Dec9

The Power of “Word of Mouth” Marketing

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The Power of “Word of Mouth” Marketing

It can change … everything

A few months ago, my friend Jeri told me that her brother was selling tons of art he’d collected over the years. Somehow his collection had gotten out of control and taken over his whole house. Finally he decided that he wanted it all gone, sold, so there’d be room to walk around.

Jeri invited me to get some friends together and go over to play “Let’s Make A Deal” with her brother.

Off we went, and we found sculptures, paintings, artifacts, funky furniture, mosaics, vases, knickknacks, Chinese fountains. Clutter! It was great fun, sort of like getting into Sotheby’s warehouse.

The Circus by Chris Roberts-Antieau

But nothing appealed to me, not even the framed fabric picture almost hidden on the second floor landing. It was charmingly weird and I usually like charmingly weird but it was a picture of a circus and I haven’t liked circuses since I was a little kid. The clowns’ exploding car in Madison Square Garden scared the pants off me when I was about four.

So I moved on to look at giant statues, plush but uncomfortable furniture, massive mirrors, tiny mirrors and more knickknacks than you’d see in the Daytona Beach flea market.

I had to pass the circus picture to get back downstairs. Look at those tiny stitches, I thought, and all the little details. Amazing. And what an imagination. A big white horse with both eyes on the same side of its face, a fire-eater, an elephant, a human cannonball peeping out of his cannon at a tall woman peeping into it.

I noticed the artist’s name, Chris Roberts-Antieau and then it leaped off the wall and into my arms. I bought the darned thing, hung it just inside my front door, and every day I find something new in it. I love it.

My favorite artist's son, Noah

What I didn’t know is that Chris Roberts-Antieau is a pretty important artist. Her work is hanging in the White House and has been featured in a lot of magazines, including Oprah.

I’m as fascinated with the child-like quality of her work and her terrific sense of humor as I am with her astonishing skill, especially sewing everything so perfectly.

So Word of Mouth worked for Jeri’s brother. A lot of people, including me, showed up to take all that onerous art off his hands.

But Word of Mouth started a chain of events.
It brought me to my circus image and all of Chris Roberts-Antieau’s wonderful work. I even made a point of meeting her son, Noah, at Miami’s Art Basel exhibition.

And seeing her work was the final persuader in getting me to try my hand at mixed media. I signed up for a course at the Ft. Lauderdale Art Museum.

My own version of Chris's Work, Black Clothes White Cat

I decided to copy one of Chris’s works, not sewing it finely as she does, but gluing it crudely. Pepper and I went to the Salvation Army to find something furry to use for the cat in the picture.

And, now I’m trying other kinds of mediums and enjoying my new artistic outlet, thanks to my friend’s Word of Mouth Marketing that, at first, just brought me in to her brother’s home to look at his art clutter.

Bless her.

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Dec2

CRM: Customer Relationship Marketing, We can learn from Non-Profits

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CRM: Customer Relationship Marketing, We can learn from Non-Profits

In a 2002 article for Enterprise APPS Today, Arthur O’Connor, head of the CRM Integration Practice at Reuters Consulting, wrote:

The CRM fad is now officially dead. May it rest in peace. Contrary to the writings of some industry pundits, the demise of CRM is not greatly exaggerated. It’s real. The party’s over. The fat lady sang. It’s DOA.

Companies have become disillusioned; projects have been stalled; budgets have been cut; and enterprise rollouts of CRM pilot projects have either been postponed or cancelled. As a result, many software vendors, technology integrators, and consulting firms are limping along, and some don’t look like they’ll be around for much longer.

Apparently the main reason CRM crashed is that it was expensive and time consuming to keep track of all those pesky customers. And why bother when the Internet would be a limitless source of new customers forever? It sounded, at the time, like a new kind of thinking for a brave new world.

It was really the same old thinking so many marketing executives had spouted over the years: “Customer Acquisition!”

Increasing revenue from existing customers (and bringing back lapsed ones) is not the glamour end of the business. Acquisition is where the excitement always lives. It has always been so and every client has a budget for it, and little left for retention.

