How to Anger Your Customers By Offering Them A Discount

If you follow the email trail in reverse order, you will see why

Convince me I'm getting a good deal with my 20% offer

Wait until I place an order

Send me an offer for 25%!!!

Either Figleaves intend to anger me or are just too plain lazy to use their data properly!

It's Not A Conversation If You Don't Say Anything

Big Brother Mannequin

Italian firm Almax have introduced EyeSee technology into their mannequins to provide retailers with information abut the consumers passing by or through their stores.

Capable of facial recognition, the software can gauge reaction to outfits on display

“Any software that can help profile people while keeping their identities anonymous is fantastic,” said Uché Okonkwo, executive director of consultant Luxe Corp. It “could really enhance the shopping experience, the product assortment, and help brands better understand their customers.”

Perhaps one day we will 'hear' them talk to customers perhaps offering promotions or details of to where the clothes in the store

High Street to 'e'- Street

The BBC recently reported on the ongoing struggles of some the UK most recognisable High Street brands.

With a list of brands that include Habitat, Comet, HMV, GAME, JJB Sports and Thorntons, it doesn't make happy reading.

Reasons for the decline range from the current economic climate, to bad customer services, to the impact of competition.

And yet there is 'e'-hope for some of these brands.

Take Comet for example. Management Today reported that Appliances Online has made a bid for Comet's online operation. Appliances Online claim that Comet lost out because of  

‘a poor attitude to is customers, deficient delivery service and inadequate after-sales offers'.

And if having a good attitude to customers is reflected by Facebook 'Likes' then we have a clear winner in those terms

Appliances Online 582k Likes vs

Comet 35k















But this is not the only business model that potentially works better online after a poor bricks and mortar story

That High Street favourite Woolworths is now trading successfully on line. Habitat kept only a few stores after the purchase by Homebase but again has maintained their online store . And the list has many more including Hawkin's Bazaar as well as HMV who are launching an online ecommerce site to combat their nemesis Amazon


But as I've talked about before, it's not one way traffic.  By being more Customer Centric both High Street stores such as M&S and John Lewis, as well as ebay, Amazon and Ocado see that often playing out both channels can be to their advantage. Rumours persist about Amazon and a high street presence and ebay had a UK store ( for about 5 days admittedly) 

It's not about Physical versus Digital. It's about doing what's right for the customer


BBC report can be found here High Street retailers: Who has been hit hardest?

Making It Easy

You have to love it when a brand makes it simple for customers to navigate a site

Augmented Reality Glasses

“A system and method to present a user wearing a head mounted display with supplemental information when viewing a live event. A user wearing an at least partially see-through, head mounted display views the live event while simultaneously receiving information on objects, including people, within the user’s field of view, while wearing the head mounted display. The information is presented in a position in the head mounted display which does not interfere with the user’s enjoyment of the live event.”


Yes , that's right Augmented Glasses Microsoft style as described on their patent application. 




Seemingly ready to take on Google's Project Glass announced earlier this year





The future looks very Star Trekkie

Image Gizmodo

10 Interesting Mobile Marketing Statistics

1. There are approximately 4 billion mobile phones worldwide
2. 3 billion are SMS enabled
3. 1 billion are smartphones
4. 2014 is the year mobile internet usage is destined to overtake desktop internet usage
5. 74% of consumers will wait 5 seconds for a web page to laod via their mobile device before abandoning
6. 46% of consumers are unlikely to return to a mobile site if it didn't work properly last time
7. 61% of customers who visit a mobile unfriendly site will go to a competitor's site
8. 38% of smartphone users have completed a purchase from their device
9. Mobile devices now account for 36% of all email opens
10. Visa predicts that 50% of all transactions will be via mobile by 2020

Stats courtesy of Mobile Marketing Strategies Knowledge Bank

The Psychology of Customer Conversion - Infographic

Getting inside the head of your customers can often help marketers move that conversion along.

This interesting infographic from HelpScout summarises a few studies that might help in that process

The full e-book is available from them here 

Russell and Bromley's Missed Opportunity

As a Russell and Bromley fan , I was interested to see if their shoes could be purchased online.

It seemed that I caught them mid-upgrade

But it was great to see that they offered me the opportunity to keep in touch and find out when the new website was up and running sometime in the Autumn. ( Having worked with a few Marketing  Teams, they love to be that vague with the launch dates - not that the customers like it)





So the email sign up looked like this, and it was great to see that they didn't ask too much of me

And a matter of moments later I got a welcome email.

But that was the beginning of October 2012, and not having had any emails since I thought I'd take a peek at their website today...and can you spot the subtle change in copy?

Looks like a slight slip in the delivery date.

Now of course they still have bricks and mortar stores so surely there was an opportunity a month into the 'relationship' to keep me in touch as to what was happening both on and off line?

Easy Subject Line Testing

Looking to see how to test your email subject lines?

