Marketing by Permission Marketing by Permission Getting business advantage and great return on investment from top quality sales and marketing requires attention to your customer's needs and to the law. That's what this is all about.. Other topics include data privacy in all its forms.
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While on the topic of Customer Service...
2007-10-31 12:54:00 I am experiencing BT as I write. I am a very old (watch it!) broadband customer in the UK. BT in their wisdom piloted ADSL with hard wired "master sockets" with inbuilt filters which split DSL from phone. I took the service 10 minutes after it was available in Bracknell. I had the engineer come and install it, and run a 25 metre cable to my office from the master socket for a 5 metre distance.He couldn't install it outside because "That would need a ladder, and I'm not insured for ladders, sir.""But you have ladders on the roofrack of your van?""Yes, but I'm not insured. Anyway this data cable isn't weatherproof, you know."So, for several years I was a happy BT Broadband customer, right up to the day they messed up, when I moved to Netvigator and bypassed the phone line entirely - they were radio linked, much like cellphones, to a base station. But Netvigator, now "Now!" or "MyNow!" (UK Broadband) has decided to withdraw service in my (only my?) area and I have rejoined ... More About: Customer Service , Service , Customer , Topic
Customer Service seems not to cover deceased clients well
2007-10-29 18:52:00 I have now had two rather bad customer service experiences, both banks, one in a call centre, the other at a counter. The call centre was Barclays, the counter was Abbey or Santander.Countering customThe counter was simple. Instead of hearing that I was there to report a death and being pleasant and sympathetic, the counter clerk told me "You'll have to..." And that's the point While I may "have to..." what I want to be told is different. I want to be told, sympathetically, that "We need to take some details from you. There is a form to sign, but I'm sure we can handle that. I'm afraid our trained person is booked solid today, would it be possible to see her tomorrow?"We could have taken it from there quite easily. And notice that nowhere in that conversation does it say "You'll have to..."Total lack of customer service means that one clerk has removed any possibility that I will use Abbey or Santander or whoever they are as my bank now or ever.But that was mild compare... More About: Customer Service , Service , Customer , Clients , Cover
Pause in blogging
2007-10-26 01:29:00 The lady to the left is the reason. She is my mother, Constance Trent, and was born in 1918 and died on Sunday 21st October 2007.I imagine you can guess that my attention has not been on my blog recently. She has not been well. In hospital she was infected with Clostridium Difficile - a superbug that is very hard to live through.We have a view in my family that flowers are great for a decoration, but are excessive in grief, so we are hoping that anyone who is moved to will donate even a trivial sum at a page we are using to raise funds for The National Association for Colitis and Crohn's Disease (a UK charoty) in her memory. She supported them in life and we support them in her name in death. More About: Blogging , Pause
UK Information Commissioner does not regulate BlueSpam after all!
2007-10-12 19:26:00 He thought he did, but he's decided he doesn't. This from ComplianceAndPrivacy.com which covers news in the security and privacy fields:Following discussions with the Department of Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform and others the Information Commissioner ’s Office has amended its guidance on the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations 2003. The guidance previously stated that marketing messages sent using Bluetooth technology would be subject to PECR rules relating to the sending of unsolicited marketing. However, the Regulations only apply to messages sent over a public electronic communications network and we have concluded that Bluetooth messages are not in fact sent using such a network. We have amended our guidance accordingly. It is for government to decide whether the law should be changed to cover such marketing. We would like to stress that regardless of whether a particular technology is covered by PECR, consumers are incr... More About: Information Commissioner , Missi
BlueSpam (etc) trends
2007-10-12 09:41:00 I'm returning to my regular monitoring of terms to do with Spam and Bluetooth this month. With the mobile industry now providing better and better marketing techniques, and with the uptake of bluecasting, or proximity marketing, via your handset, I'm looking at the past 90 days and blog mentions of the terms, and I've added a few relevant terms.For comparison the mentions, all mentions, of the term Spam are included. I really do hope this excludes the canned meat!The graphs are presented together for you to draw your own conclusions. They are dynamic - they refresh whenever Technorati refreshes. They are the total of all blog posts recorded there with the terms and are thus likely to have statistical significance.Posts that contain Bluespam per day for the last 90 days.Posts that contain Bluecast per day for the last 90 days.Posts that contain "Proximity Marketing" per day for the last 90 days.Posts that contain Bluetooth per day for the last 90 days.Posts that contain "SMS Mark... More About: Trends
