MarketingSherpa Blog

comScore just released figures on eretail sales recovery over the past weeks since September 11th. I’d love to give you a link to it because there are some fascinating numbers, but they haven’t gotten around to posting the release at their site yet, and it wasn’t picked up on Yahoo either. (A good argument for making sure your PR dept has an easy-to-use content management system for your site.)

Some basic factoids from the report which studied 1.5 million Internet users:

-“Essential” products, such as apparel, health and beauty sales rebounded more quickly online than “nonessential” products such as books which only made it up to pre-event levels as of this week. (Ok I beg to differ over what’s essential and what’s not.)

– Travel which in “normal” times represents $411 millions in sales per week, is still 17% below projections. Interestingly, it actually rebounded to just 11% below average two weeks ago, and now is dipping again. Do you think it’s anthrax related? Anyway the pre-Thanksgiving bump has yet to show.

– Non-travel items, which in “normal” times represents $589 millions in sales per week according to comScore, has leveled off to $588 millions, representing no change. However, the total these eretailers should have made from Sept 10-Oct 14 was $2,945 millions… but due to the attacks, they only made $2,660 millions representing a loss of $285 millions, or about 3-4 days total business.

That last number makes me realize how much we stand to lose if the rumors now circulating the Web on news sites such as Media Life Magazine that a massive hacker attack, that could pull the Web down for a period of time, is imminent. On a lighter note, I also wonder how many sales will be lost as people email each other about rumors of a possible hacker attack, instead of shopping as they should be.

Today a reader contacted me to complain about a company whose Web site claims it can help you make a lot of money online. The Sherpa reader said he had contracted that company to help him with marketing… and then when he found the company’s services were not useful for his purposes, he cancelled his account. And was socked with a $700.00 “cancellation fee.”

I’m not going to mention the company or reader name here because fellow-journalists have warned me this company is “law-suit happy” and it’s a time and money suck to fight stuff, even when you’re clearly in the right.

However, I’d like to take this chance to warn all of you — please check out folk’s credentials outside of their sites before you buy expensive marketing-related services and tech online! Ask around on email discussion groups such as i-advertising.com or adventive.com’s groups. Check out folks with both Internet ScamBusters and the Better Business Bureau. There are a lot of too-good-to-be-true creeps out there trying to suck the money from your budget without providing value.

Normally I don’t run mentions of vendor or agency Webinars because they are too often thinly disguised sales pitches (you know, the kind with the phrase “our value proposition” tossed in.) However today I’m breaking my rule because Russell Kern, of Kern Direct, is doing a free Webinar on online B2B sales lead generation marketing on November 15th. I really respect Kern, and quite enjoyed his recently released book on the topic. So, if you are a B2B marketer doing sales lead gen, you may want to register for this freebie at http://www.regsvc.com/kerndirect/default.asp?QQ1=PR.

One last thing, if you’re planning on doing a marketing campaign with a butt-ugly hotlink URL (like the one above) you might want to ask your Webmaster to make a prettier ghost URL for you that people can type in easily that automatically shunts them along to the right place. I use cheap URL generating software from Prolinkz to make mine….

(P.S. Just in case you were wondering, neither of the above was a paid endorsement. Although the charity of my choice does have high hopes come Christmas.)

Opt-in versus opt-out. I’ve had people in the traditional direct mail world tell me I’m a bit too much of a “opt-in fanatic.” “Stop harping on it,” they say, “You have to be opt-out to make real money these days. You’re just a purist with her head in the clouds.” Well, three recent news items have brought the opt-in vs opt-out debate to the forefront again … and it looks like consumers are on ‘my’ side, even if many traditional direct marketers are not:

1. A newly released Forrester report reveals that unless email marketing evolves to a purely opt-in, permission-based, process the emarketing industry as a whole could “fade away” because consumers are so fed up with receiving unwanted email, even from companies they know and trust.

2. Proving Forrester’s research results are not freakish, a newly released Meta Group research report also says pretty much the same darn thing. According to an eCommerceTimes story on this report, “online customers are raising the bar for what constitutes ‘world class’ permission marketing, limiting the number of companies with which they wish to have an online relationship to between 10 and 20…. [companies should focus on the] elevation of permission e-mail management into an enterprise-wide issue.”

3. The UK’s NetImperative emarketing news site just reported that European Union privacy committee members may allow each country to set their own rules about what’s legal in gathering and using email addresses. Countries, such as the UK, with strong direct marketing lobbies, are leaning toward opt-out even though it could be detrimental to business in the long run. The article says, “Opt-in campaigner and UK country manager of email marketing firm L-Soft, Rachel Kittridge, said the news represented a blow to the e-marketing industry’s future credibility. ‘The ruling could be the difference between a bright future for e-mail as a marketing tool, or a tale of what could have been.’“

We were spammed not once, but twice today, by a marketer named Darleen Calonge who works for BidBaySearch.com. I know it’s spam because she sent the exact same identical, personal-sounding, letter to every single email address that is posted on our site — emails to editors, marketing, ad sales, subscriber services, you name it. Now, every day all these addresses are inundated with offers for cheap viagra, home loans, photos of naked girls, millions of dollars from Nigeria, and on one notable occasion last week, some exceptionally plush-looking coffins made in Columbia. Just like you, we usually click ‘delete’ and go on with our lives.

