February 5, 2010
Blogs, Email Communications, Email Newsletters, Twitter, Website Strategy
3 Comments
We’re coming up for the Kent 2020 exhibition in April 2010 and it’s started …. the stream of emails and phone calls from companies trying to sell exhibitors their services. This could be printing, exhibition stand stuff, gimmicks, whatever.
Like local political party reps at election time, they come out of the woodwork expecting to gain business. To be frank, it’s insulting, opportunistic, and in today’s climate, just plain stupid.
The winners in business in the future will be those that create an ongoing, but non-invasive awareness of themselves. Does Custwin want to buy new exhibition popups etc. for Kent 2020 this year? No. Would we need to next year? Possibly. Would we be adverse to getting a blog feed, Tweets, or an occasional email newsletter from companies who supply such products, over the months? No, we wouldn’t be adverse. In fact, it would help to build up trust, it may even lead to us meeting the suppliers at some point, and it’s got a much stronger potential to turn into business for the suppliers at some stage.
Taking another subject, a company was pitching chocolate fountain hire for the Kent 2020 exhibition. As a cold introduction to 100 people it’s possible that very few may respond. But as a warm drip feed over a longer period of time, the percentage of buyers will increase. HOW that drip feed is implemented is a subject all of its own but it’s not rocket science.
The focus here happens to be on an upcoming business exhibition but the principle applies for any type of business that wants to gain new clients, particularly at times of the year when those potential buyers are more likely to need such services.
Those businesses that don’t embrace the concept of drip feeding their message into potential clients will soon find themselves losing out to their competitors who understand what makes potential clients tick.
April 10, 2009
Email Communications
2 Comments
This week I saw evidence that either:
a) I’d turned gay;
or …
b) Companies shouldn’t rely too heavily on the basic data supplied to them but should look at the human side of things.
Thankfully (for my fiancee) it turned out to be the latter …
I’d planned a surprise engagement couple of days away (including hotel) and needed to book flowers to be delivered to our hotel room for our arrival. Found a company called Arenaflowers.com and the process went like this:
- Made the bespoke request online (I wanted something specific).
- Got the price and paid. Made it clear that the hotel booking was in my name but supplied details to go on a card with the flowers (for my soon-to-be fiancee). The idea was that the flowers got delivered, the hotel knew they were for my room and they’d be there with the card on arrival.
- On the day I got a text saying they’d been delivered – a nice touch.
- Sure enough, the flowers were in the room on arrival but alas, the card greeting wasn’t with it. Still, not a big deal.
- One happy fiancee.
Got back home and found the email from Arena Flowers which said:
Dear Andy,
Your order was delivered to Andy Harris at Ettington Park Hotel at 8 April 09 @ 9.01. We hope that Andy Harris enjoyed the flowers (and has said thank you!).
!!!!
So it was an email TO me, hoping that I had enjoyed the flowers (or some other man). You can see how this happened because all the details entered into their system would have been related to me and because the hotel was booked in my name, that’s the name that was assumed to be the recipient of the flowers. Various fields of data entered to their database but without considering the real story that was right under their nose because I’d also included in my email to them who the flowers were actually for, including the details that were supposed to go on a card with the flowers.
If they’d thought a little bit more about the depth of the order instead of making assumptions that everyone orders flowers that are directly for the recipient by name as per the order details, then I wouldn’t have a daft looking email in my inbox and wouldn’t have this tale to tell.
However, apart from that mistake and the absence of the message card I’d still probably use them again because the flowers were lovely and were on time, which, at the end of the day, was all that mattered!
