ETD: 735 Patents; Retailers -- Please get coordinated with all
your channels; Business Card Specialists; Measuring Online Ad
Effectiveness; CRM Failing as It Yields One-Sided 'Relationships'
E-Tailer's Digest
etd_post@gapent.com
Mon, 03 Nov 2003 22:25:42 -0500
E-Tailer's Digest --- Everything for the Retailer
Issue #0735 November 4, 2003
George Matyjewicz, Moderator mailto:georgem@gapent.com
Published by: GAP Enterprises, Ltd. http://www.etailersdigest.com
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CONTENTS
[1] Greetings
[2] Patents
[3] Retailers -- Please get coordinated with all your channels.
[4] Business Card Specialists
[5] Measuring Online Ad Effectiveness
[6] CRM Failing as It Yields One-Sided 'Relationships'
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[1] Greetings.
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Hi All:
OK gang, it's 25 days to Black Friday. What are you doing this year to
increase sales? How do you think this season will be for retailing?
Today we have some interesting material on advertising and customer
relationships. IMHO, they should go hand-in-hand. How can one create an
ad campaign without knowing the customer needs? I was looking at an
article that was published in Inc a couple of years ago that described one
of our clients and how they used computers to go back to the future. They
actually bought for what the customer wanted, not what the designers said
they should buy!
Today we have Business Card Specialists profiled, which will remain for
posterity at our "Members: Who Are You?" site.
http://etailersdigest.com/resources/members/index.htm And we have a form
there for you to tell us about you. As I said when I first proposed this
idea, we have "known" each other for a long time, yet we often don't know
anything about each other. So, tell us who you are and what you do.
Now, let's get to everything for the retailer.
Sincerely
George Matyjewicz, PhD
Chief Global Strategist, GAP Enterprises, Ltd.
mailto:georgem@gapent.com
http://www.etailersdigest.com
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[2] Patents
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This past weekend I met socially with a couple who's business is to create
and patent kitchen items. Very interesting stuff. They started the
business 25 years ago because Gail was looking for a place to store large
items in her pantry - cookie sheets, serving trays, etc. She couldn't find
one anywhere, so she invented one. And many more items came along on the
same manner.
They don't sell the products, merely develop the patents and license them
to two distributors who build and sell the products, many of which are
built in China.
They have an office in our building and spend their days thinking of new
ideas and protecting themselves from patent infringement suits. If you
have a patent that somebody infringes on and you don't take action within a
year, you lose the rights. Interesting to note that patents in the US are
not valid elsewhere unless you file for an international patent. However,
if you have a patent in another country it is valid in the U.S.
They were both reps in the giftware industry before starting the
business. I found it fascinating.
Does anybody have any experience with patents? Care to share?
George
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[3] Retailers -- Please get coordinated with all your channels.
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George: the quick answer to satisfaction with websites is generally positive.
But you think the Big Guys are perfect? I got a sales catalog from
Neiman-Marcus and tried to order a certain suit online. When I found it,
the site indicated that only a size 14 was available (NOT my size.) Since
I have become wise to the lack of seamlessness among various channels, I
tried the 800 number. Yes, they have my size. I ordered it, and will
WRITE a complaint sometime to HQ.
-- Jan Owens
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[4] Business Card Specialists
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Business Card Specialists offers full color digital business cards,
letterhead, envelopes, brochures, self-ink stamps, banners, post cards,
mailers, graduation announcements, etc
Business cards are a mini-billboard of your business. This is one of the
impressions you leave behind with your customer. Business cards are one of
the least expensive marketing tools for your business and can be passed on
by others so always give 3 to 5 cards on every meeting.
Business Card Specialists is better than the competition because we offer
high quality product for the lowest possible price!
I started this business because of my desire to help businesses enhance
their company image. There are endless possibilities with digital
technology. I can provide various products for your business needs.
I just started Business Card Specialists in July of 2003. I am growing the
business every day and looking to hire image consultants that want to have
fun in their job and make good money as well!
We market via word of mouth, cold calling, networking functions, some
newspaper advertising, friends and family.
Costs: Full color Digital Business Cards
$79.95/1000 $99.95 Setup and Design
$109.95/1000 $135.00 Setup and Design
call 317-201-7673 or email stevebcsindy@cs.com for other pricing.
Steven Moore, Owner
Business Card Specialists
4553 Makena Ridge Lane
Greenwood, IN 46142 U.S.
