Month: May 2018

Baseball great Albert Pujols got his 3,000th hit earlier this month. 

I’ve rooted all my life for the St. Louis Cardinals. So it broke my heart when Pujols broke up with the Cardinals in 2012 to join the Anaheim Angels.

The heartache reminded me of my ninth-grade girlfriend, Susie Wallace. Susie and I had just finished a slow dance at the mixer when she broke the news: She was dumping me for Stevie O’Shea.

“Why?” I asked.

“Because he appreciates me,” she said. And then she strolled across the dance floor, grabbed Stevie’s hand and left the gym without looking back.

“But I DO appreciate you,” I mumbled. Too late.

After signing a $254 million contract with the Angels, Albert said he might have taken less money if the Cardinals had appreciated him more.

“But we DO appreciate you, Albert,” Cardinals’ management said. Too late.

Albert and Susie have me wondering:

Do you appreciate your customers? Do you show it?

If not, brace yourself. They might bolt to Anaheim or run to Lover’s Lane with Stevie O’Shea.

Customers break up with businesses for various reasons. A vast majority of them will bolt when they feel unappreciated, perceive indifference or simply forget about the previous business.

In fact, many will forgive a service slight or tolerate a slightly inferior product – as long as they feel appreciated.

That’s why you need a customer appreciation communication plan – before it’s too late.

Whether you communicate by email, snail mail, social media or some other medium, here are four tips to guide your customer appreciation plan:

1. Stay in touch – at least monthly. If you don’t have an email or print newsletter, you need to launch one.

2. Educate and entertain. If all you do is pitch products, your customers will tune out.

3. Be interactive. Let customers post on social media, in online surveys, in comments on your blog. Thank them for praise. Thank them for constructive criticism. Show them you’re listening. Appreciate their feedback, and they’ll appreciate you.

4. Get personal. Use personalized salutations in your emails. Tailor your content and special offers to specific audiences. Don’t send everything to everybody. The more you tailor content to customers’ interests, the more you say, “I know you and appreciate you.” They’ll feel the same.

Want to learn more about how to appreciate your customers so they’ll appreciate you? See the p.s. below…

Thanks for reading.

Tom
MarketVolt

p.s. Our on-demand webinars reveal great ways to build connections with prospects and customers. We’re currently running two webinars. We’ll be adding other topics soon. 

• 5 Ways B2B Businesses Use Email Marketing To Simplify & Accelerate Connection-Building & Sales
    
  
• 5 Ways B2C Businesses Use Email Marketing to Increase Profits

WARNING: You may never microwave a convenience store burrito again after reading this kinda-gross, but kinda-funny(?) story!!!

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A job-seeker in Aurora, CO prepped for an interview and drug test by taking a cup of urine to a 7-11 near her prospective employer’s office.

She popped the urine in the oven, set it to “High,” pressed start and waited.

Just guessing, but I think the urine wasn’t hers. And I bet it was drug-free.

For those wondering “WTF?”: To fool the drug-testers with someone else’s clean urine, you gotta make it warm — as if it just streamed from YOUR bladder.

Anyhow, back to the microwave: It didn’t take long for the cup-o’-pee to reach that point that all us microwavers dread — the explosion threshold.

We’ve all heard the sound – a pop or dull thud, nothing like TNT, but messy all the same.

The clerk heard it and then watched as the drug-test-faker opened the oven door.

Yellow liquid dripped onto the counter and the store filled with that unmistakable aroma…

…of straight-from-the-oven pee-pee.

“Clean it up!” the clerk demanded.

The faker wiped a pool from the oven onto the floor and then bolted.

She didn’t get far.

The cops found her (and issued a citation) at the prospective employer’s. She was waiting for her interview (most likely wondering how the heck she was going to pass the drug test).

One more thing: She didn’t get the job.

My kindergarten teacher, Opel Bossey (yep, I had a kindergarten teacher named Mrs. Bossey), used to say, “Cheaters never prosper!”

With all due respect, Mrs. B.,  that’s a nice idea. But it’s not true. 

Cheaters do prosper occasionally (perhaps often).

But that doesn’t mean you oughta cheat.

And there’s nothing like a good cheater-DIDN’T-prosper story to remind you…

You can prosper in marketing and communications without tricks. Without misleading subject lines. Without fudging the facts. Without misrepresentations. Without cheating.

Next week I’m going to share a story about the on-demand webinars we now offer (see the p.s. below for details). Some so-called “marketing experts” encouraged us to mislead and fudge and misrepresent to increase webinar response rates. We chose a different path.

Thanks for reading, and remember… If you’re going to microwave a cup-o’-pee, use the medium power setting. 

Tom
MarketVolt

p.s. On-demand webinars are here. We’re offering 5-in-25 Webinars (five great marketing ideas in less than 25 minutes) 24/7. Show up any day, at any time, and the webinar will be starting within 15 minutes. We’re currently running two webinars, both of which dive into how you can segment your list to deliver the right information to the right people at the right time. 

