Add global compliance and cultural custom to the list of why email preference centers are really hard to sell internally and build well. I had a meeting this morning where we started to list out all the different country and local laws governing choices across various brand service agreements, and it quickly became overwhelming. It was no help that the database guy kept saying, "That'll cost you more."
This is a guest post by Eric Zeitoun, president of Dragon Rouge USA, a leading independent brand and design consultancy.
While we struggle to emerge from a full-blown recession, marketers know all too well that advertising and (unfortunately) innovation are the first budgets that are most likely to get cut. So how can marketers continue to innovate?
What's all this outrage for North Carolina school principal, Susie Shepherd, for supporting her parent advisory council's innovative use of marketing incentives? Who are we kidding? I used to teach, so I know how some schools operate like they're in the third world, without proper books and resources. This school was just looking for creative ways to raise much-needed money.
Indications are that Apple--long admired for setting the bar high when it comes to beautifully-designed, innovative, game-changing consumer products--may be facing some stiff competition. According to Forrester Research analyst James McQuivey: “Apple is under threat on the brand front in a way they haven’t been in recent years.”
Did use an abacus or slide rule to build your FY'10 budgets?
To prepare and distribute information about next year's Marketing Plan did you use a typewriter and make a duplicate with a layer of ink paper?
Or did you hand crank copies on a Ditto (or Verifax) machine?
In my most recent Daily Fix post I made the boast that social media works for small business and that I had proof. Delivering on my promise to provide such evidence, here's the first of a series.
Charged with finding new markets for growth, many Western marketers are eyeing China’s rising middle class and terrific GDP numbers. And while getting Western products and services into the Chinese market is hard enough, the ability to compete and thrive in China takes mastery of specific skills and processes. Success also involves a drastic change in mindset.
The central question of any marketing opportunity is, "What motivates customers to buy?" This is just as true in email as any other channel. How do we know if two or blue or Tuesday or 15% will generate more response and revenue? The answer is simple: Test it.
Three people are dead and nearly two dozen hospitalized after participating in a sweat-lodge ceremony billed to help people "find a new vision for life." Behind the controversy and criminal investigation is James Arthur Ray, a self-help guru I saw in action at one of his free seminars in Phoenix, six months prior to the Sedona tragedy.
According to a recent article in USA Today, “simple” will mean to consumers in 2010 what “cheap” means in 2009. In fact, the move to simplify is already underway, because “Simple is better,” as stated in the first line of the article: “Marketers such as Starbucks discover that simple sells.”