There's always a better mousetrap
2007-10-11 09:43:00 I just had an email from a business colleague who is part of "my" Linked In network. He said "I'm moving to FaceBook." Well, I'm not. Not from any particular dislike of FaceBook, I'm just content with what I have where i am.I already don't use Plaxo nor do I use Spoke. I have serious doubts about their mechanical approach, and their export of data without obvious consent from the EEA, and I do have some doubts about Linked In. But this is the problem. There are many social networks that may be useful or appropriate.The issue is "How do I make use of them all?"The answer is that I don't. And I'm not even sure one should. The real dilemma is about the use a contact is if you never, ever talk to them. Are you useful to me? Am I useful to you? Will either of us be useful to the other in the future?And, if the social network is a showcase of who we are, which is the most appropriate network?I wish I had some answers. More About: Always
Ten Landmines for eMarketing
2007-10-01 15:28:00 So many people get this wrong that they spoil it for those who get it right. So I’ve been thinking of a simple “What not do Do” guide. One - Don’t use your own email server Ok, it’s there and it’s cheap. So why not use it?Some fool will put every addressee in the "to" or the "cc" field, but the "bcc" field sends it to "undisclosed recipients" so you look bland and allows no personalisation and thus decreases responses.Your email server has your IP address. Did you know it only takes four independent spam reports in 24 hours for people to start peering very hard at your IP addresses and starting to blocklist you? I do mean blocklist, not blacklist. Similar, but not the same.There's no possibility of campaign tracking, no integrated marketing, no response tracking, no return on investment measurement."It's just an email let's send it now". Yes, unchecked!You need to outsource your eMarketing to a specialist agency. Let them have the headaches of negotiating...
ad:tech - Digital Privacy - How to Respect your Customers
2007-10-01 10:48:00 I was also on this ad:tech panel last Thursday, in distinguished company. The excellent part was that the audience became part of the panel. We not only had questions from the floor, we had answers and opinions from the floor, too.There were some very good messages:Users need to take responsibility tooLooking at the opening up of social networks to search engines, users need to understand what they are doing when they give out information there. They need to understand how data may be aggregated in order to make positive and sometimes unwelcome identifications. While this is said to be especially important for minors in view of the current mediasteria about sex and the Internet, it's as important for adults, especially where a career might be vulnerable to a scandal.We've all posted something we shouldn't somewhere we shouldn't have. A careless or angry comment on a forum, an unwise flirtation in a social network, a foolish blog entry or blog comment. [memo to self - I rea... More About: Customers , Tech , Privacy , Respect , Digital
Gartner CRM Awards finalists
2007-09-29 10:02:00 I was reading "Service and a Smile", which opens with:"Gartner ’s CRM Excellence Awards was a major highlight of the recent Gartner CRM Summit. There were three finalists: Electronic Arts, Lennox International, and Shaklee. Each shared their success story, based on a winning customer strategy that gives customers choice and gives front-line staff the information and support they need to deliver a compelling customer experience."There's a good write up of what the finalists did with technology. But, for me, the real question is what they did with internal attitudes.I simply don't believe that a CRM system is a magic bullet that can turn companies round. I don't think Gartner does, either. It certainly didn't when I was there.Since CRM systems tend to be inflexible (SAP anyone?) the job is all down to becoming customer focussed, learning what your customers need, and staying agile enough to respond to sudden market variations. Could your CRM model have handled your own North... More About: Finalists
Totally against permissions
2007-09-28 12:52:00 I've a good friend in Australia. Ok, that's probably not relevant at all, but I think you ought to know that I have at least one friend!He sent his 79 year old mother a card via 123greetings.com a site which used to be a reputable site and which used to let you send free eGreetings cards. But the site has been raped and pillaged, and I assume this has to be with the site owner's consent, or they would have stopped it. It now appears briefly, and then morphs into a site that probably shoves spyware at your machine.His mother was told by the thing that she'd visited adult sites. It scared her. He wrote to them. They replied:"We understand your concern.We being a free greeting cards site are dependent on our sponsors to keep bringing these beautiful cards to you folks.It is the advertisers who decides the form of advertisements which in this case are in form of pop-ups. Meanwhile, as you find these pop-up's irritating may we suggest you to use any software of your choice to ... More About: Ally , Missi