Tel: 317-201-7673
Fax: 317-889-7826
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[5] Measuring Online Ad Effectiveness
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From Jan Owens...
Marketers have long said they would increase their online advertising
budgets if Internet sites would do what they promised to do years ago:
quantify the effects of an ad campaign on sales, brand awareness and other
factors like the consumer's intent to buy.
With each passing month, online companies are increasingly able to do just
that. The question is, will marketers actually respond?
Google is the latest Internet company to make good on the promise. A new
feature allows advertisers to copy a string of software code from Google's
Web site onto pages of their own sites. When users click on the
advertiser's link from Google's Web site, Google follows the user's
progress. Like other companies, Google does not collect personally
identifiable information on the user.
Advertisers can log on to Google to view graphs showing how many visitors
bought an item, signed up for an e-mail message or sought other information
deemed significant. Armed with that information, marketers can determine if
their ads are worth the expense.
The feature also helps Google avoid temporary advertising suspensions by
marketers, who often test the effectiveness of their ads by simply stopping
their advertising campaigns for a few days and tracking the effects on sales.
Industry analysts say the Google feature, and similar services from
companies like DoubleClick, LinkShare and CentrPort, are helping a
generation of marketing executives to quantify the benefits of their
advertising investments.
A new Forrester survey of 95 marketers, released Friday, found that 81
percent said their online ad spending would increase if they saw research
proving that such ads would increase sales. Yet most of the survey's
respondents were unaware of the numerous studies "that show the impact of
increased online spending - and those who were aware discounted the results
as inapplicable," the report said. "Only firsthand, positive experiences
with online media will give marketers the confidence to increase spending."
Google's service is one that could provide marketers such assurances, Ms.
Li said. CNET Networks Inc., the online technology publisher of Web sites
including News.com, Builder.com, GameSpot and others, is offering similar
services. Earlier this year, GameSpot, an informational Web site for video
game enthusiasts, rolled out a program for its advertisers called GameSpot
Trax, a free online service that can track various statistical results of
ad campaigns.
Lot's of details at...
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/03/technology/03ecom.html?ex=1068868110&ei=1&en=470b6daede917832
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[6] CRM Failing as It Yields One-Sided 'Relationships'
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In an article by Alan Mitchell in CRM buyer he noted when software vendors
and management consultants claimed that CRM could be a magic bullet, they
overlooked one thing: Just because we need to manage the mechanics of our
interactions with customers, it does not follow that they want a
"relationship" with us.
So, is customer relationship management (CRM) really as dead as a dodo? The
rationale is that CRM will never work because it requires too big a seismic
shift in companies' operations. And, anyway, it is just a fancy name for
good old-fashioned marketing -- finding out what your customers want and
providing it for them.
Let me present an alternative view. Firstly, clients are still interested
in CRM because, quite simply, they have to be. If you are a large
organization that needs to handle many interactions with customers --
billing, queries, complaints, customer service, marketing messages -- in
day-to-day business, then you are in the business of managing relationships
whether you call it CRM or not.
All the obsessions of CRM -- single customer view, managing multiple
touchpoints, segmentation and targeting of messages, costs and benefits --
follow naturally from this basic operational requirement. So those seismic
shifts cannot be avoided. Companies simply have to learn how to let the
left hand know what the right hand is doing.
The real problem with CRM is that it is not a marketing-driven concept. CRM
looks at relationship management from the point of view of individual
sellers. It does not look at relationship management from the point of view
of customers, who are inevitably trying to manage many different
relationships with many different suppliers. It does not address customers'
relationship management needs.
When software vendors and management consultants claimed that CRM could be
a magic bullet delivering mouth-watering outcomes, such as soaring customer
retention rates, cross-sales, and word-of-mouth recommendations, they
overlooked one thing: just because we need to manage the mechanics of our
interactions with customers, it does not follow that they want a
"relationship" with us.
These two motivational and structural issues lie at the heart of CRM's
problems. Huge rewards await those who successfully tackle them. But they
require new and different business models. They are not the remit of CRM,
and never will be.
Details at...
http://www.crmbuyer.com/perl/story/32023.html
+++ [Moderator's Comments] +++
To paraphrase that famous political statement a 10 years ago - "It's the
customer stupid." Far too often companies establish programs and forget
the primary ingredient - the customer.
What do you think?
George
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