VerticalResponse Email Marketing Blog for Small Business

Ego Gratification as an Ad Motivator

I know I'm going to get some comments on this one so bring them on. Ego. Everyone has one about one thing or another. It's really about some sort of status, right? What exactly is it that touches our egos? Here are a few examples of how exclusivity drives ego gratification.

I had been back in the states for a few weeks from my LONG OVERDUE vacation, but on my way back i was annoyingly waiting for my luggage and a lovely Louis Vuitton suitcase rolled by on the conveyor. Nice bag. About $1200 for the tiny one. But the bag got slammed and trashed like the $200 Samsonite that most people have. The price for that ego? About $1000. But nice job putting Uma Thurman in a fancy dress, and JLo in the ads. Why? People WANT to be like them and want to carry bags they have.

And what about the "little blue box"? You know what I'm talking about. Everyone loves it, it's Tiffany fortheluvapete. Anything in that box has GOT to be cool. I mean they patented the color! The jewelry is top notch and the price is about 20 times the price of any "normal" piece of jewelry. (I hear Kanye crying right now). They've done a great job of appealing to the ego of their customers. Heck, they even have a lower cost silver line to graduate people "up" to who they think they are! Great job Tiffany!

We all succumb to some sort of ego when it comes to advertising. Heck i have this "friend" whose ego was crushed when someone looked at her Technomarine watch and asked where she got her Fossil. Ouch.

Oh and it's not just product, VR has plenty of customers and publishers with newsletters that profess "The Best" info about something, or "The Most Fabulous", etc.

Do you have a product or service that appeals to the ego in anyone? It's a trigger, so pull it. Ego driven products can charge premium pricing most of the time. Why? Because it's not that we "need" the product, it's that we "want" the product and can have the product.

Here are a few examples of how to appeal to the ego:

• Financial Consultants - Looking to attract new customers that want "wealth management" instead of simply "financial planning"?
• Wineries -  Do you have a low production wine you will only sell to people who are "on the list?"
• Gifts/Jewelry retailers - Do you have a one of a kind product that is strikingly similar to something worn by Jennifer Aniston (or any other celeb that has been in US Weekly or on the Red Carpet lately)?
• Spa/Salon - Do you have the latest "must have" treatment that takes 10 years off of us? (If so I'd like it)
• Restaurants - Do you cater to "high-end" or "gourmet"?

If I haven't mentioned your business, no problem, you may very well have something that grabs the ego.  If you do, call it out, you'll not only get your target audience, you'll also get the wannabes! Hey Amex graduated me up from the Green Card;-)

Sales Prevention - C'mon Gap!

While it isn't my intention to keep disparaging the Gap, I have a perfect example of sales prevention that every business can learn from. Hey a big company is a big company...I guess.

So this holiday season I decided to buy employees "cool" jackets with the VR logo embroidered on it. Not the ordinary kind that fall apart the minute you wash them. For the girls, easy, I went to Banana and got stylin' jackets. People in the store were nice to me, and even gave me discounts. Unfortunately I wasn't able to get anything for the guys in there, I didn't like the selection and I'm kinda snobby that way.

Next stop, the GAP. I find a great jacket in the store and ask for about 20 of them.

Sales Prevention Guy (SPG): "We don't have that many but here's the number to call and they'll sell them to you. I called, they have them." Great! Easy! Or so I thought.

Next day I call and tell GAP Customer Service person (GCS1) exactly what I need and she says, "I'm sorry, this is corporate sales and we don't carry that."

Janine: "Hmmm, the nice salesguy in your store told me you had them. OK, whattaya got?"
GCS1: "Go to our site and choose from there."
Janine: Showing my age I accidentally type in www.thegap.com, and low and behold, it doesn't even redirect to www.gap.com, it goes nowhere. HOPEFULLY they own the URL. "Wow, you have ONE sweatshirt for guys and it's not even a zip up."
GCS1: "Yup."
Janine: "You have all of these great clothes and only offer one sweatshirt? Thanks anyways."

So off to the Gap site to purchase the 20 shirts. I put through the purchase and waited for days, no shirts arrived. Questioning this, since the process thus far has been slightly murky, I logged into my account and the order had been canceled. Didn't tell me, didn't email me.

Back to GAP CS.