Spam is still Spam, even if it is B2B
2007-09-27 22:38:00 I have an email address that is part of a limited company - a company I am proud to be associated with, and for whom I do some freelance work from time to time. In return they grant me email, and other facilities. So there is no way we can consider this to be an individual subscriber under the PECR.Nonetheless I am an individual, and as an individual I have the right to know under section 7.1.c.ii of the Data Protection Act 1998 "Subject to the following provisions of this section and to sections 8 and 9, an individual is entitled — to have communicated to him in an intelligible form — any information available to the data controller as to the source of those data" when some random spammer targets me for his campaign.Today I got an email from "Angel Sales and Leasing" out of the blue, trying to flog me an Audi. the footer says:"Angel Sales and Leasing Marketing Compliance CodeMarketing communications are delivered in accordance with EU Directive on Privacy and Electronic Co... More About: Spam
ad:tech Digital Consumer panel, et alia
2007-09-26 19:08:00 Just back from today's ad:tech foray. The panel was interesting, though it did suffer from a tired lunchtime audience with exhibition fatigue. iMedia hyped the session as hard as they could, and we did get a good few drop-ins as the session continued.The basic question we were discussing was "You've lost your customer, how do you reconnect?"There are several ways of looking at this, ranging from a customer who hates you to the customer who just forgot you.We also looked at "Blind advertising networks", new jargon for me, but obvious once it's explained as a way of filling up spare advertising capacity without harming the end vendor's rate card (think of selling standby tickets for aircraft - there are similarities, but they aren't congruent concepts), and at social networking. And we looked at privacy issues.My main concern, as always, is to get more money out than you put in. ROI, or "how many pence does it take to make a £1?" I look at integrated marketing with emphasis... More About: Tech , Consumer , Panel , Digital
BT Spams - offers no excuse or rationale
2007-09-19 13:39:00 I received, at a business I am associated with but not part of, and for whom I used to act as webmaster, a spam email from BT. It comes from BT Business at btbusiness@comms.bt.com , but I have never, not ever, given BT permission to market to me, nor have I ever been a customer at that email address.The email has the subject line "Want to get more business from your website?" and gives me the phone number, 0800 876 6301, of my local area BT Sales team.My first action was to reply, asking why I was being sent this email. I want to know what data they hold on me, what permissions they believe I've given, and the source of the data record.There has been no answer by email.Today I dialled the number. I met a very nice and highly professional salesman. he was:amazed that the email had gone out at all - no-one had told him! How bad a marketing campaign is that?apologetic that I had been spammed, but unable even to tell me whom to contactsorry that he had no access himself to the dat... More About: Offers , Excuse , Offer
ad:tech 26 and 27 September 2007
2007-09-19 12:14:00 I've been invited onto a couple of panels at ad:tech at Olympia next week.On the Wednesday I'll be on the Digital Consumer Forum panel working my way through lunch (memo to self: Always consider the food angle!)On the Thursday I'll be on Digital Privacy - How to Respect Your Customers at teatime. There's that food motif again!Both panels look like great fun and are addressing essential topics. Just how should we react as vendors to consumer needs? More About: Tech , September , September 2007
Northern Rock
2007-09-18 23:46:00 I've been watching the Northern Rock saga. Wouldn't it be great if they could have done something to get those queues of people who wanted to deposit money? That would have been real marketing.But I was annoyed by the one thing Adam Applegarth left out early on: The fact that the first £2000 is 100% guaranteed, and the next £33,000 is 90% guaranteed, by law. Would he have had a run on his bank if he'd made this clear every time he spoke?A few sheep, they would have queued, but the rest would have seen how stupid it was.In these days of soundbites, a bit of soundbite marketing would have done no harm at all. More About: Northern Rock , Hern
Blog by Email
2007-09-17 10:48:00 No, I don't mean I am. I mean you can, if you like what you read, get this blog by email. It's a properly permissioned system, there's no spam, and it comes on Mondays at 9:30am UK time, prettily and economically formatted.You subscribe to the list, if you want to, either in the clutter in the left hand margin, or by using this form:And you unsubscribe when you want to using instructions at the foot of the email it sends out. The whole thing's automatic. More About: Email , Blog
Challenged in the Transport Department
