Your marketing role and the cost of petrol

It’s a sad comment on our political leaders that the debate on petrol pricing has been so woeful.

However, that’s just my opinion and that is not important. The critical thing is that consumers are concerned about petrol. And how will that affect us as marketers?

We all know there is lots of whining going on. And for good reason. For many people, petrol at $1.60 per litre, is lifestyle-changing. (Not to mention what $2.50 might do in a year’s time).

As marketers, we have to be alert to what petrol prices mean for consumer buying habits? And how will the agencies that market consumer products be impacted?

Whenever consumers are feeling the finch, that’s important for marketers.All the information to hand seems to be indicating that consumers on tight budgets are being forced to make cuts.

Many readers of The Scoop will have already noticed that in the US last Friday Sears, Roebuck reported a $56 million loss for the quarter ended 3 May. That was surprisingly bad, even taking into account the steep drop in earnings that had already been forecast.

In Australia, last Saturday The Age reported that new applications for consumer loans have all but dried up. Whether that’s because of higher interest rates or petrol prices, who knows?

From anecdotal evidence everywhere, it seems that in mid 2008, people are:

• Eating out at restaurants less often.
• Buying less clothing, or shopping at discount retailers to save money.
• Taking public transportation more often or riding or walking to work/school.
• Developing an overall mentality to cut spending.\

This sort of behaviour has to very soon trigger an impact on marketers.

For consumer brands, more advertising dollars will be refocused on value brands. In many sectors, the price points on products from airfares to chemicals will soar as a result of higher energy costs. And lower profits will mean every vendor relationship will come under greater scrutiny.

Marketers and ad agencies of all sizes need to be more proactive in understanding the changing consumer mindset.

Marketing communications messages that motivated buyers even six months ago may need to be different today. Increasingly, people are becoming more worried about feeding their families, getting to work and paying their rising bills.

Agencies must empathise with consumers and appeal to their immediate needs. Marketers need to be out there talking to people and pouring through current research and interpreting it carefully.
Higher petrol prices seem set to be a way of life now for as long as oil supplies last. That does not make anyone happy. But, as marketers, we can do something about it, in our own little way. Time to listen more carefully to consumers and clients. Time to innovate more often. Maybe it’s time to ride a bike to work.

You can get a FREE copy of a 12-page PDF on “Direct Marketing Foundations”, written by Frank Chamberlin.

DM course: ‘Introduction to Direct and Digital Marketing.’

In two-days this course contains numerous proven techniques that can be implemented in the workplace immediately. And so much of it is relevant to all marketing.

“I found this course informative, practical and inspiring. When it finished, I was very keen to get back to the workplace to start implementing the good ideas I learnt.” Nikki Aspropotamitis, Marketing & Events Coordinator, DaimlerChrysler.

Dates: 13, 14 August 2008

Presented by Frank Chamberlin for the Australian Direct Marketing Association (ADMA)

Venue: Clifton’s – 440 Collins Street

Course description: The course looks at all the pillars of dm including targeting, offers, media options, the digital scene, data, measurement, planning for dm, understanding customers, testing, building brands with dm and creative techniques. There’s even a session on DM copywriting! In two days delegates walk away with an overview of everything related to direct and digital marketing.

Price for two days of practical content that you can use at work: $913 (inc GST); reduced to $759 (inc GST) if your company is an ADMA member.

For more information and to enrol:

Email: patrice.fowler@adma.com.au
Phone: 02.9368 0366
Book online: http://www.adma.com.au/asp/index.asp?pgid=30691

Writing Tip - Writing for the Web

When writing for the web, don't write for readers, but write for scanners. Make sure you are as concise as possible.

• Make sentences short and to the point
• Avoid long blocks of text.
• Each paragraph should be about a specific idea
• Use headers and sub-heads so that scanners can navigate information easily
• Use bulleted/numbered copy whenever possible

\Make headers meaningful

Headers and sub-heads are where eyes go first. Your headlines must:

• Make sense as stand-alone elements
• Meaningfully convey the content of the text that follows
• Be dynamic in plain English.