However, getting spam from a marketer who really should know better (a marketer who’s marketing Internet marketing services to marketers!) is an unhappy occasion. Uncool Darleen, uncool!

This afternoon my neighborhood post office, along with most other post offices in DC, along with some in nearby Virginia, closed early. They don’t know if they’ll be open tomorrow. Much of the mail received yesterday has not left the DC area either. This is apparently due to the anthrax problem.

I’m very lucky in that my company receives 99% of our orders online. We also ship most products out of other locations. Other DC-based organizations are not so lucky, especially those engaged in the fall fund-raising drives (there are a lot of not-for-profits in this area.)

While Internet bugs are annoying to say the least, so far to my knowledge they’ve never killed anybody. Now postal mail is more dangerous than email attachments. It’s a sad and weird world to say the least.

A quick run-down of smart (and dumb) things I’ve noted in the emailed confirmations from all the online stores I’ve been buying my new, mainly-fleece, Winter wardrobe from:
1. JCPenney.com – ouch. Confirmation email subject line says, “JCPenney.com Invoice H454-22498, Order 2001293 11 0098536” Invoice??? I thought you only got an invoice when you owed money. And, how weird is it to start a new customer relationship by referring to your customer as a long nasty-looking number? The text email itself is actually an invoice! No welcome, no salutation. There is a “thank you for shopping with us”, but it’s near the bottom jammed in with other official data and feels like an afterthought. I also think it’s a bit strange that they put my own phone number at the very top of the email — as in why would you remind me that I gave such personal info to a what appears to be a soulless machine?

2. EddieBauer.com – very nice. Email subject line says, “eddiebauer.com order confirmation”. And there’s a clever little note: Are you getting our free e-mail newsletter? You can receive a periodic “heads up” e-mail with the latest word about new products, online overstocks specials, plus all the news from Dodgeville and environs. Visit our sign-up page and subscribe today! http://www.landsend.com/newsletter”

Again, they shouldn’t have to ask if I am opted in or not. And, um, I never heard of “Dodgeville” before although I’ve been a customer for ages. But all in all, a smart thing to do.

Have you received any great — or lame — confirmation emails when shopping online? Tell me about them at AHolland@MarketingSherpa.com!

Yesterday a Sherpa reader suggested, “Why don’t you try JC Penney for cords?” so I dutifully went trundling over there. OK first thing: as a tall woman it’s way fun to have my own section immediately (as opposed to sites such as Target or J Jill where I have to click on each item I like to see if it’s also in tall, and am far too frequently disappointed.)

But then I gotta say I was stunned almost senseless by stupidity.

What really bothered me was Penney’s PITIFUL eretail store graphic of handbag online shoppers have to click on to add choices to their cart. There were several times (especially when Penney’s site taunted me with their exceptionally warm black chenille cardigan) that I thought, damn the budget – let’s order this puppy! And then I couldn’t figure out how to. I clicked on obvious stuff — colors, photos, descriptions — until finally by process of elimination I figured out that the JC Penney site needed me to click on a really lame graphic of a handbag, sitting almost randomly at the bottom center of the page, to actually order online. Then it took a lot more random clicking to figure out how to check out.

This should NOT be this hard. (In fact it should be blindingly obvious to even really stupid people.)

I’m sorry — being a big huge fan of eretail – but I should not have to think so hard, to work at figuring out your system, to buy a pair of jeans online (among other things). If JC Penney is, as independent measurements show, one of the top top eretail sites in the US for this Holiday season, how much better would sales be if site design made ordering even remotely intuitive???

Prospects and customers who interact with you via email are more likely to become accounts with a higher lifetime value (assuming you handle your reply email quickly and warmly) because people prefer to buy from companies and people they have a perceived relationship with. If you’re not measuring the value of a name that’s received personal emailed interaction from you or your customer service department, versus other accounts, you probably should be. At the very least the results may help you with your pitch to the CEO to invest more in aneCRM tech that can help customer service answer incoming email better!

But just like asking for the order, you also have to ask for the email. It’s not enough to simply stick your email address on the “contact us” page of your site.

This point was brought home to me today when I visited proud parent Bryan Eisenberg’s Web site for his infant daughter. Instead of just sticking an email address at the bottom of the page, he put a clickable “Email me please!” under his daughter’s picture. I had to sit on my hand to keep from clicking on it. Very clever idea that could be used in more commercial sites.

Do you work for a nonprofit or not-for-profit organization? There’s a new email newsletter that specifically addresses what you need to know about Internet outreach, effective Web design and even fundraising online. I’m personally recommending it because I know the editor, Tanya Renne is great at writing the kind of stuff that’s really hands-on useful.

No opinions or newsy news. She just brings how-to tips to make association and non-profit execs jobs easier.

You can subscribe for free at DotOrgAdvisor