First sleep and second sleep – the good old days?

I got 7 ½ hours last night and almost always get from 7-8 hours of sleep nightly. I have been thinking about how people sleep today versus throughout human history. Full disclosure – one of our clients Tempur-Pedic is a highly successful manufacturer of mattresses but they know nothing (and are not the least bit concerned) of my blog posts.

What got me thinking about the history of sleep was something I read not long ago about Ben Franklin and sleeping during the time of the American Revolution. Apparently there was a ‘first sleep’ and ‘second sleep’. Such that people would get up after sleeping for several hours in the middle of the night and be awake for some period of time prior to going back to sleep after sleep halftime.

From Wikipedia – Segmented sleep, divided sleep, bimodal sleep pattern and interrupted sleep are modern Western terms for a polyphasic or biphasic sleep pattern found in medieval and early modern Europe and many non-industrialized societies today, where the night’s sleep is divided by one or more periods of wakefulness. This is particularly common in the winter. Maybe they were talking about NFL coaches who seemingly sleep in their offices in season.

Because members of modern industrialized societies, with late hours facilitated by electric lighting, no longer have this sleep pattern, they may misinterpret and mistranslate references to it in literature. Common interpretations of the term ‘first sleep’ are ‘beauty sleep’ and ‘early slumber’. A reference to first sleep in the Odyssey was translated as such in the 17th century, but universally mistranslated in the 20th.

Far be it for me to get into things like REM (Rapid Eye Movement), Circadian rhythms, and dreams (I will leave that to Aristotle and Freud), but it is interesting to me that in all of human history only over the last 200 years (gas lighting came into practice in 1807) or so have humans sleep habits dramatically changed. It seems to me that many people do not value sleep as much as they should. The health benefits of a good night’s sleep are fairly well documented. It also helps make people less cranky (maybe President Obama should mandate sleep for Congress as they seem particularly cranky although it might be due to them getting too much sleep in House and Senate sessions).

But the notion of a true ‘first sleep’ with an ‘awake’ period in between and a ‘second sleep’ is foreign to me and, I would imagine, most people. I wonder how Attila the Hun and Genghis Khan ‘slept’. Did they get their 8 hours? Rampaging and pillages is very tiring after all. Maybe it is that since there was so much less to do at night before the advent of electricity, sleep was valued more as a pastime? After all, until recently people did not have Facebook to keep them up at night.

How about you – do you have a nightly targeted sleep amount? And are you cranky when you don’t get it?

Catalog hunter – Shopping for the holidays will be different this year

Noticed the traffic in your postal mailbox (isn’t it ironic it needs to be designated that way now?) lately? Or better, the lack of traffic? It’s no secret that mailers have cut back dramatically on promotional mailings.
According to Mintel in the first quarter of 2009, credit-card issuers cut solicitations in half, reducing mail volume 49% vs. Q408. The research company estimates that US card issuers sent fewer than 500 million offers in Q109, the lowest quarterly total recorded since 2000.

Though credit is being cut back, the data shows that the number of debit card mail offers nearly doubled from Q408 to Q109, while checking account solicitations grew by 29%.

But that’s merely on part of the story. The days of doing the heavy lifting of holiday catalogs in your home also appear to be over. Even though I watch and keep close tabs on the industry I still am shocked at how few catalogs we receive at home. And we (ok maybe my wife and daughter) have a history of buying via catalogs.

Marketing strategists interested in reducing expenditures have seemingly won out here, convincing many traditional catalogers to not mail at all or substantially reduce the volume and page counts of their catalog mailings. While this can make the bottom line look better in the short term in the long term this tactic will likely backfire and in a big way. Catalogs drive online sales. And retail sales. As much progress as has been made in tracking the ability to track online and retail sales driven from the receipt of a catalog or mailing still leaves a lot to be desired.

And what of the relationship (companies love to think they have relationships with their customers) with customers? Sure customers and prospects can be sent emails (provided they have given their permission) but the customer ‘experience’ is vastly different to that of receiving a physical catalog.

