Thanks, AAdvantage, now goodbye!

AAdvantage unsubscribe screen
AAdvantage finally asks me for my email prefs… as I’m about to unsubscribe.

I just unsubscribed from both my AAdvantage email accounts, mine and my teenager’s. I was getting several emails a week and it was pointless to read them since AA does not serve my local airport. But, they’re about to as a result of the USAir merger so I’ve made a point of making an occasional qualifying purchase to keep our combined 50,000+ miles intact.

Or, so I thought. I actually read one of these emails this morning, and discovered the miles in both accounts had zeroed out. (AAdvantage does not bother with real-time reporting, so it showed 24,372 miles in my kid’s account while a couple lines below showing an expiration date a few days ago.) D’oh!

Why in the world, if American wants me as a customer, would they not send me a special announcement that the miles were about to expire and some information on how to preserve them?

AAdvantage Customer Service screen
Thanks, AAdvantage, now goodbye.

And why in the world would they continue to flood my inbox with emails when I hardly ever open any of them? A best practice followed by many marketers today is to warn customers they’ll stop receiving emails unless they take some action. But AAdvantage is the original mileage reward program and their policies have likely been around as long as people have been receiving emails. Which is probably also why I get so many emails from them; I can’t remember them ever asking me if I would like to specify preferences, until I unsubscribed today.

So, AAdvantage has done its job, which is to pry loose some miles fair and square. But American Airlines has lost a couple of potential customers who fly frequently and could have been on its ALB routes very soon. I fail to see how that’s a good thing.

P.S. Don’t know if they are still doing this as I am no longer an active member, but United’s Mileage Plus had a promotion they would send to people with expiring miles, asking if they wanted to convert the miles to various subscription offers. I’m sure they earned some nice revenue from this partnership at the same time they kept members up to date on their accounts. Another example why AAdvantage’s assumption of primogeniture–I’m right because I was here first–is actually obsolete and clueless.

Does your direct marketing need a Letter Doctor?

I started my direct marketing career in the 1980s, a quaint bygone era when there was no internet. One of my favorite resources was a perfect bound magazine called Direct Marketing and one of my favorite contributors to said magazine was Luther Brock, “The Letter Doctor”.

Brock would take a sort of self-help approach to copy critique. He would pick a common marketing problem, present a few paragraphs from a letter (possibly not a real one) that was not solving the problem so well, then make suggestions for improvement. It was a diagnostic approach: you know things are supposed to be a certain way, but they’re not; what’s wrong, and why? Of course he was promoting his own services as a freelance copywriter, but there was lots of good information to a fledging.

I expect Luther Brock is no longer among us. A 1958 graduate of a Denton, TX high school is listed on the internets as the owner of a business called The Letter Doctor, so this is probably Luther’s son. Another person, I assume unrelated, owns the domain lettterdoctor.com and markets from that website. The original Letter Doctor probably never saw any reason to claim the domain name; what was an internet domain anyway and who cared? (In the very early days of the World Wide Web, we looked up numerical domain identifiers, not names.)

I found myself invoking the spirit of the Letter Doctor today when a client asked me to take a look at some not-successful lead generation direct mail. There were some bullet points of features and benefits: did they really know those were the most powerful message to their audience? There was an informational offer: was it really the best appeal to the target reader, and was it stated appropriately? In short, this robust and experienced company needed a checkup, same as any of us.

Do you have a letter doctor–someone who’s willing to poke and probe and make recommendations based on how your marketing differs from expectations? If not, it might be worthwhile to seek one out.

When you want LESS response to your marketing, do this

The Freakonomics authors present an interesting theory in their new book, Think Like a Freak: The Authors of Freakonomics Offer to Retrain Your Brain. Why is it that, in spite of all the publicity and ridicule visited on “Nigerian scam” emails in which someone you don’t know will visit you with huge sums in return for sharing your bank account routing information, those emails are still sent from alleged Nigerians? Wouldn’t they get a better response with a new scam sent from, maybe, Crimea?

The answer, according to Levitt and Dubner, is that the scammers WANT a lower response. Sending out mass emails is free, but manipulating the mark who responds is not. Therefore the scammers want to limit their responders to only the truly most gullible who believe that, regardless of past disappointments, there may still be a pony under that pile of poop.

This has application for your own marketing if you have a sales organization that must process the leads you generate through email, direct mail or search advertising. Offer a free tcotchke or entry into a drawing for an iPad and you’ll boost the response, but many of those alleged prospects are responding just for the freebie. Not only are they worthless as leads,  they cost you money because they get in the way of opportunities to follow up other, better qualified responses.

