When you make a mistake, apologize.
I recently attended a DMIX (Direct Marketing Idea Exchange) luncheon and the speaker was the President of a large catalog company. She was kind enough to give us each a gift car d to buy something in her catalog.
There was a book in there I wanted, so I ordered it. First they sent me a letter, saying my book was delayed. Then they sent another letter (3 weeks later), and said it was on back order, and they’d let me know when it came in.
Months later, I wrote to her about this, and the book came flying to me FEDEX from Amazon (not her company).
She made it right, but only because I was in her industry and write a lot of articles, etc.
Afterward, they should have written and told me they were sorry about the delay in my shipment.
Meanwhile, we’re working on a hospitality client’s business at my office, and deployed a huge email campaign with an error in the offer.
I called the client, and said we have to write to all of them immediately and say we’re sorry and correct our mistake. I sent an OOOPs! email, and we received so many orders right away. In fact, a much higher response than we’d had in many months.
We apologized quickly. We gave them a good offer. We also appeared like real human beings who make mistakes.
So, they forgave us, and bought a lot from us.
June 3, 2009 No Comments
I love the art prints, and where is the offer?
Recently a client came to our offices to tell us all about his fabulous line of art books. They were great, and we enjoyed seeing the art, before it was published. He mentioned the thickness of the books, the special art historian who was the author, and so on.
Then I asked him the big question: what is your offer? His reply was, “I don’t need an offer”, and “these books are high quality and stand on their own”.
I explained to him that in direct marketing you always need an offer, or you’re just selling retail in the mail. The offer answers the customer’s questions of “what’s in it for me”, and it is really the closer for the sale. [Read more →]
November 11, 2008 1 Comment
