Know-How Exchange : E-Marketing

It is creative and should cause a stir.

I personally hate company Christmas cards that are signed in mass and come with no real message. I certainly hope your reps send something person out to their very best contacts... With a individual and personal note.

Love it! I'll be waiting to hear the results!

Michael

I think this is a great idea. I too think the standard company christmas cards are very impersonal and get tossed right away.

The thing I like most is that this shows the personality of the employees and allows people to get to know them a little better.

Mike

I hope you don't mind some brutally honest comments.

I watched a bit of one of the videos and I enjoyed it very much. I think this idea has great potential.

However, made this campaign touches on a very delicate and politically sensitive issue which is the relationship between marketing and sales.

What is it we are trying to promote? Are we promoting the brand, or the marketing department, or the person who signed the e-mail, or the company, or a product, or the relationship between a buyer and a sales rep?

I have been both a marketing person and a salesperson. When I was in marketing, I was always looking for projects which would make me and my department look good. When I was in sales, I was looking for ways to increase sales and to further my personal relationships with customers and prospects.

To me, a traditional Christmas card is sent from a person to a person, and not from a brand to a prospect or from a department to a prospect. Therefore, if this were my project, I would focus the resources of the marketing department on creating tools which would help individual salespeople send effective personal notes to individual prospects and a further one-on-one relationships.

I would not ask prospects or customers to take their valuable time to watch multiple videos and devote between salespeople. This is counterproductive at best.

I think these videos can be an incredibly effective tools in increasing your profits and market share. However, if I were sending such an e-mail, I would try to make each e-mail look like a personal note rather than as a part of a mass mailing or survey.

Certainly there needs to be a balance between the desire of the sales force to dominate the relationship with prospects and customers and legitimate needs of the company to promote their brand. Certainly every situation is unique, and I may be way off base here.

Re: traditional Christmas cards, I certainly feel they should be sent on a case-by-case basis. It takes time and effort to hand address and hand sign and mail a Christmas card, and no matter what you do with your electronic cards I believe these are certainly appropriate on a case-by-case basis, and I would make a limited number of these available to the sales staff.

Thank you and have a very Merry Christmas. Good luck.

Dear Chris

This idea is totally whacky and is bound to attract good publicity if it is sent to the right people (Or if the right people are directed to it via an email)

Dave’s (Telemoxie's) cautionary point is well worth bearing in mind. As a salesman and a sales manager, I never stopped being astonished just how little humour some customers displayed. My sales manager used to say that until you are invited to be funny, be serious – a point which he demonstrated by cracking a mild joke with a client on a joint visit. This hugely experienced, professional manager was quite open about his mistake once we had left the client and apologised to me for misjudging the situation.

I would put the delivery of the link in the hands of the sales people, as they will be best placed to assess how suitable the client is to receive it.

It reminds me of some singing emails I used to send to make a bit of a stir. I discovered that the version of Outlook Express supplied with Windows 95 had the unexpected ability to accept a .WAV file instead of an image file as background wallpaper. On opening the email, it automatically played the tune or song which I’d recorded to the .WAV file. Hilarity all round and a few negative comments – mainly because of the shock instilled when something unexpected occurred on opening an email!

Well, I’m about to do it again. I’ve set up a home based electronic and acoustic recording studio with a wide range of samplers, sequencers, synthesisers and digital audio works stations. I have recorded “Silent Night” and “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star for – wait for it, lute and massed bagpipes. So far everyone who has heard it has wet themselves. It has my dog howling at the computer speakers.

Go for it and do let us know how you get on.

Steve Alker
Xspirt