Unlike last week, things slowed down in the twitterverse for me.
If you’d like to follow me on Twitter you can do so at: http://twitter.com/rsmartx.
Have a great weekend.
I’ve always been interested in the relationship between creative and business ventures. In college at The School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston I learned how to design things, then at Tufts University I learned how they were sold. What’s always amazed me is how many great marketing ideas have bubbled up from the art world directly into the business world. Unfortunately the business world does not always do them justice. Here’s an example of what I’m talking about.
The first video shows footage of a giant zoetrope sculpture made by Peter Hudsons, which he brought to Burning Man back in 2007. The piece animates a monkey that is swinging from branch to branch of a giant tree. The footage is not great quality, but you’ll get the idea and Peter explains how it works over the course of the clip. The link to his site above offers better footage of a more recent project brought to Burning Man in 2008. He’s done at least four such zeotropes to date.
With Peter’s zeotropes, there are several exercise bikes that are placed around the sculpture that actually power it. In order to set the piece in motion audience members must generate enough power to get it spinning and up to speed. Following this, the participants on the bikes cheer each other on, and are cheered on by the crowd. There are also a series of drums that are placed around the piece that trigger the strobes to create the animation effect. There is a brilliant reveal that takes place when the drumming reaches critical mass, the bikers get the piece spinning fast enough, and strobes snap into a coordinated sequence that brings the animation to life. Peter really says it best:
Below is a clip is the BRAVIA-drome, the world’s largest zoetrope made for a current Sony advertising campaign. As you can see they had a slightly larger budget …. but they lost sight of the most important feature in the slickness of their presentation. The thing that Peter understands so well is the idea that engagement depends on investment. Sony seems to have made something that is technically remarkable, and beautiful, but significantly less engaging. I think they dropped the ball, so to speak.
I’ve been exploring the idea of adding audio versions of some of my blog posts to this site. Would that be of interest to anyone? I’m also interested in conducting interviews that I could turn into a podcast. So, I’ve done some research into what it would take to create high-quality audio presentations, and I’m writing to share what I’ve learned.
There are a couple parts to making a high-fidelity audio recordings including, a microphone, a recording space, a recording device, and an audio editing suite. I’ll quickly run through each of these parts.
I started with the microphone because its the thing that senses audio input and I thought that it would have the biggest impact on sound quality. This turned out not to be the case and I discovered that it is possible to create a decent sounding recordings with a fairly inexpensive microphone, or even the microphone in your computer. Because microphones work in conjunction with recording devices I’ll talk about them together. Here are the three most common configurations I came across:
There are other configurations that are common if, for example you need to use multiple microphones, which usually requires some sort of mixer. However, in order to record podcasts and interviews, these should suffice. I spoke to many people, and read many online reviews, before choosing a unit to test in each category. These represent high quality instruments at a reasonable price. In other words, there are cheaper and more expensive options, but these offer exceptional value for the money. For some perspective, you can find solid stand-alone microphones starting at around $100. I won’t go into detailed reviews here as this information is readily available online.
From left to right these are:
the H2 Digital Recorder ($180), a Shure KSM27 ($299), and the The RODE Podcaster ($229)
I decided to go with a USB microphone because sound quality was my first priority and I wanted to put extra money towards that. I also assumed that I’d always have my computer with me when I was recording. The benefit of having the computer is that you can quickly do test playbacks to adjust levels and manage room sound. As a nice added feature, the USB microphone also has an 1/8″ monitor jack on the side so you can plug in headphones and monitor the sound while your record.
In the case that I might want to record interviews with people on the street I thought I’d pick up one of these microphones for $15 which works with the free digital recording application I have for my iPhone. If you’re really on a budget, you could try using this alone. It’s supposedly better than using the built-in microphone in your computer (and is attached to a solid state device which produces less noise itself). That said, given the right recording space it is possible to make decent recording with just your computer.
The space in which you record will have a greater impact on sound quality than a choice between any of the above microphones (except maybe the built-in computer microphone and the $15 one). I tested them all in a furnished office as well as in a completely sound damped room (i.e. no reflected sound or outside noise). What I noticed was that recording in a proper room makes the worst microphone I tested sound better than the best one in the un-damped office. At the same time, the best microphone still sounded significantly better in an apples-to-apples comparison in each space.