There are several ways to get fewer but better qualified responses:

  • Offer a premium that is only of interest to someone who meets your definition of a qualified buyer. Everyone wants an iPad; only a few want a poster with functional diagrams of vector network analysis yet that offer was highly effective for one of my clients.
  • Make them do something to get the freebie. Ask them to provide complete and accurate contact information and answer a few questions about buying authority and plans. (If you’re giving away something, they will be motivated to fill in correct information to be sure you can reach them.) Make them fill out a survey. In effect, they’re working for the reward so it’s no longer “free”.
  • Or, don’t offer anything, other than a “complimentary consultation” which is a thinly disguised sales pitch. This is what your sales reps want you to do, because it will only produce very well qualified leads. You normally won’t do it because there will be a disappointing number of leads and your cost per lead will be extremely high. But sometimes this is the right way to go.

With an improving economy, lead quality becomes increasingly important. Try a few of these tactics in your next campaign.

 

What are you on, Diet Coke?

Diet Coke Kiosk
Diet Coke’s fiendishly ironic (or not) kiosk at Fisherman’s Wharf; click the picture for a closer look.

The riskiest kind of advertising is that in which you are so much inside the head of your audience that you can actually poke gentle fun at them and they will be appreciative rather than insulted. My favorite successful example is an etrade billboard that towered above San Francisco in the height of the dot-com craziness: “Sure, it’s scary. But so is falling in love.” Sly reinforcement of the trepidation the internet bubble investor was feeling, and implication you should do business with etrade because they understand. Of course, this love affair didn’t end very well, but that’s not the copywriter’s fault.

A less good example is the badvertising kiosk I photographed at the Hyde Street turnaround, one of the most touristy areas of San Francisco. “You moved to San Francisco with a crowd-funded website. A dad-funded hatchback. And a no-funded bank account. You’re on. Diet Coke.” Please tell me how the target of this ad could be anything but insulted.

To parse it, you’re a loser who can’t afford to buy a car and you have no money in your bank account, and you’ve moved to San Francisco like thousands of other idealistic young people who are about to get a harsh lesson in reality. The “crowd-funded website” is what does the greatest damage here, though. I don’t think the copywriter (who I have the feeling is some old cackling dude in New York, with arthritis-gnarled fingers, who last visited San Francisco when Carol Doda was performing on Broadway) has any idea what a “crowd funded website” is—that’s actually quite a complex thing to pull off, hardly in the wheelhouse of somebody who can’t balance a checkbook. No, they’re just trying to paint a picture using some phraseology they grabbed out of Wired magazine and the general idea is that’s what young people move to SF for these days, instead of serving coffee at Vesuvio.

Actually, it isn’t, necessarily. There’s quite a battle among young people these days for the city’s soul as evidenced by protestors vomiting on the massive buses with the black tinted windows that whip the techies back and forth. Being an internet billionaire is not on a par, karma-wise, with being discovered playing your guitar in Golden Gate Park. The stock photo (behind the Diet Coke logo) of the “Painted Ladies”, another touristic attraction with little meaning for the young scrounger unless he sleeps under the bushes in Alamo Square, and the very location of this kiosk where few actual San Franciscans would see it all suggest the campaign was conceived by a couple of nicotine-stained hacks peering out the dirty windows of an office in Midtown Manhattan.

I haven’t yet mentioned the tag line, with its subtle-as-a-brick double entendre. Note in the photo that the period in “You’re on. Diet Coke.” is in a smaller font than the rest of the type (compare it to the punctuation in the body copy) to give us an extra wink. Oh. I get it. “You’re on” is one of those anthemic phrases like “let’s ride” but they just couldn’t resist suggesting the youngster is hopped up on caffeine and artificial sweeteners.

Which makes me wonder…. Could this actually be intended as irony? Is it in fact designed for the tourists, inviting them to mock the Friscans they know are mocking them? If so, genius. But I don’t believe that is what is happening here. Diet Coke team, if you’re reading, please tell me it is or isn’t so.

Playing the “oops” card in email marketing

Have you noticed how many emails you get these days with a subject line like “OOPS, we goofed” or “please accept our apologies”? Then you read and it’s a company that you may or may not recognize, telling you that they previously sent out a message in error saying that your discount was void when it really wasn’t, or they sent out a very private offer by mistake to the entire list and now they’re going to have to honor it?

Made you look, didn’t they? It’s the virtual equivalent of the good old “our buyer goofed” sale. We made a mistake, and you can reap the benefits, you greedy bastard you.

Well [IF YOU ARE MY CLIENT, PLEASE STOP READING RIGHT NOW], I found myself with a natural marketing opportunity this week when my internet service provider actually did face an “oops” moment in real life. It seems that SpamCop went all Putin and decided to block all kinds of completely legitimate non-spamming email servers. The ISPs have to plead to be unblocked and even after they are, it takes some time for the pending emails to resolve  and be delivered.