Companies that spend little or no time coddling best customers, getting referrals from and generating word of mouth from all customers and selling other things to them all are ignoring a huge potential source of revenue.

Charities don’t do that.

They’re great at working their donor files. Even if you’re as tight as Scrooge McDuck, try sending money to a half dozen or so charities like Smile Train or Boys Town and watch what happens. It’ll be a very inexpensive lesson in CRM, not to mention brilliant direct mail creative. It’ll look weird at first what with fonts and layouts making everything easy to read and the copy in a perfect one-to-one personal mode.

You’ll get special updates on all the good your money is doing. You’ll see the kids you’re helping. You’ll be asked for more money but you will also feel like a valued and important member of a wonderful group. It will never occur to you that you’re being CRMed.

And, you’ll give money again.

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Nov28

The extremely useful DM Math tool

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The extremely useful DM Math tool

It’s called the breakeven “allowable” and it’s handy for all kinds of things in our business.

For a brand new program we use the allowable to tell us if we have a viable business or not. That can save a lot of money up front.

When we’re considering something new for an existing program, the allowable tells us exactly how much of a lift we need from the new element.

We refer to it almost every day and we fine tune it, rework it and generally use it as our guide, our north star. We even use it to help set prices for products and services.

On one level, the marketing allowable tells you how much you can spend on marketing efforts to get one sale and break even.

The formula is deceptively simple: R-C=A, which means Revenue – Costs (not counting marketing costs) = Marketing Allowable. That means how much money you can spend in marketing to generate one order.

The reason for focusing on one sale is pretty obvious: everything is a multiple of one.

“Costs” means the cost to you to deliver one order of your product or service (and “freebie” if applicable), handle the order taking, order processing, shipping, response management, customer service, complaints, bad debt, returns and so on.

“Revenue” refers to all the money customers pay you, including shipping and handling charges, when they buy your product or service.

If your costs are $11.50 to deliver and service one order and your revenue is $23.50, then you can afford to spend $12 in marketing to get one order.

If you can afford a marketing budget of $100,000,(excluding onetime costs such as research, planning and creative development) then you must get $100,000/$12 = 8,334 orders.

You then look at media costs. Let’s use print as an example. (These numbers have nothing to do with reality. They’re just for demonstration.) Assume that an ad of reasonable size costs $20/M. You can “buy” a circulation of 500,000 with your $100,000. You need 8,334 orders. That’s 1.67%, too high for print so you look for alternatives, applying the Breakeven Allowable whenever you consider costs and reach.

After a while, using the Allowable becomes almost automatic. Which it should be.

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Nov22

And… ACTION!

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And… ACTION!

A Call-to-Action (CTA) should do just that- call people to act! The purpose of a CTA is to generate a response. Whether you want customers to call you back, send in a reply card, or bring in a coupon, you want them to respond. Here are a 4 ways to help make your next Direct Mail or Email Marketing program drive a response:

1. Use active words!
Using words like “Call”, “Reply”, “Subscribe” or “Register” involves the customers. Think about what the objective is for your marketing program. Do you want to increase traffic to your website, visitors to your store, or add people to your email database? Once you’ve got that down, you can figure out your “active” word.

2. Create Urgency
You can have the best offer or direct mail piece in the world- BUT if no one acts upon it, then what’s the point? You have to get customers to act right away. If you need customers for a specific time frame (i.e. a slow season), than consider using urgent language. Adding an expiration date, or limited-time offer helps create urgency. Sweeten the deal by offering a gift if they redeem the offer by a certain day.

3. Tell em’ what to do
People have to be told what to do, when, where and how. Don’t make things more complicated. Keep your message clear and concise and simply spell it out for them. For example, “Subscribe to our Tip of the Week by Tuesday, November 7 and receive a $5 off coupon to use on your next purchase”.

4. Make an offer they can’t refuse
When creating the offer, try not to go for the “usual”. If you’re competitor is offering a “Buy one, get one 50% off” offer, why do the same thing? Instead, try something like “Free $10 gift card with your purchase of $35.” Remember, most people don’t like to have to calculate things. Making it easier for them is always better.