Part of the reason I selected the USB microphone was because I knew that I’d want to find a good room to record in. If I could do that, I could probably bring my computer as well. Plus, if I ever mix in interviews from the street with the $15 microphone, they’ll sound more authentic!
I don’t have too much to say here other than that I’ve used two programs and they are indistinguishable from a sound quality perspective. They are Audacity and Garage Band. Audacity happens to be free, and has a great support community that makes all sort of plug-ins and filters, so I’d recommend starting with that.
Ok, that’s it for now. I’ll add more information here once I get some additional experience recording.
Several people have recently asked me about how to get starting with a public relations practice, so I’ve put together a primer post on the subject. If, however, you are just looking for tips on how to write a press release, then I suggest you check out this great resource from PR Newswire. And, this diagram might be of use.
Ok, for everyone else, here’s something more substantial:
At it’s core public relations is focused on managing the flow of information that goes in and out of your organization and through third party intermediaries (The Capital “P” Press) between your business and your customers. Depending on how your organization is structured, this function may be managed by corporate communications, a public relations team, or under a general marketing team. What started changing PR was the advent of consumer generated media, company wikis, forums, and other online resources that have made the boundary between communities more porous. This has had the effect of distributing the public relations function deeper into, and across, organizations.
Still, organizations do make “official” announcements that are indisputably managed by public relations professionals. Official messages are not always intended for external consumption, but can also be directed internally for distribution to, and by, employees. It might be easiest to understand these messages as “accepted company stories”. These stories are often made available though communication guides embedded in wikis or FAQ pages. It’s also important to note that these stories are not always be defined in a top down manner. In fact, many of the most engaging and compelling stories arise from within organizations.
Companies are increasingly telling their stories through blogs, wikis, FAQs and other resources that are made available to internal stakeholders and consumers. Because of this, it is possible to efficiently deliver messages to the press without necessarily having to contact them directly. In many cases, members of the press (including consumer generated media authors) are able to follow companies by simply subscribing to these services. Obviously, there are times when you’ll want to break news to specific news organizations in advance of making the story public through your website. In this case, customer relationship management tools (CRM) make this process easier. I’ve written about CRM tools in this earlier post.
CRM tools allow you to manage your relationships with your customers but also with people in the press (who may also be customers). When used correctly, these tools can enable you to serve your customers and the press more effectively. For example, they can help you keep track of how members of the press prefer to be contacted (e-mail, phone, fax, etc). They also offer tools for tracking the effectiveness of these approaches. For example, showing how many of your e-mails were opened and clicked through and where you get the best responses. And, in the case of phone conversations, you can capture notes about those conversations, schedule follow-ups, and make additional resources available to your contacts. You can also use CRM tools to capture articles that have been written about you in the past, tagging articles and making them available as a resource for your team. With a CRM system in place you’ll be able to understand what your contacts are interested in, while being able to share the relationship as a resource with the rest of your organization.
Not all companies have the resources to set up a CRM system and manage their press relationships, which means that it may make more sense to work with an outside firm. This decision is complicated and there are many factors to consider including the size of your organization, your growth plans, and the amount of press interaction you expect to have. As a general rule, I would say that it’s preferable to develop an internal competence if possible, but that working with a PR firm along the way, and for ongoing support, can be very helpful.
Managing PR internally has several benefits:
The short answer is probably not unless you’re a larger company announcing some really big news. That said, the same companies that send messages out over the wire, such as PR Newswire, offer a suite of support services that are useful. These services offer some of the functions of the CRM I mentioned above. They have tools to create lists, make notes on specific contacts, capture how they prefer to be contacted, etc. They also offer an updated database of contacts at most publications, which is a big deal because people in the press move around a lot. If you’re not using your list frequently enough to keep up, this service can be very helpful.
The problem is that the service is also quite expensive, so it only makes sense if you have enough volume to support a subscription. This is where the freelancers and PR firms that I mentioned above can help out. Since contacting people in the press is a core part of their business, they almost always have subscriptions to these services which they can leverage for you through your partnership.They also have experience working with the platform and can generally provide significant value, particularly if you’re just getting your practice started.
