Text Messages and Serving the Customer

A friend of mine told me recently about a smoothie shop in her town that is making good use of mobile technology to serve their customers.

Visitors to the smoothie shop can sign up to receive SMS updates from the store. The shop sends a daily text message to its subscribers, telling them about the special of the day and sometimes offering extra discounts, such as "Visit us today and show us this text message to receive 50% off any large smoothie!"

Social media and other digital communications tools like SMS, Twitter, Facebook, and email can be a great way to offer something extra to your customers and to build a better customer relationship. Here are a few reasons (and rules) for why this works:

1. It's welcome. Perhaps the number one reason why these forms of communication can be successful at building customer relationships is that they require the organization to ask the customers' permission. (Seth Godin wrote a great book back in 1999 that explains how and why Permission Marketing works.) Your customers must opt-in to this service. They - not you - get to choose whether they receive your communications every day (or week, or what-have-you). Customers who view such messages as spam will not receive the service. Those who do subscribe to the service will not view your messages as spam (and if they did, they could unsubscribe).


2. It's expected. Your customers know what messages they will receive from you, and how often, because you tell them before they even sign up. You post point-of-sale advertisements in your shop that tell them how they can "sign up for free [daily/weekly] messages containing [updates/news/coupons/special offers] via [text message/email/Twitter/Facebook]." Or you print this information on your packaging. Or your sales clerks ask them if they would like to sign up as they check out (and then direct them to a paper or digital sign up sheet, rather than putting them on the spot by asking for their contact information verbally).


3. It's easy. Your subscribers get your information pushed to their email inboxes, Facebook accounts, or mobile phones. They don't have to go searching for your news and coupons on your website, via Google, or in your store. And your messages are short, so they don't take long to read. If you have too much to say (i.e. more than 140 characters, whether or not you are using Twitter), you give the customer a headline and a link to a webpage that contains all of the information. If they are interested in the headline, they can follow the link. If not, they can delete your message.


4. It's helpful. You send these messages for the purpose of serving the customer. You give them information that they would like to hear. You give them information that they care about. If your organization serves smoothies, you distribute links to articles about healthy foods and healthy living. If you sell bicycles, you distribute links to news about cycling and cyclists. If you provide business services, you distribute links to information about industry developments and best practices. And, when appropriate, you distribute special offers for your products and services. Every message you send to your subscribers should serve your subscribers.

For building customer relationships, these communications methods can be a great tool. But remember, as with any marketing effort, your SMS and social media communications should serve the customer, not just serve you.

Viral Marketing Failure du jour

As a general rule, I shun Facebook applications. I dislike the way they clog up your profile, and I dislike the way they require you to allow them to access all of your Facebook information (which is usually unnecessary, and is not used for reasons that benefit the end user).

But today I saw in my News Feed that a friend had taken a Facebook quiz entitled "What Does Your Day Mean?" which purported to report the implications of being born on a particular day of the week. It sounded interesting (though I would never take it seriously). I was curious. I decided to add the application and take the quiz myself, just for kicks.

As was to be expected, the application required me to allow it to access all of my Facebook information. Okay. But then, an epic viral marketing failure: before it would allow me to take the quiz, it asked me to invite my friends to add the application, too.

Forget it.

The creators of the application are making an attempt at viral marketing by asking people to tell their friends. But they are going about it all wrong. You cannot force someone to recommend your product. And you cannot expect someone to recommend your product if they have not yet tried your product. You would not expect someone to recommend a movie they have not yet seen, or recommend a clothing designer whose clothes they have not yet tried, or recommend a restaurant at which they have not yet eaten.

You must let customers experience your product first. And their experience with your product must be remarkable enough that your customers want to talk about it. They cannot help but talk about it. Talking about it benefits their friends, and builds coolness points for themselves. (Thanks, Seth Godin, for your great book on ideaviruses like this.)

If you force people to talk about a bad product, the opposite happens. They hurt their friends; they hurt their trust with their friends; and they hurt their coolness points. People do not want to do that.

I did not want to invite my friends to add the application, and, in so doing, to stamp my recommendation on a product I had not yet tested. Neither did I want to spam my friends with one of the Facebook application invitations which I so despise. (Disclaimer for my friends who have sent app invitations to me: I still love you. You are forgiven.)

Granted, this application did have a "skip" button to the "invite your friends!" plea, for those users who take time to search for the button. But the inconspicuousness of the button makes the invitation stage seem unavoidable. And if the user does skip the invitation stage, they will likely never recommend the app to their friends.

If these Facebook application creators truly want to enhance their viral marketing, they need to save the "invite your friends!" request until the user has already completed the quiz, or joined the cause, or played the game, or done whatever the app does.

Let the user experience the product first. Then give them an easy way to invite their friends. If they like the product, they will often be more than happy to tell people - especially through the click of a button on a social media site like Facebook.

Survival of the Journalists

As a follow-up to my blog post of 27 July, refuting the concept of a "Balkanization of the Web," I must share this excerpt from Jeff Jarvis' BuzzMachine blog from yesterday:

"It is clear that if journalists want to be supported – let alone have impact and influence and find their days worthwhile – they need more people to spend more time with news. I believe they should be doing the opposite of what is being suggested in many quarters: clamping down controls to try to fight aggregators and search engines, threatening to build pay walls, consolidating content into destinations they’d have to work harder to get people to visit.