Two tips for making email campaigns more effective

Relevance is key. We all know that. Letting recipients see that what you are offering is relevant, can be challenging but it is of the utmost importance.

1. Refine your segmentation. And how do you do that?

• Base your segmentation on your client behaviour, not just demographic
  information.
• Identify an increased number of sub segments and personalise more relevant
  offers to each.
• Create different versions of your messages.
• Continually test.

2. Improve transactional messaging. Transactional emails are highly relevant and very likely to be opened and read. Therefore, they should offer the customer something, furthering his or her relationship with you. Recommend additional products or services the customer might want or need; offer a subscription to your newsletter; and send transactional messages in HTML format to reinforce your brand.

Better Subject Lines

Here are a five practical tips for better subject lines in email marketing:

1. Leverage your company brand. A subject line that says ‘70% off from Acme Bananas’ is going to have a far better response than one that simply says ‘70% off.’
   
2. Think segmentation. It’s important to test different subject lines for different customer segments.
   
3. Question almost everything. Subject lines that pose a question, such as ‘Is it time for you to find a better copywriter?’ tend to work very well.
   
4. Make it about them, not you. ‘We’re having a sale’ won’t cut it as a subject line but ‘You can save money’ interests the reader more.
   
5. Inform before you sell. If you describe what’s in the email in the subject line, a recipient will be much more likely to open it rather than if you try to sell too early.

Writing Tip - the Ellipsis

The ellipsis is a series of three -- and only three -- full stops used to mark missing words, an uncertain pause, or an abrupt interruption.

Avoid the temptation to use more than three dots -- it looks amateurish. For example, we write:
We asked Miss Savage her age but there was no answer . . .

But we do not write:

We asked Miss Savage her age but there was no answer . . . . . . .

Similarly, the same thing applies with excessive punctuation: Only one exclamation mark or question mark should be used at a time. Consider the following over-punctuated examples:

• Buy now!!!
• Great bargains!!!!!!!!!!

Excessive punctuation looks too much like hysteria and detracts from your credibility. Professional writers avoid it.

Making email marketing work better

Probably all marketers are now aware that there are very effective web analytics tools to optimise web site sales.

However, Jupiter Research suggests that few marketers are integrating their web analytics into their email marketing programs. As email newsletters are mostly geared towards driving customers to web sites, there is obviously an opportunity that marketers may be missing.

By integrating your site analytics data into your email platform you can make your email marketing program more profitable. Analytics data is especially useful to create segments based on how your customers are behaving on your web site.

And remember, it is not just a matter of monitoring what has been purchased. You can gather valuable insights by knowing what was not purchased. For example, analytics can help marketers understand which products and categories are frequently abandoned. These non-completed purchases can be followed up with email.

Of course, it is imperative to keep privacy issues in mind. Customers are uncomfortable if they feel they are being followed.

One simple but effective technique is to note what product a customer has abandoned, then include that product as one of several “featured products” in a future email. With this sort of tactic, customers are likely to find such an email relevant without feeling like they have been followed.

Apart from making better use of analytics, there is still the troubling issue of how often to send emails.

Taking a one-size-fits-all approach, might seem like the easy way out of this one, but it is unlikely to be the best answer.

One proven approach to getting frequency right is to ask customers when they sign up how frequently they would like to receive your newsletters. Be sure to include a sample version so they understand the full value of the publication and have an idea of what to expect.

But there is a more sophisticated way. You can analyse your email response data and segment it using customer behaviour methods such as RFM, or other profitability metrics, to determine the optimal number of contacts for each segment.

Of course, there is nothing better than testing. Ideally, you should segment your list and run tests around frequency. There have been many cases where marketers have found that they can increase their frequency provided the communications are relevant and offer appropriate value with each interaction.

You can get a FREE copy of a 12-page PDF on “Direct Marketing Foundations”, written by Frank Chamberlin.