I should note, PR Newwire is not as savvy when it comes to consumer generated media, though I understand that they are making efforts to come up to speed. This is another area where PR firms can help out because they have established relationships with bloggers through their work for various clients.
You should adjust the way you tell the story depending on how you are delivering it and to whom. The essence of the story, however, should remain consistent. For example, if you’re announcing a beta of a new product or service via twitter the message will not be the same as the press release you send out to your contacts via e-mail. In general, the formality of your message should be inversely proportional to the frquency on which it is sent out. Thus, twitter messages are frequent and informal and press releases, which are sent out only when you’ve got big news to share, are more formal. I am including a worksheet below that outlines three models to start thinking how a message fits into a larger portfolio of messages.
Thanks for reading and I hope this is helpful. I look forward to your thoughts and feedback.
It’s not that often that I come across a new product or service that has the potential to save lives and make money. I think the e-cigarette is such a product and is poised to disrupt the industry. What I find strange is that it hasn’t blown up yet …. but then, I might just be on the cusp of something here.
Electronic cigarettes resemble real cigarettes in size and color, though they are not made of paper and tobacco. The tip has a fake ash on it that glows when you inhale, the main body of the cylinder is a battery, and the business end has a heating element in it along with a cartridge that contains propylene glycol. As in a theatrical smoke machines, the heating element reacts with the propylene glycol to produce the smoke. Cartridges are available with nicotine at several concentrations, without nicotine, and in a variety of flavors.
Image from New Scientist Magazine
You can watch many video demonstrations of e-cigarettes online here.
I was skeptical about how convincing the experience would be, so I bought an NJOY Pro to test it out. NJOY is the largest domestic e-cigarette company with distribution in all fifty states and overseas. I have to admit that it’s very convincing. You’ll notice that some things are different than a traditional cigarette though, such as a slightly harder draw, the fact that it’s not soft like a traditional cigarette, it’s heavier, and the flavor is not exactly the same. I found the flavor to be close to a hookah, which is more fruity than straight tobacco. I’ve tried a couple flavors and vanilla is my favorite so far. I should also note, that I have smoked cigarettes in the past but am not a smoker so I’ve been using the non-nicotine cartridges.
Approximately 20% of the population in the United States smokes cigarettes, globally you can raise that to almost a third of adults. As to be expected, smoking rates drop somewhat as nations become more developed. The health consequences and costs associated with smoking are overwhelming. In the US alone 6% of total health care costs were smoking related in 1999 (World Health Organization (WHO) Study) for a total of about 76 billion dollars. And, that doesn’t count all sorts of other environmental costs.
If electronic cigarettes are not bad for your themselves, and if they can help some of these people quit smoking than they should be able to save lots of lives.
Helen Thomson’s article in New Scientist Magazine, Electronic cigarettes: A safe substitute? , considers this question:
So what precisely is the evidence for and against e-cigarettes? Laugesen is one of the few researchers tackling this question. In early 2007, his company – Health New Zealand – began a research programme to investigate what hazards e-cigarettes might pose. The research is funded by Ruyan but Laugesen insists it is independent, a view backed by the WHO. “Dr Laugesen is a respected tobacco control researcher,” emphasises Raman Minhas, technical officer of the WHO’s Tobacco Free Initiative.
Though Laugesen’s conclusions have yet to be published in a peer-reviewed journal, his preliminary results have been released and seem positive.
If you’re interested in getting more detail, check out the New Scientist article in full. You can also read about Langesen in Michael Field’s article in the The Dominion Post.
If the evidence is pointing to the fact that e-cigarettes are AT LEAST better for you than traditional cigarettes, than the real question is whether or not people will transition to e-cigarettes from traditional ones. In other words, even if people don’t quit smoking there will be massive health care benefits if they simply transition to an e-cigarette. Here’s an interesting article from the NY Times that supports this idea, but also talks about A Quitter’s Dilemma: Hooked on the Cure.
