Absolute Blog

By Brian Meckler

You’ve spent good money to draw consumers into your business. The designers and marketing professionals you may have worked with talked at length about branding, building and maintaining your company image. At last, droves of customers pile into your business. Now what? To not appear false, your business needs to match the image you worked so hard to create. Here are a few things to keep in mind when dealing with customer retention.

Think of your business location as your own promotional medium. Your business is a promotional zone that is ready to serve your marketing needs. You have complete control of the marketing message that influences your customers while at your business.

Just imagine all of the areas of your business you could use to promote specific products: from the windows to the walls, entrance, front counter, lobby, bathrooms and the parking lot. By using this approach, a business owner can highlight their marketing message clearly and repeatedly for maximum impact. I’ve seen businesses that have advertising inside their business, usually in the bathroom, promoting other businesses (even competitors). Why not use this valuable real estate to promote your own business instead?

Display photos and testimonials of satisfied customers on your walls. Place posters promoting upcoming sales in your entryway. Create appealing displays for the products you want customers to buy. Make a display of products that might not typically be envisioned to go together. Use your products in new and creative ways around your business creating vision and inspiration. Even if the customer doesn’t choose to go with exactly what you have displayed together, it demonstrates product versatility and creates the idea that the possibilities with your products are endless. Even just by moving products that have not been selling well to a centralized location and making them the focus of a display or a certain area of the business, you are almost guaranteed better success with the product. And remember, there is power in repetition. Also, another valuable idea is to give your customers a ticket to a prize drawing that will be held at a normally slow time of business.

Have you ever driven by a restaurant, smelled the food and instantly became hungry or found yourself craving their food? A well-directed aroma of your food can be a powerful incentive to spend money. The same holds true for businesses other than restaurants. The power of scent can be used with body products, candles and other household items. Entice your customers by providing samples of these products which will make buying the product irresistible. I’ve seen several banks give away lollypops to kids or a treat to a customer with a dog at the drive-through window.

Is your company an environmentally friendly (green) company? If so, promote it. Many customers are very interested in doing business with green companies to protect the environment. Even General Motors, the makers of the gas-guzzling Hummer, is promoting their green efforts.

Tactics like these allow you to focus directly on the target customers that matter the most. If you don’t promote your services/products a customer may not be aware of their value or worse yet, may not be aware of something you have that they are interested in. Our business has flyers promoting our services posted on the window of our entryway. A visitor to our office complex saw the posters and hired us to develop a Web site for him which has since led to other services like Web site hosting, e-mail marketing and graphic design for his business. If we didn’t have a poster displayed we would have never had the chance to work with this customer.

Looking for prospective customers is time-consuming and expensive. It’s much easier to get your current customers to buy more often than it is to increase your customer base and it also comes at a fraction of the cost. Retention is important because these customers provide your base, helping you to plan for expansion and keeping your business afloat during periods when the market contracts. Focus on getting your customers to come back by making each experience they have with your business a great one. Your current, loyal customers can also help build a positive reputation for your business. These customers spread positive word of mouth advertising which helps you attract more new customers. Focus on quality instead of quantity.

Focus your efforts on your current customers first and once you have the marketing methods in place to make the most of your existing relationships then shift gears to recruit new customers to your business and work on growing that relationship. However, the most important message to remember out of all this is plain and simple. Your business will grow substantially if you can get your current customers to frequent your business more often.

Do you have any unique retention ideas to share? Please post your ideas on our blog at absolutemg.com/blog. We’ll give two ticket vouchers for a Fargo-Moorhead RedHawks baseball game to the first five who post usable ideas.

Brian Meckler is a marketing advisor for Absolute Marketing Group of Moorhead, MN. He has over nine years of advertising and marketing experience. Feel free to contact Brian at 218.284.1111 or brian@absolutemg.com with any questions about advertising and media planning for your business.

