Subject: Seize Those Touchpoints

From: Chief Marketer <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 11 Jan 2005 10:50:04 -0600

January 11, 2005 | A PRIMEDIA Property |

Table of Contents
Branding: Seize Those Touchpoints
Search Marketing: Shopping Around the Comparison Shopping Sites
Sampling: First Class All the Way
Direct Marketing: Winter Cleaning
E-Commerce: A Matter of Trust

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This Week's Stories
Branding: Seize Those Touchpoints

DIRECT
Every customer interaction is a chance to enrich the brand. James Vander Putten, senior vice president of Newtown, PA-based ICT Database Marketing Services, and ICT chief information office Pam Goyke, have outlined seven steps to help transform calls from a mere cost of doing business to a branding opportunity. Among them:

Step 1. Recognize core brand values and take-away statements.

Step 2. Align those values with contact center metrics that can be calibrated through systematic tracking and traditional consumer research.

Step 3. Create a new training curriculum that goes beyond competence and courtesy and includes the presentation of brand attitude as defined in core value statements.

To read more, visit DIRECT.

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Search Marketing: Shopping Around the Comparison Shopping Sites
By Heather Retzlaff
CATALOG AGE
Every marketer worth his salt knows the importance of search engine marketing. But many are still unsure as to the value of appearing on comparison shopping sites. Comparison shopping engines can help you boost sales and acquire customers -- provided your company's product is a top contender among the search results. And that doesn't mean your company has to offer the lowest prices for the merchandise featured.

Unlike a general search engine such as Google, AltaVista, or Yahoo!, where visitors search for relevant information on a vast array of subjects, comparison shopping engines allow shoppers to research the price and details of specific products. If the customer finds an item at a desirable price, the shopping site will redirect him to the merchant's site to make the purchase. All comparison sites are not created equal, though. Each engine uses its own particular algorithm for ranking and displaying search results. Each also has different criteria and charges for participating merchants.

One of the beauties of comparison search engines is their testability. Alan Rimm-Kaufman, founder of Charlottesville, VA-based e-marketing consultancy Rimm-Kaufman Group, advises testing the various comparison shopping sites as well as the products that work best on those sites before making a commitment. Some sites specialize in particular product categories; what's more, not all the sites attract the same type of shopper.

To read more about making the most of comparison shopping sites, visit CATALOG AGE.

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Sampling: First Class All the Way
By Amy Johannes
PROMO XTRA
First-class passengers on select Continental Airlines flights can soon carry that "first class" feeling with them, thanks to a new deal between Premier Bags and the airline to distribute free luxury gift bags to customers.

Starting Feb. 1., Premier Bags, a New York-based product placement company, will distribute small gift bags containing top fragrances, books, cosmetics, and skincare products to first-class customers departing from Newark, NJ -- Continental Airlines' largest hub -- to Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Diego, and Seattle.

Premier Bags selected first-class passengers as its target market with a belief that these consumers would make future purchases of its clients' products, says Premier Bags CEO Laine Lipsky. The program gives Continental customers the "royal treatment" and gives the airline a boost among first-class travelers who travel cross-country routes, she adds.

To read more about the sampling program, visit PROMO.

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Direct Marketing: Winter Cleaning
DIRECT TIPS
The start of the new year is a good time to put your direct marketing efforts on a strict regimen of data hygiene. By some estimates, up to 30% of those customer names, addresses, phone numbers, and e-mail addresses you've been compiling may have gone dark in the past 12 months. It's time to shed that flabby data and slim down to competitive weight.

Of course, using improperly groomed names can be a waste of money--you don't want to send direct mail to an old customer address that is now a vacant lot, for instance. Old customer information can also take a toll on the reputation of your enterprise. Starting this month, businesses engaging in telemarketing are supposed to hold their lists up against the national Do Not Call registry on a monthly basis rather than quarterly. And getting too many bouncebacks from old addresses in an e-mail campaign may get you flagged by service providers as a possible spammer -- making further e-mailing difficult at best.

The best policy is a periodic database check-up to make sure your lists are up-to-date and optimized for marketing purposes. To get a better picture of how that should be done, DirectTips asked some of the experts at InfoUSA. To read their suggestions, visit DIRECT.

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E-Commerce: A Matter of Trust
The average consumer doesn't mind when marketers use his personal data to tailor offers and ads--except when he does mind. Got that?

According to a new study of 1,799 Internet users by e-marketing services provider Dotomi and the Ponemon Institute, 89% of consumers "would let a trusted marketer share their personal interests with a third party without permission, in order to increase the quality of services and products produced." But only 20% would let the marketer "share information to track their buying behavior to influence future purchasing decisions."

As for what constitutes a "trusted marketer," 64% of respondents said they would trust a marketer more if the company gave them more control over the types of online communications sent to them. Eighty-four percent of respondents said outright that they want more control over the types and frequency of Internet ads sent by advertisers.

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