My own experience with the e-cigarette tells me that people will be willing to switch because of the fidelity of the experience, the ability to regulate nicotine, the health benefits, and the cost benefits. On the last point, If you calculate the cost of the batteries which last for about 300 charges, plus the cost of cartridges, which cost about $1 – $1.50, but last as long as about half a pack of traditional cigarettes, than the cost of smoking e-cigarettes is significantly less than smoking traditional ones. And, we can safely assume that this cost will go down as e-cigarettes gain adoption and greater competition.
E-cigarettes have only been on the market since 2004. In that time, they have developed a small user base with Ruyan, the largest manufacturer, claiming to have sold over 300,000 units in 2008. That’s a tiny sliver of the potential market, and compared to growth rates for comparable products like nicotine gum that seems odd. On the other hand, they have not been brought to market is a comparable way. Thus far it’s been a grass roots effort. I think this gels well with such a new and disruptive product. The slow growth may also be an indication that additional product development is required. Don’t forget this is a completely new product category so there will be a lot of learning to do about how customers actually use the product. You can bet that it won’t be the same as a traditional cigarette, and that product development teams will be iterating quickly to keep up. When I spoke with NJOY they also said that they are working on a second generation of technology that will make the e-cigarette an even better experience. I don’t have details on this, but they did say that patents are pending.
This approach will also provide some time to conduct additional scientific research into the health issues/benefits of the product, and those studies are surely underway. There is also a need to conduct additional studies to measure conversion rates of traditional smokers, and eventual quitters. Like nicotine gum, it’s likely that a significant percentage of the converts will become regular users of the e-cigarette rather than quitting all together. Meanwhile, the folks at NJOY have partnered with McMurry (marketing) and TSC Group (distribution) and are gearing up to make a giant splash once they have all their ducks in a row.
Meanwhile, consumer generated media will continue to proliferate around e-cigarettes with online forums and video demonstrations, though I’m not seeing much response for the manufactures in these forums. This seems like a major missed opportunity to engage and gain insight, though I did see one post in which NJOY offered a discount code to forum members “smokey”. So you’d think they’d have a following on Faceboook, right? Only 125 people currently in the group though. MySpace? Not there. NJOY events? Nope. I see a huge opportunity to create a core group of evangelists around this product before the big marketing push. Any campaign should tap into what’s happening in the forums, for example, users are developing their own language around the topic. Traditional cigarettes are called “analogs”. Also, many of the posts I came across included footers with a mention of how long they have been “analog free”. Plus, there is also a secondary market developing around “juice” refills.
It’s important to point out that e-cigarettes are not positioned as “smoking cessation devices”, meaning that they are not making any health claims which would be subject to FDA review. This positioning is unlikely to change unless significant medial benefits can be demonstrated through research. That said, you’ll see plenty of testimonials online about how people are using e-cigarettes to quit. Knowing that it won’t be positioned as a cessation device, I think there are some interesting opportunities to talk about other potential benefits. From my conversation with an NJOY spokesperson, my guess is that you’ll see e-cigarettes with caffeine and/or vitamins coming soon. I think that’s a good way to manage the legacy of negative perceptions around smoking which is a huge challenge.
Here’s one idea based on what I’ve learned so far that would bring value to NJOY, or any other player in the industry. This observation is not “feature” related, but focuses on the overall experience of the device. The fact is that features can be managed by product development teams, but it’s much harder to create an experience for the customer that is bigger than any feature set.
When people transition for traditional cigarettes to e-cigarettes their behavior fundamentally changes in many ways. For example, they no longer have to go outside to smoke. This changes the ecosystem in which smoking takes place and presents many opportunities. In the past, you might have seen ash-trays where smoking took place, or a cigarette box on the surface of a desk. Though the legacy of these objects has been overwritten by smoking policies, the memory remains. Following this, there is an opportunity to make the chargers for the e-cigarettes tap into this legacy. Currently chargers look like ugly cell phone chargers, but there is no reason they couldn’t be more attractive and inviting. Based on this, it should be possible to make smoking more social again in environments that have been off limits for many years.
Plus, the actual act of smoking changes. You don’t have to light up an entire cigarette to enjoy a single puff. How does this change the way we use the device, and how should this impact the design? And, that’s just the tip of the iceberg when you consider the opportunity to bring community and technology into the conversation.