As far as copywriting tools and tricks are concerned, alliteration is an oldie but goody.  Sadly, this technique gets used all too often in all the wrong situations. Alliteration enhances the message. It is not the core of the message.  We’ve all seen these terrible uses of alliteration like the “FREAK OUT FRIDAY SALE!” What’s your message? Do your sales reps don Speedos and Halloween masks to “freak you out” and then give you a discount for surviving the mayhem? No. Copywriting isn’t about throwing alliteration together “to be catchy and creative.” A good writer takes the message  and titles it or positions it  in a memorable way. Alliteration must serve a function. Take Arby’s 5 for 5 for $5.95 deal. The message is that five different menu items can be arranged in any five part combination and the price will still be $5.95. The repetition of the five is for easy recall. For a day of the week special, I look at Taco John’s “Taco Tuesday.” It’s been around since I was a little kid, but it still works. It’s simple. It’s to the point.  Next time you’re looking to brand a sale or write a headline, make sure you have a solid message or goal. Let the message or goal work for you. Remember, the headline serves only two purposes, attention and retention. And as a general rule, avoid violent or destructive words like freakout or mayhem. You’re a professional business. Sound like one.

7 weekly sales alliterations that should be avoided at all costs.

Writers, if these get approved and slid across your desk, it’s ok to cry because part of me would die too.

Moron Monday “our prices are so low, they’re stupid!” - Why would I buy from or be loyal to an idiot?
Totally Terrific Tuesday! - what’s so awesome about it? Sure it’s not Monday, but it sure as hell isn’t Friday.
Wacky Wednesday - unless you’re selling keyboard ties, stay away.
Threes Company Thursday - John Ritter? It’s too soon, too soon.
Fallout Friday - because nothing says Buy Me!  like nuclear winter.
Super Saturday - when did Saturday ever save the day? Does it wear spandex? Hmm..
Sunday Spectacular - yes. I did just sit in my underpants for 12 hours, but I assure you there’s nothing spectacular about a grown man in Sponge Bob boxers eating Captain Crunch watching reruns of Xena.

By MacDalton Berns

Companies have used brainstorming sessions as a tool to create “original” marketing ideas for decades. To be original, you must be first. Originality is the mark of an innovative company and is the wind in a successful marketing campaign. However, workplace habits and trends are eroding the benefits of true brainstorming.

The forecast for original ideas looks bleak. Instead of putting a pen to paper to extract original ideas from your brain, it’s more natural today to do an Internet search to see what other people have done in similar situations. This practice of regurgitating already-done ideas may be detrimental to your marketing campaign’s success because it takes away from the tornado of memorable innovations associated with being a trailblazer.

During the last two years, I have had better success brainstorming away from the computer screen – whether at a coffee shop, on a long run or in the shower. When you are not comparing your problem to a prefabricated solution, your brain explores more options. Here’s a lightning quick list of essential items for brainstorming success:

Chief Brainstormerologist:
A brainstorm session must be planned and facilitated by an experienced and energetic leader with strong communication skills. This person must set adequate timelines and be fair to all ideas during the session. This person must not promote all their ideas as the best.

Clear Goal:
Investing time into brainstorming is wasted unless there’s a well-defined goal. Bad Example – The brainstorming session goal is to create ideas to increase sales. Good Example – The brainstorming session goal is to create ideas to increase web-based sales by 20 percent to Upper Midwest women 18-34 for the next three months.

Session Prep Time:
Team members need an adequate amount of time to rack their brains for ideas prior to meeting. The less time you give someone to prepare, the more likely they’ll just search the Internet and be stuck with one idea without giving their imagination a chance to shine. Some people do not think well on their feet but have stellar ideas in their storm cellar.

Proper Invites:
The brainstorm leader (Chief Brainstormerologist) must invite the appropriate team members. I have seen many great ideas blocked by managers because they were not included in the initial brainstorm. Being included in the brainstorm is essential for team member buy-in.

Comfortable Atmosphere:
The environment should make all team members feel that every idea is a good idea. In many instances, the golden solution yielded from the brainstorm is a culmination of different ideas. Create a level playing field for all idea givers – no matter what their status is on the corporate ladder.

Follow-up:
Let the brainstorm team know what was decided. Let them know that you appreciate them sharing their original ideas. Hopefully, this will lead to more innovative thought in daily tasks. The most successful brainstorming session will yield a solution that no one will remember who originally voiced the solution.

The tried-and-true brainstorming fundamental has changed in today’s marketing discipline. I believe that the creative craft is better with original thought created without an Internet search. We’d love to learn your opinion about the future of brainstorming. Please post your opinion at www.absolutemg.com/blog.