It can be as simple as this example from ASOS that mistakenly appeared in my Inbox

But here are a few other ideas / tips

Test according to segment to understand how different audiences react to different copy

Length. I've usually found that shorter, to the point is better. Your audience may be different

Do versus Say. Does your audience react better to actionable or informative headlines?

Search and Copy. What's your audience searching for using Google or perhaps on your own website ?

Be careful what you wish for

But please don't act your agency the question I had put to me last year.

'Why does the subject line including the free offer get more opens than one without  but then the clicks remain the same?'

Getting your audience to open the email is not the end game. Your end game is always the ultimate conversion whether that be a sale, whitepaper download or an event booking

Driving Customer Loyalty - 25 Key considerations

An ICLP study lists 25 key factors in driving customer loyalty

The report includes key learnings from some well know brands including

Ritz-Carlton who are ahead of the pack in achieving customer-centricity.

The hotel company turned a traditional message into a more customer focused concept – “Let us stay with you”. With a solid focus on more unique and personalised guest experiences at its hotels, Ritz-Carlton is benefiting from a deeper level of engagement with guests, and more loyal customer

Nuffield Health and their use of data

A leading health & fitness organisation with 55 gyms throughout the UK, they used data analytics and predictive modelling to identify potential lapsers and instigate sales and marketing campaigns that would help them retain these members. The model was found to have an accuracy of at least 70% and
helped to identify behaviour that indicated when a member might lapse.

Dell Computers understand loyalty is built on listening and responding.

Establishing trust and building credibility are two key elements of any social interaction – and they are especially vital in the social space where every interaction can be public. Loyalty in Dell’s case stems from fully understanding their customers and their needs and wants – not from market research but from direct communication with a large and very active customer segment. After a number of high profile service disasters, Dell established a social space where faults and problems were acknowledged openly and promptly. Customers could request new features and suggest improvements – and receive feedback. Within a year, Dell’s brand was perceived as both innovative and credible.

The Global Hotel Alliance understanding the importance of local. 

They launched access to over 1000 “local experiences” as part of their GHA Discovery programme. Groupon Rewards and the growing success of Bloomspot show that deals and incentives work best in
a local environment giving greater control to the individual merchant and targeting
interactions by matching individual behaviours.


The full report and a list of the 25 factors can be downloaded here

The CEO Conversation Infographic

For all those B2B planners looking to see how best to communicate with CEOs, this infographic from DOMO gives some interesting pointers.

Rugby Tackle Your Way to a Beer

Ingenious , if slightly hazardous , vending machine that encourages the 'nudge' to get your can of beer out

High Noon for a QR code

Korean Teenagers Dance For Free Coca Cola

Cool bit of technology employed by Coca Cola in Korea enables a vending machine to check out the moves by teenagers in the shopping centre




Apparently, the technology employed in Microsoft's Kinect.

This is fast on the heels of Pepsi's innovative machine that gets consumers to play games and send drinks to friends as gifts in the form of codes they can redeem at machines

Favourite Subject Line of The Week

Just because...

Email Open Rates By Time of Day Infographic

Surely 'What time of day is it best to send my emails?' is one of the most asked questions in email marketing?

( Alongside what's an average open rate?)

Some results analysed by GetResponse in Q1 2012 have been used to create this infographic

Hanna Andrzejewska, Communication and Marketing Specialist at GetResponse says

1. The really important finding was that all messages, no matter what time they were scheduled for, get most opens within the first hour from delivery (up to 23%).

2. This means that if a message is sent too early (or too late) to top engagement times, it will miss the chance of reaching its maximum results. It simply cannot wait in the inbox for too long.

3. The research confirmed that the subscribers are most engaged with their inbox content during the working hours: Scanning emails is the first thing they do when they start work — 8-10 a.m. Then, their inbox activity goes down, with the lowest results around lunch, and goes up again shortly before leaving work — 3-4 p.m.

4. An interesting thing is that the average click rate also increases around 8 p.m., which might mean that this is the time when recipients read through their messages with more attention.

She also told Marketing Sherpa that marketers should

One, schedule your message delivery to match the top engagement times so that [it] doesn’t wait in the mailbox for more than one hour.

Two, aiming at the afternoon upsurge will let you avoid the morning clutter (more marketers schedule their messages to land in inboxes between 6-12 p.m

Exact Target recently published this interesting interview about when to send an email.

Forget the stats. For me it boils down to this shortlist :


1 - Know your audience


That was short, but it breaks down a little further

1 - Understand what they are trying to achieve: Are they researching, buying,using the product

2- Understand how they purchase your product or service : Buying weekly groceries is different buying holidays. So should the communication timings and frequency of email

3- Understand how they consume content : Are they using mobile, tablets or desktops




And remember, if you follow the crowd, you'd better make sure your email is capable of standing out and your customer will look for it above everyone elses

Cookie Help

The Cookie Legislation is complicated for both consumers and marketers so I was really impressed with the way BT explained how the various levels of cookie use on BT.com affected me, the consumer.

By dragging from right to left, I was able to understand the Targeting, Functional or Strictly Necessary and Performance features related to my cookie preference.

Nice one BT