Thanks for reading, and I look forward to your feedback.
Wow, short weeks are fast … and yet I have more links than before? Weird.
If you’d like to follow me on Twitter you can do so at: http://twitter.com/rsmartx.
Have a great weekend.
Customer satisfaction is one of the most important indicators to watch if you’re in charge of marketing for an organization. This post outlines some of what I’ve learned about how to assess customer satisfaction and bring the voice of your customer into your organization. I’ll start with an overview of what a customer service assessment program looks like, then I’ll talk about how it relates to consumer generated media, why marketers are well positioned to do this work, some key assessment metrics, how to make research actionable, and finally how to put together a customer satisfaction strategy. If you’re already familiar with the background, I suggest jumping down to the strategy section.
Before I start in, It’s important to remember that keeping existing customers usually offers a greater return than trying to acquire new ones. Plus, it turns out that satisfying existing customers is often the best way to acquire new ones because of the effectiveness of word-of-mouth marketing. In order to improve customer satisfaction, you have to develop a strong practice for listening to customers.
As the section head suggests, listening to customers is not something that you can budget for in the first quarter of the year and then cross off your list. This is an ongoing practice that must be supported accordingly. Recent studies that show that “customer experience” is increasingly becoming the most important driver of competitive advantage (National Retail Federation, Customer Experience Maturity Monitor) so this is an essential investment core to the marketing function.
One of the challenges associated with developing a continuous practice is that there are usually existing customer satisfaction assessment programs in place within each organizational silo. This means that customers may be asked the same, or similar, questions from different groups within your organization. Plus, research results may not be shared or available as a resource. This erodes an organization’s credibility by making it appear disorganized, frustrates customers by repeating questions, and ultimately reduces response rates.
The best way to tackle this is to integrate your customer satisfaction practices with your customer relationship management tool (CRM). I talk about CRMs in detail in my earlier post here. This makes doing research easier because you can approach research subjects with a 360º view of their experience with your company (i.e. you’ll know if they participated in past research, what products/services they use, if they receive your newsletter, etc). When you demonstrate that you know something about a research subjects before asking them a question, you appear smarter. This, in turn, leads to better engagement.
CGM is an important channel for understanding customers satisfaction and sentiment with regard to your organization. This is one area, however, that it is harder to manage with a CRM. Instead, it’s important to use CGM as a parallel input into your assessment program.
There are excellent third party tools available for doing this, such as Get Satisfaction, and FixYa. Alternatively, you can offer these services through your own site. Either way, it’s important to keep your eye on consumer generated media because it can be the most cost effective way to listen to your community and manage satisfaction issues. Many issues simply bubble up from the community and don’t require formal research. Most importantly, it’s a dialogue, which means you have to share your research outcomes and intervention plans with the community. By doing so, you return value and increase the likelihood of ongoing participation. I’ve written about The Value of User Generated Content here.
It is my belief that the marketing staff is best positioned to serve as the voice of the customer within an organization. This is partially because marketers are often the most objective stakeholders when it comes to customer experience. While marketers may have helped develop the product/service, they don’t have the biases of the development team. And, while they may have helped sell the product by supporting the sales team, they are not compensated directly on sales as the sales team is.
Marketing teams are also well positioned to coordinate the needs of different organizational silos. Marketing supports sales, so they understand what the sales team would like to know from/about customers. Marketers also work with development teams and often help facilitate the research they conduct. Plus, marketing should run knowledge management through organizational CRM tools, so marketers are set up to transform research into a resource for everyone else. In many cases, they also have the most experience doing such research and can ensure that relevant questions are being asked in the right way. This is essential to tying research back to a customer satisfaction strategy and the actionable interventions that support it.
There are a variety of metrics that are used to get a handle on customer satisfaction; I’ll present three of the most common here and briefly explain how they work. I’ve organized them from simplest to most complex. Which method, if any, you should use is really dependent on your specific business.