If you remember to: 1. Use Active Words, 2. Create Urgency, 3. Tell them what to do, and 4. Make a great offer, than you’re all set! It also doesn’t hurt to test different campaigns, to see what works best for you.

Lois K. Geller is President of Lois Geller Marketing Group in Hollywood. Florida. Find her on twitter: @loisgeller. Her books on marketing are available on Amazon.com.

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Nov17

The Joy of Speaking

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The Joy of Speaking

The Wall Street Journal ran a great article called, “Your, Um, You Know, Public Speaking” . It talked about different ways to overcome your fear of public speaking that did not involve the “take-a-gulp-of-wine” method.

According to most studies, people’s number one fear is Public Speaking. Number 2 is death. In other words, people would rather die, before having to speak in front of people.

Some of the suggestions made were:
1. Join Toastmaster’s, a non-profit that helps its members improve their public speaking and leadership skills. 2. Hire a Coach or Consultant.

I was a painfully shy person growing up. When I started working for the Meredith Corporation, I was sent to Des Moines, Iowa to do a presentation in front of a lot of people. It was one of the worst experiences of my life!

After that debacle, my boss sent me to a Dale Carnegie Course for some help– desperate help. It was exactly what I needed. I enjoyed it so much, that I went on to be a certified Dale Carnegie Instructor. From then on, speaking came to me like second nature.

Over the years, I have done countless Keynote Presentations and speaking engagements. I’ve travelled all around the world to speak.

After years of practice, I’ve come up with 5 main things that I do when I speak:

1. Right before any speech, I always make it a point to greet and shake everyone’s hand. I try to get to know my audience and remember people’s names so that I can mention them during my speech.

2. I draw my audience in by starting with an incident that happened to me that morning or a story. The typical “Today, I’m going to talk about–“ routine is boring.

3. My presentations are structured around 4 main points. My goal is for the audience to walk away with at least one of my points. At the end of my presentations I always summarize what I talked about and mention my 4 points again.

4. After my speeches, I like to continue the communication with the audience. People usually give me their business cards afterward to receive my Tip of the Week.

5. If I meet someone who I would love to work with or that I really resonated with, I like to write them a personal note via snail mail.

The most important thing is to keep speaking, as it’s the sign of a great leader.

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Oct31

The Power of Focus, and it pays to escape from the office!

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The Power of Focus, and it pays to escape from the office!

I wish I had time to go to more conferences but I just don’t. In the last few years, I’ve managed to attend only when I’m a speaker.

So last week, I spoke at two events (an industry conference and a benefit), but I stayed afterwards to see what I could see. It was great because I:

1. Got to meet a lot of new people and to put faces to names I’d met only online
2. Learned a lot listening to other people speak
3. Enjoyed not being at my computer keyboard.

Lois Geller, Michael Dell'Aciprete, Maria Harrison


My keynote topic at the Florida Direct Marketing Association’s Annual Summit was that “in this chaotic world, we need to focus on one great objective.” I had fun speaking and then I really had fun seeing and listening to old friends such as Herschell Gordon Lewis,
Dale Filhaber, and Bob Dunhill.

I also got to hear people I hadn’t yet met, people like Bullseye Strategy’s Maria Harrison who spoke about SEO and Native Remedies’ Michael Dell’Aciprete who spoke about interactive marketing.

I noticed that I was able to focus on what they were saying and later, as I thought about it, I wondered if the growing trend in online meetings is going to change that.

A Meetings Professionals International study with 2,740 responders indicated that 11% of meeting professionals expect an increase in the use of technology to access meetings and content remotely. Everyone is trying to lower costs so it’s understandable. I just don’t know if it’s a good idea.

The problem is that when I log on to computer mediated sessions I tend to keep working quietly, checking my Tweetdeck, email, reading reports and sometimes having conversations in the office. No focus.