After thinking I was having a wonderfully peaceful week, I discovered today why I was not getting replies to my various project-based emails: they hadn’t been delivered. Several frantic hours were spent following up to re-send from gmail, in each case asking the recipient to confirm receipt.

Several of these were emails I wouldn’t normally expect to be answered: a casual conversation with a prospect, for example. But when I re-sent they dutifully said yes, I got it which means they read my email. Wait a minute! So this gave me the excuse to email a few folks [YOU CLIENTS AND PROSPECTS AREN’T READING THIS, ARE YOU?] I have been trying to light a fire under and saying hey, I’ve been trying to reach you, maybe the emails just haven’t been delivered, I’m still interested in working with you!

Try it yourself, if you dare. Disclaimer: professional driver on closed course. Possible side effects may include drowsiness and over-optimism.

New Crest tube is designed by idiots

Crest Tube
Crest tube can’t hold the toothpaste… brilliant
Do you have a mess like this in your toothbrush drawer? You will, if you’re a loyal customer of Proctor & Gamble and their flagship Crest brand.

Seems like the old tube with the small opening and the screw top wasn’t good enough for them, so they went to this great big cap that is supposed to pop on, but it doesn’t. And they also changed the formula of the paste so it’s more liquidy and oozes out all over the drawer.

Anybody know why they did this? Hard to believe it’s less expensive than the traditional tube. I think it’s a case of a/changing two things at once, which as marketers we know is folly and b/somebody with too much time on their hands.

I’m too cheap to throw it out, but as soon as it’s done I’m going to switch brands to somebody who still uses the old fashioned tube.

What we can learn from college solicitation direct mail

My son is a high school junior who recently took the PSAT, so he’s receiving a ton of prospecting mail from colleges. The other night we went through a stack of these direct mail packs, and it was interesting to see his reactions.

There was a lot of good stuff. Overall, the colleges did a strong job of presenting what makes them unique, and if it’s not a good match for my high school student there’s no fault to either side. But he had a couple of interesting comments from which lessons can be learned.

A couple of colleges disqualified themselves for consideration with cut-rate production. Here’s a college he’s never heard of, and you send him a solicitation that looks like you’re operating on a shoestring, and out you go into the discard pile. Lesson: be aware of the competitive environment in which your solicitation is viewed. If you really can’t afford a professional photographer and designer, maybe a heart felt letter from the president, in laser addressed envelope,  is the way to go.

And, a good third of the schools wanted my student to continue the dialog by going to a special web page and logging in with his name and password. This is Gen-X, or even Baby Boomer, marketing: assuming people will feel special because you’ve gone to the trouble to set up a “personal web page”. My millennial found it laughable. Passwords and user names are for World of Warcraft and a discussion of them usually leads to how you have been hacked. He also drew amusement from how he was “gmaxwell” on some college sites but maybe “gmaxwell3” on others and wondered if that meant he was less desirable to the latter.

To me, the best of the bunch was a completely non personalized self mailer from Carleton College with body copy that started: “Nice work on the PSAT!” Do they have access to his score? No matter. Why not assume the best about him and give him a compliment he may or may not deserve?

Chrysler, Dylan show how not to use celebrities in your advertising

Much has been made of the expensive nonsense that was the Chrysler ad in last week’s Super Bowl. What does “more American than America” mean? And is it disingenuous to proclaim “you can’t import American pride” when Chrysler is in fact owned by a German company? What was most troubling to me, however, was the way that Bob Dylan’s most public product endorsement (surprisingly, there been others) turned him from an icon into a pitchman.

The use of Eminem and Clint Eastwood in the two previous Super Bowl spots was brilliant. Eminem didn’t appear till toward the end and he looked like an anonymous and well-dressed young hipster, no visible tattoos, prompting many viewers to say “who’s that?” (The theme of the spot in that dark year, by the way, was “Imported from Detroit,” a direct contradiction to this year’s.) There’s no hiding Clint Eastwood’s voice, but the man himself was in shadows until the very end for the “halftime in America” spot, another piece of brilliant writing and staging.

By contrast, Dylan is in almost every frame of the 2014 spot so it comes to seem like a “you’ve seen him on…” retrospective. It doesn’t deflect the blatantly obvious to have the ironic cut of him flipping through his own albums in a record store. And at the end he does in fact turn to us and come right out and say it: “we will build your car.” And if you act fast, you’ll get a bonus set of floor mats!

Celebrities stand for something beyond their (often tawdry) actual selves. If you pay to put them in your advertising and fail to leverage that aura, you’re shooting yourself in the crankcase. The only exception might be the Ed McMahon/Bob Dole category of commercials used to pitch to an elderly audience, which is believed to have great respect for figures of authority. Come to think of it, Dylan’s actually old enough to join those ranks.