APOSTLE MODEL – Developed in the mid-1990s at Harvard Business School (HBS), this model adds an additional dimension by recognizing that customer satisfaction does not imply loyalty. Thus, one question for loyalty and one for satisfaction. Note that this model has been used with a variety of scales. I prefer the three tier scale because it reflects that fact that the smallest quadrant population consists of apostles. Here’s a great article for HBS on why customers defect.
| Manifest Variable | 1 | 10 |
|---|---|---|
| Overall satisfaction | Very dissatisfied | Very satisfied |
| Expectancy disconfirmation | Falls short of your expectations | Exceeds your expectations |
| Performance vs. the ideal | Not very close to the ideal | Very close to the ideal |
It might help to think of assessment in terms of human vital signs. Measuring heart-rate/pulse gives you an immediate sense of stress, temperature might point to longer-term issues, and respiration rate may indicate some additional dimension. Don’t rely on one method alone, but take a holistic approach to the process. For example. try pairing one of the above metrics with ethnographic research.
Before you build a continuous practice that is tailored to the needs of your organization, it’s important to establish a customer satisfaction strategy. The above information is really a backdrop to set the stage for developing this strategy. From there, you can implement the tactical research initiatives to support your plan. Here’s an exercise to get started:
Start by identifying the opportunity space for improving customer satisfaction and list out all the projects that might improve it. To make sure your list is thorough you can reach out to your customers, look at the competitive landscape, and do some generative ideation exercises with your team. The best ideas arise when you produce lots of ideas, so don’t be afraid throw your crazy ideas into the mix.
Once you have a strong list, create a table so that you can assign each idea a feasibility and importance ranking. Give yourself a budget of points to assign each column. In the example below, I’ve given each idea an average allotment of 5 points. I have seven ideas, so that gives me a total of 35 points to distribute in each column. Using a point budget is essential to the prioritization process and represents underlying financial constraints.
In reality you may only be able to afford to pursue on or two of the ideas so it’s important to select the best ones. Once your chart is complete, graph your results to visually represent which ideas offer the greatest potential. This exercise can be conducted with research participants, internal teams, or individually. If you are handy with Excel it may be helpful to compare sample sets of data to understand internal vs. internal perceptions of customer satisfaction.
So now you have a strategy in place, you’ve got systems in place to communicate with your customers, and you’ve got a handle on where they sit with respect to satisfaction. As you pursue the tactical implementation of your strategy, you may have to conduct additional research. Based on what you already know about your customers’ experience with your company (through your CRM) you can make sure that your research questions tie directly to specific implementation challenges. The first intervention opportunity occurs as soon as you interact with a customer who is not satisfied.
You should have a plan about how to respond to these customers immediately. They’ve just gone out of their way to help your company improve your products and services, so make sure to start by thanking them. From there, set clear expectations about how their input will be factored into future product/service development. Provide them with resources where they can learn more and/or participate. Finally, consider doing something to show your commitment to their patronage. If you haven’t offered some form of compensation for participating in the research study you might offer these participants some sort of discount. It’s best to set up some sort of matrix of offerings based on their answers (i.e. it doesn’t make much sense to compensate Defectors on the Apostle metric). You might even ask them an additional question about what they would view as fair compensation in exchange for continued support. Get creative, and take this as an opportunity to reconnect.
This is a good time to return to the topic of consumer generated media because this is the place where customers can express themselves openly about your company. Of course, this is also the place where you can express what’s working and what’s not working on behalf of your company.
This is also a great way to celebrate individuals and teams at your organization who are doing a great job. And, there is an opportunity to highlight specific customers who have made significant contributions to your company. Again, this shows customers that your are listening and returning value. Doing this well will earn respect, establish credibility, and ultimately support loyalty.
Thanks for reading and I look forward to hearing about what’s worked for you!
Zumbox is a service that allows you to take traditional mail and send it to someone’s street address digitally. I was initially confused about how this would work because the messaging on their home page is limited to a statement about being “the alternative postal system”. Here’s what I’ve figured out after doing some digging and speaking with someone from their PR agency.
Individuals go to Zumbox and register on the site, which includes letting them know your street address. Zumbox then assigns you a mailbox online where you can check the mail tied to your postal address. Just like a postal-mailbox, companies and individuals can now send mail to your address even if they don’t know who you are.