Janine: "Hi, my order seems to have been canceled."
GCS2: "That's right. You can't order more than 10 pieces. It's because of people selling our stuff on eBay."
Janine: "Seems like you could have stopped the order on your site or given me an error code. Instead you just canceled it without notifying me? I just want to buy these as gifts, I would think you'd want people to buy more."
GCS2: "Sorry, that's the policy."

ANNOYING. Hey Gap, if you're not going to sell more than 10 pieces of an item on your site I've got a GREAT idea for you: PUT MORE THAN ONE SWEATSHIRT ON THE CORPORATE SITE.

So what do you do? You place two orders of 10 with two different credit cards. Hmmm, people ARE smart Gappers. Take some lessons from your brothers and sisters at Banana.

This is the very reason why we put such a high emphasis on Customer Service here at VerticalResponse. We believe we've won a lot of customers because of the fact that we pick up the phones, return calls, listen to our customer's great ideas and above all put out a product that people want and make it easy for them to buy.

In our experience making it easy for any customer to do business with you is key to happy customer relationships.

Gap failed on a number of occasions here.

1. SPG guy was nice, but didn't have any facts straight. He told me, "Not a problem."
2. CS1 wasn't overly helpful, made me feel like I was making my living off of eBay.
3. They didn't give me an error code when I ordered more than 10 and then canceled my order with NO notification.   CS2 didn't seem to care.
4. They put out a poor product, there site has nothing to choose from.
5. And ouch, there are a lot of people that remember you as The Gap, you might want to redirect that URL.

And while they still got my money in the end, I may think twice about doing business with them again. Now,  I'll leave them alone for a while.

Got a story of your own? Comment!

The OfficeMax Paper Bag

i got the Sunday paper today, crammed as usual with a bunch of FSIs (Free Standing Inserts in the event you didn't know the acronym for the flyers that your paper is stuffed with, everything has an acronym:-) and I have to say one jumped out at me. The folded up brown paper bag from OfficeMax.

I have to preface this with "we get all of our office supplies from Staples" because we do and have some ties to them. But Staples I gotta say this marketing tactic is brilliant. "Everything you can fit inside this bag...15% off". With restrictions of course, like you can't fill it with PDAs, phone cards or digital cameras. Bummer!

Still, you can load up on those annoying supplies you need, pens, scissors, staplers, paper clips, a years' worth depending on how big your company is.

Kudos to OfficeMax for a great idea to get people into your retail locations. Maybe you'll turn them into online customers later?

And hey Staples, I'm tempted to go to OfficeMax today just for the discount, but the weather is too nice!

Do you have a clever idea on how to drive traffic into your retail location? Comment...

I Drank the CRM Kool Aid

CRM, Customer Relationship Management, has been around for years. "Closing the loop" i think it was probably called at one point. As business grows this becomes valuable with a capital "V" and many of us don't think about it until it's too late.

When I started VerticalResponse everyone had their own prospect and customer data in their own programs. I thought that was ok the first year, but as our customers and our business grew it was painfully obvious we needed a solution where all of our data was in one place.

Did you ever call on a customer to ask for a testimonial only to find out they just got done screaming at one of your reps? Ouch! (Not that that ever happens here ;-) Did you email a customer that just bought something from you offering them the same product at a different price? Double ouch!

Those are just two things I can think of off the top of my head. I'm sure there are hundreds of stories like this.

Here's the immediate value we saw when we implemented our CRM Solution:

1. History - Track a customer's history from prospect to purchase, and all of the touchpoints that were made.
2. Email - Send an email from within the CRM solution so that everyone can see the communication.
3. Customer Tracking - Track that a customer or prospect clicked on a link in an email so that they can be followed up with.
4. Marketing ROI - Track an email or direct mail campaign's ROI
5. Reports - Run reports to see where sales are coming from by salesperson or marketing program.
6. Customer Support - Track cases and history of a customer

Our CRM solution is salesforce.com, but there are many out there that are affordable and will fit your budget.

In the end we save time and money - Troy, our PR Specialist doesn't have to run around to Sales and Customer Support asking them what happened the last time they talked to Ms. X before he calls for a testimonial. Dana, our VP of Sales can easily see that Alex has just closed a deal. Sonya, our Account Manger, can see that a customer proactively needs a call. All with a simple query.

We chose an ASP, because we believe in the On Demand "stuff". But if software works for you there are plenty of those to choose from too. Oh and the Kool Aid was refreshin'!