• 5 Ways B2B Businesses Use Email Marketing To Simplify & Accelerate Connection-Building & Sales
    
  
• 5 Ways B2C Businesses Use Email Marketing to Increase Profits

This is a tale about how to annoy email subscribers and encourage them to opt-out.

I signed up for Nordstrom Rack’s email list last year after I bought a couple of shirts from them.

Men’s shirts (I’m a man).

Since then, I’ve received almost-daily emails from Nordstrom’s. Eighty percent of the emails peddle women’s products.

Intimate apparel: “Enhance your favorite assets.”

Dresses: “Breezy silhouettes that are always in bloom.”

And handbags. So many friggin’ handbags!

Dooney & Bourke handbags two weeks ago. Rebecca Minkoff handbags last week. And Kate Spade handbags yesterday — TWICE.

10 a.m.: The “Online Flash Event” for Kate Spade handbags (“Bring A Little Fun With You Wherever You Go.”).

5 p.m.: “The kate spade new york Event ends soon.”

I’m finished with the breezy, bloomy, asset-enhancing emails. I’ve opted-out.

So what’s this mean for you?

Don’t make the same mistake Nordstrom’s made. Don’t send everything to everybody every time.

If you’re going to send an email that resonates with only a segment of your audience, send it only to that segment.

Nordstrom, should know I’m a man. They can check their sales logs. I buy only men’s products. They can mine third-party data. They’ll see that the guy named “Thomas Ruwitch” with the credit card they have on file, with the address they have on file is, in fact, a man.

So they can put me in the “interested in men’s stuff” bucket. And, please(!), take me out of the “interested in women’s stuff” bucket.

Clients tell me all the time that they’re afraid of sending too many emails.

Too many emails is not the reason people opt-out.

Frequency is not the issue. Irrelevance is the issue.

If you pound the inbox with emails that are not relevant to your subscribers, they’ll stop opening your emails.

Or they’ll opt-out.

Or, worse yet, they’ll click the “this is spam” button even if they originally opted in.

It’s easier than you many think to segment your list and send the right information to the right people at the right time.

Check out the p.s. below and sign up for one of our webinars if you’d like to learn how…

Tom
MarketVolt

p.s. On-demand webinars are here. We’re offering 5-in-25 Webinars (five great marketing ideas in less than 25 minutes) 24/7. Show up any day, at any time, and the webinar will be starting within 15 minutes. We’re currently running two webinars, both of which dive into how you can segment your list to deliver the right information to the right people at the right time. 

• 5 Ways B2B Businesses Use Email Marketing To Simplify & Accelerate Connection-Building & Sales
    
  
• 5 Ways B2C Businesses Use Email Marketing to Increase Profits

I watched a rerun of Curb Your Enthusiasm yesterday in which Larry David gets into it with a guy who asks him to lunch. Larry and this guy are both from LA, but they run into each other in New York.

The guy suggests that he and Larry grab lunch the next day.

Larry refuses.

“So let me get this straight,” the guy says. “I’m going to eat alone tomorrow!?”

Larry: “Why do you want to eat with ME?”

The guy: “Because we never get a chance to eat in LA.”

Larry: “Because we’re not friends.”

The guy: “We’re not friends because we never spend time together.”

Larry: “We don’t spend time together because I don’t want to spend time together.”

It’s the typical Curb Your Enthusiasm gag:

Larry says out loud the things that many of us think but are afraid to spit out. He is so blunt and so emotionally clumsy that he usually comes off as the fool. We laugh at Larry — the manner-less clown.

But how foolish is he, really?

Forget Larry’s sloppy delivery and focus only on the core message.

He says, in effect: I see no value interacting with you so I’m not going to waste my time doing it.

In life and in business, that’s a wise approach.

Business people spend so much time on worthless interactions. Meanwhile, they complain that they don’t have enough to get everything done.

I’ve been to countless breakfasts, lunches, dinners, coffees, live meetings, virtual meetings and other get-togethers with people who bring little value to me and, most importantly, to whom I offer little value.

Why was I there?

Sure, in some cases, I discovered this only after meeting.

But too often, I should have known before I met.

I should have asked (at least to myself, if not out loud), “Why do you want to meet with me?”

If you don’t anticipate mutual benefit from the relationship, don’t take the meeting.

Better yet, turn the tables when you’re chasing a meeting and ask, “Why do they want to meet with me?”

If you don’t have a clear answer that has something to do with mutual benefit, don’t chase the meeting.

Sometimes, as difficult and awkward as it may be, you have to say “No.”

Thanks for reading!

Tom
MarketVolt

p.s. I got some great feedback from some subscribers who said they want to attend some our webinars, but they can’t make it at the times we’ve offered. We’re fixing that. Beginning in the next few days, we’re going to offer on-demand webinars. Rather than joining us live, at pre-set times, we’ll pre-record the webinars, and you’ll be able to attend whenever you wish. Stay tuned for details.