Customers will forget about companies that do not mail any more. Out of sight, out of mind has not changed even in a wobbly economy. Better tracking or catalog recipients will aid in offering an understanding of exactly how the customer wants to engage with a brand. If cross channel data cannot be tied together, then it’s possible, even likely, the wrong conclusion can be reached.

I’m not advocating wantonly sending catalogs the way it was done five or even ten years ago. But the drastic reduction in this channel offers great opportunity for a smart marketer to gain share of voice and more importantly increased sales, better relationships with customers and conduits to new customers.
I enjoy receiving and flipping through a nice catalog that contains things in which I am interested. Don’t you?

A value proposition – the big supermarket vs. your local grocery

In my small town we have two food/multi-purpose markets in the town center. One is a nationally recognized chain owned by a large public company. The other is a local grocery called the Village market that has been in existence for more than 70 years. Both offer different value propositions and I shop at both for different reasons.

When it comes to pricing the big box supermarket cannot be beaten. So for basic staples the big box is where I do my shopping. The clerks are quite pleasant, the store is clean and bright and there are many choices. But for things like fresh produce, a butcher that grinds meat on the premises, (unlike the supermarket), and overall higher quality ingredients, we go to the local grocery. The people there are even more pleasant and they go out of their way to pack your bags and even help take them to the car if that’s what you need. They have a better salad bar, better fresh soups and their selection of fish is also better than the supermarket.

And to no one’s surprise the local grocery is of course more expensive than the supermarket, at times substantially so. It is bothersome since to get the best deal and the best quality products, you actually need to go to two markets that are well within walking distance of one another (almost nobody ever actually does this however). The parking lot is much easier to navigate at the local grocery although it does tend to get quite full (it is solely dedicated to the grocery), whereas the supermarket has a vast parking lot that is seemingly never full since it shares space with a number of stores.

The owner of the grocery is quite visible in town, donating food to many causes and helping out residents in a number of ways. And while I am certain that the grocery is quite a profitable enterprise I don’t begrudge its success since it continually delivers on the promise of ‘being large enough to have what you want – small enough to get to know you.’

I don’t know what would be the ‘promise’ of the large supermarket, other than we have a lot of stuff and we are low-priced and we have cool scanning so you can check yourself out.

But what I am most happy about is that we actually have a choice and they are so dramatically different. I like having choices don’t you? – Especially when the choices are so easy to contrast and compare.

The fire went out on my Amazon Kindle – and I’m NOT happy!

As an early adopter (November 2007) of the Kindle I have been a rather ardent fan of what could now be considered the forerunner of e-readers. I recently downloaded several titles that I wanted to read. I opened my Kindle the other night to see some odd horizontal lines across the entire screen yet the device was in the off position. After charging and recharging with no change in the display it was obvious that the flame had gone out on my Kindle.

Out of warranty (this one was more than a year old) apparently I am out of luck. So now I have several titles in my account that I cannot view unless I purchase a new Kindle or I guess return my Kindle to Amazon (at my cost) and hope that they can somehow repair it for less than the cost of the now reduced price of $ 259. I paid $ 399 for mine and it does thrill me that not once did Amazon offer me some sort of discount on purchasing the latest version which apparently is superior to the one that I have. Of course mine now does not work at all so a book with no printing is on a par.

A little history – the first one I received did not work and I had to send it back. Amazon had me check a bunch of things prior to agreeing to replace it which they did with no questions asked. Then I had another one which after several months also went dead. Again through the checklist that Amazon has you do on the phone (a half hour or so) with their tech person before they assented to my sending it back for yet a third which I received and has been working fine for more than a year.

I have been (and remain) a fan of Amazon in general. Jeff Bezos is a smart guy and has defied his critics in managing a company that has a stellar reputation for customer service and intuitive product offerings. But I really don’t understand the idea of not offering a replacement for a broken Kindle ANY TIME a customer asks. After all aren’t I going to use that platform to purchase e-books for the foreseeable future? And I buy a fair amount of books. I can ‘return’ those titles that I downloaded but have not read for some sort of rebate but that really does not solve my problem. I love e-readers (as well as traditional books) and think they will only get better (how about color folks and a back-lighted screen option?).