A couple of days later, I did a short talk at Senada Azdem’s Celebration of Hope is a Pink Strides Event for Breast Cancer Awareness (one of my favorite causes). There I had a chance to focus on just talking to people, and I found out I knew many of them (though I don’t live nearby, and had no idea who would be there).

Kelly killoren Bensimon, Bobby Campbell, Lois Geller & Senada Adzem


When I got to the event I ran into Scot Karp of Premier Estate Properties. He said he’d heard me speak at the Luxury Real Estate Conference at the Boca Raton Hotel a few years ago. I think he won one of my books there. Great person and I enjoyed talking to him.

Senada Azdem, Scot Karp & Lois Geller


Also met Roz Ceresne who’d introduced me to Senada Adzem. Senada is from Bosnia and she’s involved in a lot of things. For example, the people in our office have packed up a box of books for her to send to an orphanage over there.

Kelly Killoren Bensimon, of the Real Housewives of New York City, was there introducing her new shoe line. The Kelly by Kelly Killoren Bensimon line, is a philanthropic shoe line that benefits breast cancer. For every shoe sold, $3.00 will go to the Breast Cancer Research Fund.

Sometimes mingling at the beautiful Estate felt like old home week. One of the doctors in attendance recognized my Philadelphia accent and when we had a chance to chat, we found out that we knew quite a few of the same people back in Pennsylvania. Mingling also resulted in meeting new friends which I wouldn’t have had the chance to do if I hadn’t been there as a speaker.

So, I’m going to take my own advice this week and focus on not being an office hermit and on getting out more to meet new people, get new ideas and be REFRESHED.

How about you?

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Oct28

The Power of Handwritten Notes

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The Power of Handwritten Notes

Growing up, my friends and I played with dolls, action figures, jump rope, hopscotch, and played video games like Super Mario Brothers.

Now, it seems like even toddlers are walking around with cell phones and iPads. My niece, Yanelly (5 years old), knows how to get on the Internet and logon to Disney.com. She can fully navigate the website by herself! She even knows how to stream her favorite shows and movies on a PS3 game console through Netflix. She taught me how to do that last week.

She doesn’t even know how to write her name, let alone read. Kids are learning to type before they even learn how to write.

I couldn’t help but think about how people rarely hand write things any more. Are handwritten notes and papers going to be a thing of the past?

Don’t get me wrong; I type everything, too (I’m obviously not handwriting this post). But to me, there is nothing like getting a heartfelt handwritten note.

There is a power in handwritten notes. Will it die off eventually?

I sat in my room the other night and pulled out my “memory box”, where I keep all of my mementos, notes, cards, pictures, etc.

Any note or card that anyone has ever sent me, I keep in that box (except ones from ex-boyfriends). The way I look at it, if someone takes the time to sit down and write their sentiments, they really care about me. That means a whole lot more than a Tweet or Facebook Post will ever mean to me.

Think about it this way, what would mean more… a handwritten love note or a love email? That doesn’t sound romantic does it? If Grandma sent you an email on your birthday, instead of your annual card, would it mean as much? My parents have been married for 28 years and my mom still has all the love notes that my father has ever written to her.

When it comes to a Direct Mail campaign keep these things in mind. I’m all for instant communication, but I think we shouldn’t forget the power of a handwritten note and the impact that it makes.

Nordstrom and Christian Dior are masters at this! Their Sales Associates send their customers a handwritten thank you note after every purchase. Now, that’s a great relationship builder.

A handwritten note tells the person that they’re on your mind and that you value the relationship. Sending a “We Want You Back” note to reactivate an old client, or handwriting a P.S. on a letter, can make a world of difference in you direct mail campaign.

If handwritten letters are not an option (i.e. if you’re sending 10,000 mailers), then consider making your program personable. Don’t get personable confused with personalized. Adding someone’s name to a letter is personalization– the typical thing to do. Personable means making the letter sound human, like a friend is talking to you.

So the next time you start typing away a note, think about how much more it would mean if it was handwritten in your own handwriting and sounded just like you.

Let me know your thoughts. What is your favorite letter you’ve received?


Guest Blog Post from
Rachel Rodriguez
LGMG Account Exec.

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