MacDalton Berns is a marketing advisor at Absolute Marketing Group in Moorhead, Minnesota and teaches advertising class at Concordia College. Feel free to contact Mac at 218-284-1111 or mac@absolutemg.com.
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Article By: Chad White

RECENTLY AN EMAIL EXPERIENCE COUNCIL member asked me whether retailers should drive sales online or offline with their email marketing. The marketer wanted to drive more store traffic, but wasn’t sure about all the ways to go about doing that. The added concern was that revenue was more trackable and measureable online –and the marketer definitely wanted to get credit for the sales they drove.

Having a very subscriber-centric view of the world, I answered that, in general, retailers should not try to force customers into particular channels, that they should try to be channel-agnostic. Some subscribers will learn about products through email and then seek them out at their local store, while others are more than happy to buy them online. Still others will call in or will buy once they’ve seen the product again in the catalog. A sale is a sale is a sale.

That said, there are a few reasons to inject some occasional channel bias into your email marketing. First, email is good at driving sales to other channels. For instance, 86% of survey respondents made an in-store purchase as a result of receiving an email, according to a recent survey by Epsilon. Second, there’s been plenty of research that has found that multichannel shoppers spend more — and the more channels they interact with, the more they spend. Third, there’s often a business need to drive subscribers to a particular channel. And fourth, different channels are better at some things than others. So if you can break out of siloed thinking and take a holistic approach to sales, there are many opportunities.

With all of that in mind, here are some ways to drive traffic to your stores:

1. Store events. One of the key advantages of stores is that customers can see, touch and taste products, and experience them firsthand. It’s also the one channel where you can have face-to-face interactions with your customers. Those strengths make stores ideal for events like food tastings, cooking demonstrations, instructional workshops, trunk shows, and book signings.

For instance, earlier this month Harry & David held a Gourmet Grilling Sauces Tasting Event and used a June 9 email to raise awareness. A June 9 Home Depot email promoted a kids workshop on how to build a birdhouse. And in a June 12 email, Toys “R” Us promoted a 3D Crayola Chalk Art event going on in-store. For retailers that have an active flagship store, you may consider following Saks Fifth Avenue’s lead and emailing subscribers a monthly listing of flagship store events.

Charity events that are tied to stores can also be supported by your email marketing. For instance, in a Jan. 31 email, Macy’s promoted its National Wear Red Day event in support of the American Heart Association: If you wore red to a Macy’s store on Feb. 1, you received a 15%-off coupon. And on June 23, Finish Line promoted a shoe donation drive in partnership with Soles4Souls, where donating a pair of shoes at a Finish Line store got you a $5-off coupon.

2. In-store sales. Another effective way of spurring subscribers to visit your stores is by promoting in-store sales. If the sale is across all channels, then you can also send them coupons and discount codes that work in stores. Ann Taylor, Barnes & Noble and JCPenney do this regularly, and go the extra step of including printable, bar-coded coupons or links to them. Doing so not only makes redemption easier for cashiers, but also allows the retailer to track sales from email subscribers. And if you want to more actively drive subscribers to stores, you can send store-only coupons.

3. Online circulars. Related to store-only deals, online circulars are another staple of retail email marketing. JCPenney, Kmart, Target, Staples and several other retailers include links to these in every email, driving at least some traffic to stores with every email they send out. Other retailers like EB Games, OfficeMax and Toys “R” Us send out emails dedicated specifically to promoting their circulars.

4. Ship-to-store programs. If you have the ability to fulfill online orders from your stores, that’s also a great way to encourage store visits and create upsell opportunities. Cabela’s, Circuit City, Coach, Linens ‘n Things, Sears and Wal-Mart, among others, routinely promote their ship-to-store programs. Since going national with its Site-to-Store program last July, Wal-Mart has integrated that program into all its emails, touting it in email headers. It’s an especially powerful tool when trying to close last-minute sales right before a major holiday. For instance, in the days before Christmas last year, you saw retailers like Linens ‘n Things promoting ship-to-store along with gift cards and their store hours.

Other processes that begin online and end at stores can also boost store traffic. For example, in a May 6 email, Walgreens announced that it was giving away free 8×10 photos for one day only. All you had to do was upload your photo to their system and then pick it up at your local store.

5. Store locators. Backing up all the previously mentioned tactics is the store locator. Make it easy for your subscribers to find the store nearest them by including a link to your store locator in every email. And consider working that store locator into your email message when you’re promoting an in-store event or sale.