So now I have to reconsider my entire relationship with Amazon’s Kindle. Maybe the Sony Reader, or the new device from Plastic Logic, or maybe even the new Barnes & Noble device. What a shame, the Kindle had me at hello.

Direct marketing shouting should end with the passing of Billy Mays

Yell loud enough and people will hear you. That premise has enveloped television direct response ads for many years. Billy Mays was a prime example of an affable yeller. At the recent Direct Marketing Association conference I came away with a sense that maybe, just maybe the days of shouting out a promotional message are coming to an end. I hope that is the case.

Today’s consumer has many ‘channel choices’ when it comes to information. While there remain a substantial number of people that actually watch infomercials, (c’mon you know who you are) Gen Y’ers and Millennials look at infomercials with bemusement and at times with condescension. Those groups are the future of commerce. The real question is will people still respond to being shouted at?

Audience relevancy, offer, and interesting creative continue to rule the day when it comes to direct marketing and as far as I am concerned MARKETING in general. I can safely opine that this will not change. But in a world where the laws of attraction have taken hold in the advertising world is there still room for shouting out the message in order to be heard?

Today more than ever consumers need to be drawn to a brand and its message. We all talk about higher levels customer engagement, about creating a better and more enjoyable (even fun) customer experience. Personally when I am shouted at I shut down and really don’t hear the message.

Billy Mays was phenomenally successful and a true marketing legend. Here’s hoping that with his passing we see the beginning of the end of the shouting of advertising messages. We all deserve much better. Don’t you think so?

.Mobi websites are a must have for 2010

In a report, titled “Mobile Devices Market Sizing and Share,” market research firm ABI says that more than 171 million smart phones were shipped in 2008 compared to 116 million shipped in 2007. The report says that smart phones accounted for 14 percent of all cell phones shipped in 2008. ABI noted that the sales are expected to grow 18% to 203 million 2009 as operators seek to sell lure users with aggressive strategies. Strategy Analytics estimates that smart phone shipments will total 177.2 million in 2009. Juniper Research forecasts that annual sales of smart phones will rise by some 95 percent to more than 300 million between now and 2013. The report says that by 2013 at least 23 percent of all new mobile phones will actually be smart phones.

OK so we all get it – smart phones are the future – and actually the present. But how many times have you tried to access a site on your smart phone and waited, and waited and waited for the pages to load? This is because the site you are accessing is not optimized for viewing on a mobile device.

100% of .mobi sites must be optimized for viewing on a mobile phone, the main advantage of .mobi, from the users’ perspective, is that they are theoretically guaranteed a site optimized for usage on the go. This means the website can be optimized for hard factors such as smaller screens, device form/size, device input/output options, existence of embedded sensors (acceleration, location, touch, etc.), as well as soft factors such as expectations of immediacy of results, context awareness under a shortened attention span (compared to home use of the Internet). Although a .com or any other extension can technically employ the same optimizations for mobile phones as .mobi sites, in practice, only a fraction of them are, thus necessitating content adaptation solutions.

3G transmission speeds are pretty fast, but nowhere near what people have become accustomed to when we use super fast 100MPS+ connections via cable or fiber optic networks. Personally when I have to wait more than, oh let’s say 2 seconds for a page to load I begin to get impatient and even a bit annoyed. (I bet I am far from alone here). .Mobi sites address this far better than any increase in transmission speed can – at this point. It won’t be long before smart phone transmission speed rivals that of cable and fiber optic wired connections –of course for me that day cannot come soon enough.

People will have to become more familiar with going to the .mobi sites but many sites when accessed on a smart phone give the option to go to a mobile version that is optimized. The experience and interfaces are so much better – check it out for yourself and let me know what you think.

Direct Marketing Association thoughts – is it still relevant?

As I sit in the San Diego Airport waiting to go home I have just spent three nice days in one of America’s nicest cities. I have attended my 22nd DMA conference. This membership organization that began as the Direct Mail Association became the Direct Mail Marketing Association (DMMA) then and now the DMA.
Like many associations the industry conferences is the primary revenue source. After years of growth in attendance, vendor participation and offerings, the 2008 DMA saw a significant drop in all three areas. It took place in Las Vegas 2 months after the financial crisis ensued. In additional the DMA reduced its staff substantially and I still feel bad for former DMA employees I know for a long time who’ve yet to find new jobs.