2007-09-16 16:15:00 Since 1996 I've run big, old, lazy Jaguars. I've bought them well used, and used them well. I drive cars until they disappear around me in a cloud of rust. I've had my last one since 1998, and it was by no means in the first flush of youth then. I've had to call the fire brigade out to it twice! This one expired at a ludicrously slow pace when it chose to inspect a manhole cover closely just after it has passed over a speed hump - the work of the devil - and twisted itself up something rotten. I'm still waiting for the pittance from the insurance company. It was an old, venerably old, car. It deserves a Viking funeral, but instead it will be raped and pillaged for parts.We set out to buy a replacement. I am now of an age where I am meant to have a sensible car. So I am looking at a used Smart Roadster. We went to a theme park to look at that - Mercedes Benz World, at Brooklands - and were trampled underfoot by the Volkspolizei when we tried to park in the "Sales Car ... More About: Department , Transport , Tran , Halle
Carnival of the Mobilists, Number 91
2007-09-15 21:25:00 Blog Carnival #91 is live! It's my first time hosting this and I feel a little humble. The great thing is, it's easy to host, so let me start with a plea: "If you have anything at all to do with mobile telephony in your blog, offer to host it!" You'll learn a lot from the blogs you read in the detail you need to in order to make a sensible job of hosting. Now all the links in this carnival open in a new window, so you won't lose your place.I'm going to start with Michael Mace in Mobile Opportunity. The war between Nokia and Apple and, as he says, "When two elephants fight, the loser is the jungle." The fallout could be huge. With elephants fighting, who fancies getting in the way by accident?Luca Filigheddu presents Apple iPod Touch vs Nokia N800 posted at LucaFiligheddu.com. It's another take on Apple v Nokia.Changing the mood to Bernado Cavalho in rawsocket dot org, he's talking about Eternal September 2.0. Baffled? Not as baffled as the people he reports on! "T... More About: Number
UK Information Commissioner hits Fax Spammers
2007-09-12 12:58:00 I picked up this story today. I'd love to be saying "Oh Joy, oh rapture" in a rather camp and Gilbert and Sullivan way, but I read the article fully."The Information Commissioner ’s Office (ICO) has ordered two debt recovery companies to stop sending unwanted faxes to individuals and businesses. This action has been brought under the Privacy and Electronic Communication Regulations (PECR) following hundreds of complaints from individuals and businesses to the ICO and the Fax Preference Service."Hundreds of complaints.What does it take to get this office to act?One complaint, one warning and one extra breach is enough.And the imbecilic Tories want to repeal the law! Come on, Cameron, get a grip on policy. And come on Thomas, get enforcing more often. More About: Hits , Spammers , Information Commissioner
"Who cares? Let's just spam them all!"
2007-09-05 23:55:00 "...the law is a ass — a idiot. If that's the eye of the law, the law is a bachelor; and the worst I wish the law is that his eye may be opened by experience — by experience." Thus saith Mr Bumble, the Beadle, in Oliver Twist. I've no idea at present which law Bumble was upset about, but I'm applying it to the UK's Data Protection Act 1998. You know, the one the estimable David Cameron wants to repeal because it's a 'burden on business'.Repealing the DPA is as lunatic as the Federation of Small Businesses supporting the corporate part of the Telephone Preference Service. It's ill conceived, ill argued and a total nonsense.So, let's repeal the Data Protection Act. Let's spam them all.Some stats for you. I have approximately ten email accounts. Each of those accounts gets between 20 and 300 spam emails per day. Some of the accounts are not even used, and they are published nowhere on the web. Even those accounts receive their fair share of unmitigated trash.In t... More About: Spam , Ares
Better Targeted Marketing
2007-08-29 00:52:00 Google has, at last, added adverts to the blog items. Now, let's be fair. An advert is very much a side issue for a blogger. People don't come here to click the adverts, they come here to read the blog.I mean that generically of course. After all, it would be a major conceit to think that people came here to read what I have to say! Ok, that's not true. I really do hope you come here to read what I have to say.Bloggers blog for many reasons. I do it to enhance my professional profile, and to meet new people. Sometimes I'm asked to write for other publications, sometimes it leads to a consultancy contract, and sometimes it's like the sound of one handed clapping.But, just sometimes, someone clicks an advert here. I confess that is a pleasant outcome in its way, but it does mean that they leave the blog page and end up on another site. I've long wondered why Google doesn't let people open the advertised site in a new window. That would meet the webmaster's needs and t... More About: Marketing
Carnival of the Mobilists, number 88
2007-08-27 18:33:00 Xellular Identity holds the latest "Carnival of the Mobilists", well worth a visit. I learn more than one new thing each time I follow the links More About: Number
Wisdom of Crowds or Academy of Fools?