"Right now, news organizations should be trying to reach more people and engage with them more deeply. They should seek hyperdistribution.

"Since when did it become OK for media people to shrink their audiences? Since they gave up on the ad model, that’s when. But I am not ready to surrender to the idea that advertising, which has supported mass media since its creation, is over. Yes, ad rates are lower; welcome to competition. That’s all the more reason why publishers must attract larger audiences publics – make it up on volume – as well as more targeted and valuable communities."

(Read Jeff's entire post, by the way. He has some outstanding ideas!)

I completely agree with Jeff. If suppliers of premium content (aka newspapers and journals) want to survive, they have to become universal within their online target markets. Newspapers cannot charge online subscription fees, nor can they "Balkanize" by withholding their news from search engines who refuse to cut them deals. Newspapers cannot afford those tactics - they don't have the market share. (Nielsen Online data shows that newspaper sites currently capture less than 1% of time spent online.)

Essentially, newspapers are starting from scratch. They are not re-inventing their reporting methods, no. But they are releasing a new product within an entirely new marketplace. They do not have the luxury of already dominating online news. They must fight to build their readership - and fight through excellent reporting (through all sorts of media) and exceptional customer value. It is time for news sources to unleash an ideavirus.

Lame Excuses for Being Boring - #3

Excuse #3:

"We're just a little local shop. We/Our clients can't afford any expensive 'new media' or outdoor stunts."

Actually, it's less expensive - and more effective - to do something outstanding and creative that gets people interested in your brand, than it is to keep cranking out boring, unremembered print ads, billboards, and tv spots.

When people see something new and different and crazy and remarkable, they pay attention. They tell their friends. With the near-ubiquity of cell phones, your story can be spread around the globe - literally - within minutes. For free. If it's worth talking about.

CiCi's Pizza recently launched their Penny Picker Upper campaign, in which they dropped 1 million pennies ($10,000) outside of 650 of their stores. Those who picked up a penny might find a ticket for a free drink or kids meal or buffet. They accompanied this campaign with a website, beapennypickerupper.com in which visitors can create a virtual bobblehead of themselves on a penny. Think this got attention?

Other companies have dropped wallets containing business cards and coupons around city streets. Some have anchored vehicles to the sides of skyscrapers, or "accidently" blown up the "wrong" restaurant. Think they got attention?

How much did ideas like this cost, in comparison to the exorbitant costs of television commercials, or newspaper and magazine ads, or billboards? And which produces more impressions, more responses, and more brand awareness?

Yes, you can create really amazing traditional ads that capture attention (think Super Bowl commercials). But why not save those hundreds of thousands of dollars it costs to simply get the ad running, and use that same creativity to do something that gets you free marketing from viewers and the press?

(For more words of wisdom on how to get people talking, visit www.ideavirus.com to download and read the free e-book, Unleashing the Idea Virus by Seth Godin.)

A Return to Soap Operas?

We are seeing a welcome shift in the marketing world - a move away from trying to capture customers by shouting at them with ads and commercials, and a move toward gaining fans by creating simply excellent content. Certainly we are still inundated with traditional "interruption marketing" (to borrow the term from Seth Godin) in magazines and newspapers, on tv and billboards and the Internet. But more and more marketers are letting great content speak for itself. They are doing and creating remarkable things that get people talking. (To learn more, read Seth Godin's Purple Cow, if you haven't already.)

I think the rise of smartphone apps and customer-created media (a la YouTube) has aided this trend toward remarkable content. Marketers are communicating via things that can be enjoyed as entertainment even without a brand message.

There is Gillete's uArt iPhone app that lets you add facial hair to a photo of yourself, then shave it into designs of your choice. There is the microsite for Coke Zero, which is really a video game in disguise. And how many company-created YouTube video phenomena do we see now? Like the Frosty Posse from Wendy's.

I see this trend, and I like it. This model inspires us to deeper levels of creativity. It makes me wonder whether we will soon see a huge reinvention of traditional advertising, such that we no longer see magazine ads and billboards and tv commercials as we have them today. Instead, will we see pure content - art, music, videos, games, short stories, poetry, etc. - "sponsored" by companies? For example, instead of tv commercials between our programmed viewing, will we see fun, 60-second short films with a simple, one-line message at the end: "brought to you by [insert brand name here]"?

It would be as if advertising (at least tv and radio) were coming full-circle, returning to the soap opera model. Soap operas got their name because a consumer products company (i.e. Procter & Gamble, who may have been the first?) would sponsor the radio or tv show. They would promote their cleaning products (i.e. Ivory soap); hence the name. If we see more pure content coming from marketers, it will be like a return to our roots.

Regardless, it will be interesting to see where advertising heads in the future. With the rise of the Internet and other "new" media, there has been talk of whether traditional advertising is on its way out. I can still see television, print, and radio ads as having a place alongside (instead of being replaced by) interactive, social media, viral marketing, etc. But these traditional advertising media may look very different in just 5-10 years than they do now.