Vol. 3 , No. 16     April 22, 2003

 


In this Newsletter:

  1. Something Not-So-Special in the Air
     
  2. Tackling TiVo
     
  3. A Customer Retention Program Primer
     
  4. Bullet Points Kill (Effective Communication)
     
  5. How To Improve the Quality and Cost of B2B Leads (Part 1 of 2)
     
  6. Parting the Fog of Visitors
     
  7. Dear Tig: Brand Loyalty In One-Off Purchases, Response Rates for B2B Telemarketing, and How Do You Write a Creative Brief?
     

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Don't Miss the Top Ten Section Halfway Down!

See below for Advertising, Subscription and Contact information.

Mitch McCasland
Something Not-So-Special in the Air

What's the key differentiator for airlines -- or most any other company?

No, it's not price. Companies that have this precious quality can decidedly distinguish themselves in seemingly commoditized markets.

Get the full story.

Lee Marc Stein

Direct Marketing, Consulting, & Creative Services
Improve your direct marketing ROI. Click to get our free newsletter and access winning strategies. We do marketing plans/audits, creative development and execution, database/media maximization, lifting LTV. 35+ years increasing profits of lead generation and direct-to-consumer programs. www.leemarcstein.com

Tom Barnes
Tackling TiVo

Personal video recorders (like TiVo) are hot. So hot in fact that they are making a significant contribution in the frying of consumers’ attention spans.

What's an advertiser to do when the most affluent customers aren't compelled to watch TV commercials and are, in fact, actively avoiding them?

Get the full story.


Ro King
A Customer Retention Program Primer

Customer retention programs are not the same as customer relationship management programs. What they are is a relatively inexpensive -- but effective -- means of making customers feel special and increase their loyalty to your company.

Here's an comprehensive primer on the various types of programs.

Get the full story.

 

A Note to Readers

Payback—Figurative and Literal

Hello discerning readers!

Today MarketingProfs is closing in on 74,000 subscribers. Not bad for a site that was founded less than three years ago and has marketed itself pretty much virally.

For the first two years of its history, MarketingProfs was produced solely by the efforts of Publisher Allen Weiss, who is also a professor at the University of Southern California, in Los Angeles, as well as prolific writer and musician.

Ironically, Allen had been in touch with me earlier, in 2000. At that time, I was still working as Content Queen at ClickZ.com, a web site and newsletter I co-founded a lifetime ago—in 1997. Not being especially interested in running a series of articles written by a university professor on what I considered a site geared exclusively to marketing professionals, I politely declined.

Okay, I fess up. I think I actually ignored him. Or worse. Whatever. Bottom line: the metaphorical door slammed behind him at ClickZ.

But as the saying goes, when one door closes, another often opens. Or, in the editorial world, never place a period where life places a comma.

Suffice it to say, Allen eventually recovered from the rejection, successfully founding a competitor to ClickZ in MarketingProfs in the June of 2000.

As for me, payback’s a… uh… bummer. A year ago, I unwittingly contacted Allen looking for a publisher for a few pieces of my own. I had sold ClickZ almost two years prior. It was time to get back to work.

“Hi Allen!” I wrote, blithely unaware of our short history together. “I’m not sure if you know me, but I’m a co-founder of ClickZ blah blah blah….”

He remembered me, all right.

But Allen is, after all, a gentleman as well as a scholar.

He graciously accepted my work—having undergone enough therapy to realize that forgiveness is the cornerstone of our humanity.

So large is his capacity for forgiveness, in fact, that he took me on full time this past fall. And best of all—he rarely, if ever, mentions the “incident.”

Until next time,

Ann Handley
ann@marketingprofs.com
MarketingProfs.com


 

Last Issue's Top 5

  1. Bite-Sized Chunks: Getting Customers To Try Before They Buy
  2. “Strategies, Missions and Goals…Oh My!”: The Importance of Getting Your Planning Terminology Right
  3. Measuring Data: Whadda Ya Got?
  4. The Ultimate Taboo? Using Humor in Direct Response
  5. How To Secure Widespread Adoption of Pretty Much Anything
Gator

THE FORTUNE 1000’S MOST EFFECTIVE ONLINE ADVERTISING?

Over 80 Fortune 1000 companies use Gator to reach more than 35 million consumers, generating responses 20-40 times higher than traditional online ads.
Learn more now.

Email Strategy
Top 5

  1. 7 Nitty-Gritty Tips To Publish A Monthly E-newsletter
  2. The Hippie Days Are Gone
  3. How to Turn an Email Marketing Disaster Into Profit
  4. The Marvelous, Mysterious Life of an E-Mail Newsletter.
  5. Email 101: How to Market Effectively
 
 

 

Cliff Atkinson
Bullet Points Kill (Effective Communication)

Guns don’t kill communication. Bullet points kill communication. And when you use bullet points in a PowerPoint, you’re shooting yourself in the foot.

Really.

Get the full story.


Jeff Kostermans
How To Improve the Quality and Cost of B2B Leads (Part 1 of 2)

What’s a marketer to do when budgets and staff are stretched thin, qualified prospects have become even more elusive, and resource-constrained sales teams simply need a better mousetrap to accelerate the sales cycle?

Get the full story.

kaon

Visualize significant revenue increases

See how companies like Cisco and Dell increase revenues and reduce costs by optimizing video clips, still images and interactive 3D for each product communication application. To learn more and to download a free case study, click here.

John Marshall
Parting the Fog of Visitors

If you look at the overall behavior of all of your web visitors, you'll be inundated with a ton of information from your log files.

But if you divide your users into logical groups and then compare and contrast how they behave and what they do, you'll have more accurate, actionable information that actually means something.

Get the full story.


Tig Tillinghast
Dear Tig: Brand Loyalty In One-Off Purchases, Response Rates for B2B Telemarketing, and How Do You Write a Creative Brief?

This week, a hat trick from Tig as he talks up the importance of brand loyalty, even in one-time purchases; gives response rates for B2B telemarketing; and tells how to write an effective creative brief.

Get the full story.

Contact

Publisher:Allen Weiss
amw@MarketingProfs.com

Content: Ann Handley
ann@MarketingProfs.com

Partnerships:
info@MarketingProfs.com

Ad/Sponsor Information:
go here or contact jim@MarketingProfs.com

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