So now you’re now you’re going to get your postal-junk-mail online? Not exactly, Zumbox allows you to block senders and is also building a service to stop paper-mail (you can watch their FAQ here.) At present you can only stop paper-mail from companies that are registered and working with Zumbox, which means that the value of the service is dependent on a critical mass of sender-registrants.
I’m personally excited about the prospect of stopping junk-mail even though I understand that it’s not the focus of the beta release. In the past, I’ve made calls, sent letters, and even signed up for Green Dimes to stop junk-mail. Regrettably, none of these efforts seems to have worked. I think balancing customers’ desire to stop junk-mail against a company’s desire to send unsolicited materials will be a real challenge for Zumbox. On the one hand, customers are inundated with direct-mail that they mostly don’t want and which is bad for the environment … but which they sometimes read. On the other hand, companies still get a solid return on their direct-mail investments, which is why they keep doing it. It’s hard to say how this balance will be affected in a non-physical context where you can easily stop the message from arriving on your doorstep.
That said, there are clearly financial benefits to using Zumbox if companies can achieve worthwhile response rates with significantly reduced costs (no printing, no mailing). Obviously, companies would require less conversion if their costs are lower, which should also mean that they can adjust their materials to provide a more relevant and targeted message (i.e. relevant information I actually want). Even if this transition were to start today, most companies would be using a hybrid approach for some time to come.
There is a clever lead generation opportunity built into Zumbox because users will be requesting that Zumbox get in touch with specific companies that they’d prefer to receive digital-mail from (or, which they’d prefer not to hear from). Zumbox will presumably be able to turn to these companies with potential customers in hand (or, customers that they are wasting money on). Considering that direct-mail is a massive industry, there seems to be plenty of space for a service like this today. Though, the biggest question I have is why consumers would choose this channel over something like a newsletter, and rss feed, or a twitter feed? The short answer is that Zumbox offers geographical targeting, but I’m not sure that’ll hold up as location-based mobile services become more prominent.
“Zumbox believes that over time, more and more traditional postal mail will transition to a digital platform. The cost savings, revenue opportunities, and environmental benefits are overwhelming.”
In general, I agree with the above statement. What I don’t understand is why we should try and emulate an old system, whose only real benefit is geo-location? The fact is that consumers don’t want cluttering and irrelevant messages delivered to their postal-mailbox or their digital-mailbox. Plus, geo-location offers more potential that just supplying information about where I live. If I did choose to receive unsolicited information, I’d also probably be willing to share my current location in exchange for better information (not just where I live).
If Zoombox can help stem the tide of postal-junk-mail while moving companies away from costly printed campaigns, which are bad for the envioirment, then I say kudos to them! My only concern is that I don’t see the long-term value once companies transition to more appropriate marketing techniques.
Here’s an interesting interview with Chris Anderson, the Editor-in-Chief at WIRED. His book, FREE, will be published in 2009 by Hyperion. In the video Chris discusses where the “freevolution” will fit in the future of business, the video was made at POP! Tech. Many of his comments resonate with the impulse to turn products into services, which I spoke about in this post. There are also some interesting bits about “free” as a marketing tactic. This reminded me of the second video below from Dan Ariely the author of Predictably Irrational. In this video Dan talks about the psychological impact of free.
Here’s the video with Dan Ariely.
Managing user experience across touchpoints can have a profound effect on your business. There is a “1+1=3″ effect that takes place when you align touchpoints, such that the whole becomes greater than the sum of it’s parts. This idea has been championed by the artist Joseph Albers who explored chromatic interactions with flat colored squares arranged concentrically on the canvas. It’s also been promoted by Edward Tufte, who comments on information design:
“Visual activation of negative areas of white space in these exhibits illustrates the endlessly contextual and interactive nature of visual elements. This idea is captured in a fundamental principle of information design: 1 + 1 = 3 or more. In the simplest case, when we draw two black lines, a third visual activity results, a bright white path between the lines … Most of the time, that surplus visual activity is non-information, noise, and clutter.” – Envisioning Information
While Tufte states that the extra information is often clutter, this does not have to be the case. In fact, we can use this effect to construct powerful experiences, thus amplifying the effect of our designs. Here are some playful examples of the Gestalt Theory of Visaul Perception.