If you collect subscribers’ zip codes as a part of your email sign-up process or have it because of a purchase, consider following the lead of Harry & David and J. Jill, both of which use that information to include the location of each subscriber’s nearest store in every email. That saves subscribers the lookup and is a constant reminder that there’s a store nearby to serve their needs.

6. Announce new store openings. Email is also a great way to alert customers of new store openings, as Urban Outfitters did earlier this year with a dedicated email and Crate & Barrel’s CB2 brand did last fall with several passing mentions in its emails. These emails are always best when targeted to subscribers in nearby zip codes, otherwise the email risks being irrelevant. After all, does a customer in Detroit really care if you’re opening a new store in Atlanta? Probably not.

7. Store-based partners. Although typically a tactic for brand manufacturers, there are some retailers that don’t operate stores and have store partners instead. For instance, Dell sells its computers direct as well as through Best Buy stores and has promoted that arrangement in emails on several occasions.

Chad White is director of retail insights and editor-at-large at the Direct Marketing Association’s Email Experience Council. Visit his blog at http://www.retailemailblog.com/

Visit the MediaPost blog at: http://blogs.mediapost.com/email_insider/

I ran across a problem with the Wordpress 2.5 plugin EventCalendar where the calendar worked fine, but when you click on a date in the calendar to view the Event post, it would return a Not Found error page. The fix for this is an unofficial patch. Basically two files need to be replaced - ec3.js and eventcalendar3.php. The patch files can be found in a zip file here.

By Jason Jacobson

The year was 1988. America was watching the Huxtables and listening to INXS, bracing themselves for what Guns N’ Roses would bring. Shoulder padded suits, acid washed jeans and Aqua Net rounded out the remainder of the day. The face of advertising stood in simple and archaic terms by today’s standards. Then, graffiti was used for gang messages and political protest by West Germans, not yet discovered as powerful a branding tool.

Specialty advertising was reserved for mesh hats, t-shirts, and neon water bottles. Media buyers chose paper or airwaves. Guerilla tactics involved hiding in trees. The Internet was a classified military operation. And the little Italian plumber who jumped out of pipes and into our hearts to save Princess Peach was more powerful than any of the wizards and warriors online today.

Today, the world of advertising has turned from a desolate wasteland with sparse brands wielding dominance to an overgrown jungle of brand imagery fighting tooth and nail to survive. Twenty years has shrunk the outside world to the size of a Blackberry where mass communication is handled by the masses through blogs, text messaging, and viewer created content. Our search for the next big idea resides in the quest for the next YouTube smash. Age and location demographics mean less than the psychographics we use to unlock the secrets of commerce.

The products we sell are made overseas. We produce services that sell services to service providers. The mantra of location, location, location is silenced by PayPal and pay per click advertisers. What will be the aftermath of this technoplosion?

As every generation does when reflecting on days gone by, many believe the next 20 years will bring more clutter and chaos to the world of advertising. The pathos of becoming the next Coke or Disney will force branding to get more cut-throat. Every part of our life will become consumed by someone else’s message. More accurate tracking and ever increasing narrowcasting will have developed targeting so specific that the generic slogan will die. Personal information will cease to exist. Big Brother is the name of a Market Research firm. Even today, machines can generate clouds in the shape of logos. The sky’s the limit cliché has never been so close to a harsh reality.

But perhaps the skeptics are wrong. Evidence suggests that the masses are shifting the ad armada to calmer waters. Companies are being forced to be more responsible. McDonalds has been forced to focus on healthy choices and burn the Big Mac jingle recordings. Small business continues to grow as people tire of the Fortune 500 cubicle incarceration. Government is even starting to get involved in America. Not the United States, but South America, specifically Sao Paulo, Brazil. Those officials have outlawed outdoor advertising citing the billboards take away from their beautiful skyline. Maybe, in the next twenty years, advertising clutter will be considered pollution and be controlled by the EPA.

So, what do you think the world of advertising will be like in 2028? Let us know by posting your insights on our blog – www.absolutemg.com/blog.

Absolute Marketing Group is a full-service marketing firm located in Moorhead, Minnesota, USA. 218-284-1111. www.absolutemg.com

But get your entry in soon - Cas’ due date WAS back on April 23rd, so this contest could end at ANY time.