2007-08-26 12:17:00 For perhaps eighteen months I have subscribed to the concept that experimenting with the Wisdom of Crowds is a worthwhile exercise. Yes, I am an editor from time to time on Wikipedia! I am thus part of this collective, consensus based wisdom.The great virtue of Wikipedia is that anyone may edit. You just do it. The next virtue is that any other editor may edit your work, nominate it for excellence, or nominate it for deletion. Thus we have the alleged wisdom of crowds.Critics will tell you that Wikipedia is unreliable and wave the unreliability as a banner to discredit it. Wikipedia itself recognises the possible unreliability and makes a virtue of it. As a work of reference it's a reasonable quick first port of call, but requires proper cited works to back any article up. That's good.But what an experience it can be to be part of the Wisdom of Crowds ! It is not a gentle place. It can be, though is not by design, hostile, abusive, even a place of cyberstalking.And it co... More About: Academy
"No Cold Calling" Zones
2007-08-22 00:27:00 The UK has just piloted 1,000 of these. And doorstep crime fell by an enormous amount. The BBC discussed it on the radio yesterday, and, while I forget the exact drop, it was substantial. Figures were bandied about that said that 97% of people do not want to be doorstepped by random sales people or other canvassers.I didn't care much one way or the other until last night. I'm old enough and ugly enough to amuse myself with incompetent idiots, and to allow them to waste their time with me. And yes, I ask for identification.Yesterday evening, so well timed after the BBC show, I had a call from a neighbour. "Tim, there's a very unpleasant door knocker heading your way. He's pulling bits off shrubs and doesn't take very kindly to being told that we weren't buying from him. We had to go out and check that he hadn't scratched the cars!" Fifteen minutes later he knocked.Now I don't know about you, but I can tell a lot about what I'm going to find by the way my knocker's ... More About: Cold , Calling , Cold calling , Zones
Eating my way through the Spam Mountain
2007-08-20 15:47:00 I've been away for a few days. When I got back I was faced with an unbelievable pile of spam. Somewhere in all that trash were some emails I probably ought to have cared about. But, when you face 3,071 emails, 99.999% of which are spam, you delete them all and pray the good ones get re-sent.I've had really bad experience with RBL filtering. Too many false positives make those things unworkable. Even big ISPs have been RBL blocklisted and found it hard to get delisted. But there had to be a solution. I get upwards of 250 spam emails per day, because I have several email addresses that are necessarily published on the web. I am, in many ways, my own ISP, and I needed to solve my spam problem.I am non technical, but my business partner is a whiz. First he deployed Spam assassin, just to see what it did. Well, "it" doesn't really do much, but but does flag mail pretty reliably as spam and leaves it to the email client to handle. I use Thunderbird as an IMAP client, and it ... More About: Mountain , Eating , Mount
Bluespam: Is it legal?
2007-08-20 15:35:00 This is hot off the presses from Renzo Marchini, counsel at Dechert LLP, and his colleague Kate Tebbut. Apart from this introduction, and the promise to forward any emails on the subject to Renzo and Kate, this is what they say:"Bluespam: Is it legal?" examines whether so called bluespam falls within the restrictions imposed by the Privacy and Electronic Communications Directive and whether organisations can therefore be prevented from marketing via bluetooth without first obtaining consent. It also considers the practicality of obtaining consent from bluetooth users and discusses the options for Bluetooth users who do not wish to receive bluespam.The paper is available as a pdf More About: Legal
Bluetooth, BlueSpam, BlueCasting trends
2007-08-17 18:10:00 I'm returning to my regular monitoring of terms to do with Spam and Bluetooth this month. With the mobile industry now providing better and better marketing techniques, and with the uptake of bluecasting, or proximity marketing, via your handset, I'm looking at the past 90 days and blog mentions of the terms, and I've added a few relevant terms.For comparison the mentions, all mentions, of the term Spam are included. I really do hope this excludes the canned meat!The graphs are presented together for you to draw your own conclusions. They are dynamic - they refresh whenever Technorati refreshes. They are the total of all blog posts recorded there with the terms and are thus likely to have statistical significance.Posts that contain Bluespam per day for the last 90 days.Posts that contain Bluecast per day for the last 90 days.Posts that contain "Proximity Marketing" per day for the last 90 days.Posts that contain Bluetooth per day for the last 90 days.Posts that contain "SMS Mark... More About: Trends
Back from vacation
More articles from this author:2007-08-17 11:48:00 The world has not changed, of course. I just wanted to let you know I was back, tidying up about 2,000 spam emails, and generally getting back to work.I had a lovely surprise in my inbox this morning. iMediaConnection have asked if they can pick up articles from the blog, and if I'll write for them from time to time. I got back to find this from their 6th August edition.That Google Recruitment email has certainly caused a stir wherever it's landed. It is genuine, there's no mistake there, and Brad is highly professional with his calls. It's just slightly odd and spammy. More About: Vacation , Back 1, 2 |
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