In an earlier post, I spoke about the research that Dan Ariely conducted for his book Predictably Irrational; he demonstrated how the way we set up experiences can have a profound effect on how we respond to them. In one study, Ariely placed the same quantity of food on two plates, one large and one small. He then gave 50% of his research participants the large plate and the other 50% the small plate. After eating from their respective plates, the subjects were asked about how full they were. The participants who received the smaller plates stated that they were more satiated, though they were given the same amount of food. Thus, the visual experience of gestalt connects with the real world experience of the research subjects.
In the above image, which of the dots at the center is larger?
As you’ve probably guessed by now, they are the same size.
The experiences we have with products and services across touchpoints are also effected by the above phenomena. Creating a consistent experience across touchpoints creates an over-arching experience that is greater than sum of its parts. For this reason, marketers can deliver significant value simply by aligning experience across touchpoints. Here’s a diagram that I created to explain the benefits of integrating the experience across six touchpoints. Click on it for a larger image:
Of course, this may be easier said than done. One reason that touchpoints become fragmented is because they are often managed by different silos within an organization. In order to align these silos, marketers must construct connections. This means opening windows between them, working collaboratively, and establishing standards. For marketers, these standards are often presented in the form of style guides and communication guides, though they are adopted more readily when positioned as knowledge resources. I talk more about the importance of marketing as knowledge management here. One key to success is to create resources that are as light weight as possible, which supports adoption, but robust enough to keep the touchpoints aligned.
The challenging part is assimilating the intelligence that bubbles up from each silo, integrating the sum of learning, and re-articulating it such that each silo understands the compromises and opportunities associated with the effort. When it comes down to it, the marketer must often play the role of negotiator. This can be a thankless job, because the negotiator rarely gets the credit, or the benefit of social capital, for a successful agreement. There are ways to manage this, but that’s a topic for a future blog post.
All this effort is made because experience isn’t just about how we interact with a product or service, it’s about the experience a customer has with a brand across touchpoints. Consider this thought, If a customer has a great experience at one touchpoint, but a poor experience at another, the net result may be less than the average of the two. How so?
The above argument is supported by a concept called The Peak-end Rule, that was developed by the Nobel Prize winning economist and psychologist, Daniel Kahneman, to explain how people judge past experiences. You can imagine how this would be relevant to consider when managing the different touchpoints a customer might experience.
“According to the peak-end rule, we judge our past experiences almost entirely on how they were at their peak (pleasant or unpleasant) and how they ended. Other information is not lost, but it is not used. This includes net pleasantness or unpleasantness and how long the experience lasted.” - Wikipedia
The diagram above shows two scenarios, one in which the peak experience is pleasant and one in which it is unpleasant. Though the average experience (total shaded area) is the same for all but two periods, the perceived experience is much greater in the top example. Even if you were to adjust the baseline of the bottom graph upwards to accommodate for the shaded area lost in the unpleasant peak, the top graph would still come out way ahead. Here’s another example:
In this case, two positive peaks are contrasted. All points are the same except from the peak, which is higher for the bottom chart. Simply increasing the value of this one experience has a significant and lasting effect on the overall experience.
Based on this research, you can offer an average, or even slightly below average, experience so long as you offer your customers one truly great experience. If however, you allow even one unpleasant peak experience to take place across your touchpoints, it’ll cost your dearly. This brings us back to the idea of aligning touchpoints and creating consistency. Integrating experience across touchpoints is an effective means of ensuring that you don’t have an unpleasant peak. It’s also an excellent means of identifying the touchpoints that represent opportunities where you can really shine by creating a pleasant peak experience. My former colleague, Brandon Schaeur, refers to these as “moments of wow” in his Long Wow presentation.
If you found the ideas in this post interesting, you’ll probably enjoy Brandon’s presentation below. It speaks to the issues I’ve addressed here, but more broadly explores how to do product/service development that strings together moments of wow over time. He also provides some great examples of companies that have gotten it right. His presentation also touches on some of the issues I discuss in my earler post Where Marketers Art Today. Enjoy!
