketing and the wrong way.

I don't usually point fingers but this one really got to me: American Express.

I've got an Amex card which I diligently pay off each month and so for me, it works very well. I can earn cash back at the end of each year for the money I spend, so I think I've got a good deal. Then a couple of weeks ago I got a survey from American Express, asking what I was interested in, what I used the card for etc. Now, being a marketer I thought well, why not, I know how valuable customer feedback is. So I filled it in and posted it back.

Then I got a promotion through the post from them, offering me the chance to be awarded two lots of £15.00 John Lewis vouchers over two months.... provided I spent a certain amount of money on the card, both of those months. This would have "delighted" me if it had been what I normally spent, or lower, but no. They wanted me to spend around £3-£400 MORE than I would normally spend in any month. If I didn't, I wasn't entitled to to the vouchers.

How to get it so wrong!! I had told them that I liked to shop in John Lewis so that was relevant. But considering the uncertain economy at the moment, did they really think I'd willingly "up" my credit card spending to win a measly £30 of vouchers? No way. So now I'm annoyed with them and what a lost oportunity for them to win me over and stay loyal!!

Hrrmph.

Anyobody know of a good cashback credit card that will take me seriously? Have you got a worse story? Let us know if you have and we'll tell everyone!

Karen McNulty
www.MarketingPlanWiz.co.uk

Reviews are King

There's yet another growing trend on the internet which is definitely making websites more popular and sort of makes more sense of "Web 2.0" for me. I knew that Web 2.0 was all about interacting and that websites these days had to do more of that, but short of being tolerant of social networking sites (as I get them now, but still find it easier to pick up the phone) I couldn't work out what all the fuss was about.

Then I discovered that more and more shopping sites are inviting comments or reviews on what people buy from them. You've probably seen it on Amazon but now you'll find customer reviews on all sorts of websites from clothes (Boden, M & S) through to electrical retailers such as Comet. Dodgy stuff you would think, given that presumably customers can slate your product just as soon as rave about it. But, in fact it works. Most people just give a fair assessment of what they thought and guess what? New customers trust this more than anything they read by the retailer and feel more inclined to buy as a result.

There's another new thing to add to my list of marketing things to think about...

Karen McNulty
www.marketingplanwiz.co.uk

Are our E-communications working?

Having written last time on how great e-communications are, you know e-newsletters and pretty emails that land in your inbox? Then I thought that not all of them are good. It's easy for me to say as a marketing bod that this stuff is great because it saves us so much time and it's just so clever (for easily excited people like me anyway) but I get REALLY wound up with people sending me repeated emails that are (a) too full of text to inspire me to do anything but lie down and (b) they won't let me unsubscribe.

So is that really right - upset your customers (or random people whose email you happen to have) so much that they're driven to ranting on the phone - or worse in a blog? My thought today was that for every one customer that you upset they'll tell 20 other people.... imagine how the internet expands that millions of times!

I suppose in that case it's what goes around comes around. It doesn't put me off and it shouldn't put you off if you're a marketer as long as you do it right. The law (data protection) currently says that means that if they're a recent customer that's fair enough and if they've signed up (subscribed) that's fine, which if you think about covers quite a lot of people really.

Karen McNulty
MarketingPlanWiz