Here are the actual words to the Chrysler Dylan 2:00. Thanks to Mike Wayland, Michigan Live automobile blogger, for providing them so I don’t have to watch the spot over and over again to write them down.

Is there anything more American than America?
‘Cause you can’t import original.
You can’t fake true cool.
You can’t duplicate legacy.
Because what Detroit created was a first
and became an inspiration to the… rest of the world.
Yeah…Detroit made cars. And cars made America
Making the best, making the finest, takes conviction.
And you can’t import, the heart and soul,
of every man and woman working on the line.
You can search the world over for the finer things,
but you won’t find a match for the American road
and the creatures that live on it.
Because we believe in the zoom,
and the roar, and the thrust.
And when it’s made here, it’s made with the one thing
you can’t import from anywhere else. American…Pride.
So let Germany brew your beer,
Let Switzerland make your watch,
Let Asia assemble your phone.
We…will build…your car.

And, here are the Eminem and Eastwood spots in case you to watch and compare.

Budget Rent A Car mines data, comes with new $15 gas gimmick

Last week I was in Southern California, meeting with a client about how to use customer and transaction data to market more effectively. Coincidentally, when I picked up my rental car from Budget, they made me an offer which did just that.

I generally rent a car when I’m staying overnight. Rarely do I make any significant dent in the gas tank. Thus I always fill up on the way to the airport rather than just returning it and paying a refueling charge which is prohibitively expensive, or accepting the offer to prepay for a full tank I’m not going to use.

Neither Budget nor I wants me to fill up on the way to the airport. I don’t like refueling because I’m usually cutting it close time-wise, plus I often finding myself paying extra because the previous customer didn’t fill it up all the way. Budget doesn’t like it because they aren’t making any money on me. So they came up with a new offer: pay $15 for gas, no additional refueling charge as long as I drive under 75 miles.

If I drive 75 miles, at the worst they’ll break even. I was in a midsize car, and gas in this area was around $4.50 a gallon. But most customers probably don’t come close. (I didn’t.) So they’ve found a new revenue channel and I’m perfectly happy to pay it. $15 is close enough to the $7 or $8 I’d pay on my own that I am willing to buy freedom from the inconvenience.

Designing an offer like this for your own business, or your client’s, isn’t rocket science. You need to understand the pattern of usage, which will probably vary by area. This was at Orange County Airport, where people are either renting a car for a trip to Disneyland (well over 75 miles by the end of the trip) or right in the Irvine area (my scenario). And they may have tested different pricing to find that sweet spot where the customer is happy to pay for freedom from the inconvenience of the fill-up.

I am an agnostic car renter in that I’ll buy whatever is cheapest in the results that pop up on Kayak, so long as they’re not out of the airport. But Budget has given me a reason to pay extra attention to them next time. Nice work.

FSI coupons score for the home team before 2014 Super Bowl

Super Bowl FSIs
Football-themed FSIs a week before the big bsme
Okay, football fans, what’s special about this past Sunday? If you said Pro Bowl, you just got sacked for a loss. Correct answer: it’s the weekend before the Super Bowl, and therefore the Sunday when the FSI coupons do a Richard Sherman trying to connect themselves to the Super Bowl without actually mentioning the name of the event, since they haven’t paid the hefty licensing fee.

Here comes Kraft with “your bold lineup for game day dipping”. Foster Farms wants us to “save big on tasty favorites for game day”. With a casserole made with Carnation evaporated milk, “game day just got tastier”. Attacking a problem we didn’t know we had, Hefty plasticized paper plates advise us to “soak proof your game day”. And, in case you’re planning to eat a few too many nachos, Pepcid offers to “kick off the big game with even bigger savings”. Cheez-It advises you to “kick off the big game with these fan favorites”. And Land O’Frost offers “easy game day entertaining with our premium line-up”. Anybody notice a trend here?

But the story on the sidelines is that there are far fewer of these themed coupons than in years past. And, where many of them did photo shoots of hyperactive fans enjoying their products in a home setting, now most simply stick some stock art of a green football field behind their usual overdressed product graphics. What’s the strategy, coach? Where’s your jumbo package or that gimmick play?

It just may be that marketers have found these themed ads aren’t worth the effort in terms of incremental sales. The overwhelming majority of coupon clippers are female, and so the underlying message is that the little woman is going to put out a bountiful spread for the men in her house and their loutish guests. But more and more consumers may be blowing the whistle on this blatant pandering. It may be that it’s better to promote your tried-and-true product positioning after all.

In my house, I know, the males are going to be expected to put together their own Super Bowl spread and clean up after themselves. Maybe I should get some of those soak-proof plates.