Monthly Archives: July 2009

What You Ought to Know About Lumpy Mail Before You Send It

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Last week, I wrote about lumpy mail. Greg said he’d sent out expensive gifts to some prospects, but used a format that only allowed for a short message. There was no room to explain what he did, or why the people getting the package should care. Nobody responded.

This is what probably happened:

Package received
Wow, this is great! Who sent it?
Greg?! Who’s Greg?
I don’t know any Greg. Why would he send me this?
Bet he spent a lot of money.
Hey, Joe, do you have that information on the Greenberg account I asked for?

Greg had a few seconds to connect, and he blew it. However, he knows better now.

Lumpy mail works, but just sending a package isn’t enough. The package, is essentially, the headline; it’s the introduction that invites people to find out more. Once the package is open, the rest of the contents (such as the sales letter or the brochure) have to make the case that your product or services are worth clicking on, calling about, and buying.

To quote David Ogilvy, “When I write an advertisement, I don’t want you to tell me that you find it ‘creative.’ I want you to find it so interesting that you buy the product.”

Photo: alvinman

An Easy Way to Get Prospects to Open Your Mail

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A somewhat mysterious large brown envelope arrived in my mailbox a few weeks ago. I wasn’t expecting anything, so I pulled it out from the pile and opened it first.

Why? Because it was “lumpy mail”. What’s lumpy mail? It’s something in a package (rather than a flat envelope). Seth Godin famously packaged his book Purple Cow in a purple milk carton. Catholic charities sent my mom a crucifix (good idea, very poor list selection).

In this case, the package was from Bill Roozie. Bill runs a design firm in Texas. I’d helped him out with some marketing advice on the Amex Open Forum, and he sent me a thumb drive as a thank you.

Sending something that stands out from the rest of the bills, the catalogs, and the brochures, increases the chances it will get opened. If you want to connect with your customers or your prospects, send them a thumb drive shaped like a camera (if you’re in the video business) or a purple milk carton. A plain brown wrapper doesn’t only protect privacy, it also makes the package more interesting and mysterious. It’s clearly not a bill, and could be a present (everyone likes presents).

Don’t you want to know what’s inside these boxes?

Oh, and speaking of presents, Happy Birthday Seth!

Photo: alvinman

Can Your Site Be Too Easy to Use?

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image of easy buttonI’ve talked a lot about the perils of putting up barriers to your customers (Flash, logins to comment on blogs, complicated contact forms, etc.), but can a site be TOO easy to use?

I have a client who has a listing on Lexis/Nexis’s legal services directory and wanted it updated. (not my usual thing, but he’s “technologically challenged”).

He asked me to update a listing for him on Lexis/Nexis. He told me all I had to do was hit an update button and make the changes. This seemed way too easy (what, no login? no password?). Sure enough, he was right. I filled out an online form (with name, address, etc.) and uploaded the changes.

That’s when the trouble started. There was only a tiny box to put three pages of material, and no way to tell what it would look like “live.” Then, I got a message saying the changes would go live at their next update (no indication of when that would be).

I called and was told that the reason there was no password was because you had to add the name and address in the form (so that would stop fakes). Meanwhile, the name and address were all there in plain sight on the existing listing!

They also said it would take 7-10 days to go live. Why? Because they review each entry individually, retype it, and then upload it!! I asked them to send the changes so I could check that it was OK.

They wanted to fax them! I asked them to email me. They emailed the client (who doesn’t use email). The changes were sent in plain text, so I couldn’t see the formatting.

Then, they sent a second email saying the upload was too long (they had a 300 word limit, and the listing had 682 words). No sign of this on the site anywhere.

So, after three hours of talking to the client, making changes, checking them, several phone calls back and forth, reading emails, and getting strange messages, my client has the same old listing he had before (in which the typist misspelled the client’s name)!

Yes, be accessible, easy-to-use, and friendly, but don’t leave the doors unlocked with a big sign that says, “Steal my Stuff”!

Photo: civilian scrabble

What Every Company Ought to Know About Customer Service

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customer service screamThe New York Public Library web site is broken (is this contagious?). Two days ago they uploaded a bright, shiny new site that lets you tag books, create lists, and gives better search options (such as only e-books or only books in Chinese). The trouble is, that you can’t log in. So, you can search and find the book you want, but you can’t actually reserve it (or see the status of your current holds).

Be Sympathetic

After fighting with it on and off for an hour, I called the help desk. To their credit, someone answered within a minute. He said they were getting 80 calls an hour, and to try again in a day or two. He told me what was going on, but he was awfully grumpy about it. I got the feeling he wanted to get off the phone as quickly as possible.

Now, if you’re having a problem, why not communicate better to your customers? Things do go wrong, but when they do, make sure your customer reps are polite, pleasant, and well-informed about the situation. Encourage them to sympathize with the customers’ plight (hey, I’m a book addict, I need my fix!), not push them away.

Explain the Situation

And, put up a quick note on your home page: Sorry, we’re having problems with our system right now. We hope to get it fixed by Thursday. Meanwhile, we’re suspending all fines so you won’t get penalized for books you can’t renew.

React Quickly (and Publicly)

UPDATE: I wrote most of this post last night. There’s now a note on the site, saying they’re having difficulties. Unfortunately, it took over 24 hours for them to publicly acknowledge the situation.

If you have a problem, don’t wait that long to tell your customers!

Photo: oddsock

Is Your Web Site User-Friendly or User-Hostile?

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no-no
My dad was trying to reserve a book online the other day. He hit submit on the county library web site and kept getting an error message. Then he did it again, same problem. Finally he looked more closely and saw that underneath the submit button were two check boxes that said, “Select library set”.

After some more puzzling, he realized that the library system is divided into two parts, one with about 5 branches, and then 33 other branches in the other set (no idea why). If you want a book, you have to specify which group to order it from!

Now, dad is an experienced software systems guru (and the former CEO of a small software firm). It took him 15 minutes to figure out how to reserve a book. What chance does an ordinary, non-technical person have with a system like that?

And why should a library patron know (or care) which branch the book comes from, or that there are two sets of libraries? If I want a book, I just want the book (as quickly as possible).

If there’s some reason for the division, why not say so, and in a way that makes sense to the user?

To paraphrase a recent article in MacWorld (June 9, 2009), bad sites are produced by people who know how to write code to make a computer do something, but have no idea how regular people behave and how those people expect to interact with that site.

As MacWorld said, “It really doesn’t matter if it’s a microprocessor or a system of tiny pulleys hauled by gnomes that’s inside that shiny glass and plastic product. It just needs to work the way they want it to.”

Look at your site through your customers’ eyes. Is it intuitive? Do visitors have to sit through a Flash presentation in order to get to the “meat” of your site? Is it easy to find your products and services?

Does your blog require a login in order to comment? Are you helping your customers use your products? Or frustrating them?

What about navigation? Do visitors visit one or two pages and then leave?

A site, or a product, that’s easy to use will encourage more people to use it (and interact with it). If it’s too hard, people will go elsewhere to find what they want.

Photo:keees