My thoughts as I headed out to San Diego centered a testy proxy fight between a DMA board members and the DMA board itself. Many of our clients and my colleagues decided not to attend this year for various reasons, expense being the primary reason given. I think that those folks should regret their decision not to attend.

The DMA still has its feet firmly implanted in direct mail and old habits die hard. But the leadership of the DMA has recognized the move to new marketing channels and has made strides in making information and learning on new marketing channel a focus. The proxy fight was settled and I for one was happy with the points brought up and the resolution. The DMA is an organization that can well use some pot stirring. And the exhibit hall while a nice place to see old friends and associates but walking around the floor makes me feel like I am caught in my own ground-hog day moment. It’s not working and feels outdated.

We direct marketing folks like to cite the measurability of the direct marketing process. We are even a bit smug about it. For what reason I do not know as the rest of the advertising world has always considered direct marketers red-headed stepchildren as long as I have been involved. But I did hear a lot of honest talk (particularly at the DMA Global Leaders Forum held on Monday) questioning if direct marketers are measuring the right things when it comes to web analytics and e-commerce in general.

It’s fine to have all these cool tools but if the wrong things are being measured or the measurements are not indicative of what is really happening we are drinking our own Kool-Aid. I think it is great that these kinds of questions are asked and answered – or at least they are trying to be answered.

I read Ad Age, Adweek, DM News, and occasionally Brandweek, and more and more the stories are similar. All marketers and marketing agencies direct and otherwise are trying to do the same things for their clients –help acquire and retain more customers. The marketing world has been turned on its head in the past nearly two years. Lower marketing budgets, higher accountability and demand for better ROI have changed the landscape for ever more. I am more optimistic that the DMA is heading on the right path and can and will remain a relevant organization.

The trouble with email opt-outs – they are killing what’s left of email marketing

We had an employee recently depart our company and agreed to forward emails to the employee’s personal email for 6 weeks. After 6 weeks the emails were then redirected to an address back at our company. I was assured by the former employee that the individual had opted out of newsletters and sea of emails they received on a daily basis (many, many emails), yet the deluge continued.

So I opted out on the employee’s behalf. That stemmed some of the tide but far from all of it. What began as a desire to simply stop the madness ended being a study in deception. I have come to realize that despite best practices being an easy email opt-out (most of the companies did have this procedure) there were a good number of companies that did not have an easy opt-out, and even more that ignored the opt-out request by continuing to send daily emails even after an acknowledgment was sent saying ‘sorry to see you go’. Those companies are not only breaking the law, they are taking down the medium day by day.

Our company supports email marketing to current customers as well as those would-be customers that have opted in to receive more information. We rarely use email as a customer acquisition tool. And for the Generation Y folks and Millennials email is a passé form of communication. It is seen as an irrelevant communication tool and my recent experience only goes to support that notion. And ask for an email address from someone and you are 6 times more likely to get it than to get access to their Facebook account. Pretty easy to see which is the more relevant communication.

What possible benefit could a charity, marketer, or anyone for that matter gain from continuing to send out emails to those that do not wish to receive them? Aggravating them? An unusual marketing tactic to be sure but I am hard pressed to think of any other reasons other than dishonesty, laziness or plain stupidity.

Email opt out should be obvious, easy and immediate. Those that are not doing so are just killing it for the rest of us.

Power Reviews are flying high

We have a fairly small company (www.YourCover.com) that has recently signed up for Power Reviews (www.powerreviews.com). The team brought this idea to me and I got very excited thinking that since we receive such positive customer feedback we are bound to benefit from being a part of Power Reviews.

In today’s (10/12/09) Wall Street Journal Geoffrey A. Fowler’s interesting article on the Business Solutions notes (http://bit.ly/3tUjbx) that Drugstore.com and Diapers.com both feel they are better connecting their brand to consumers by using Power Reviews. The article also talked about creating ‘verified buyers’ who would have badges next to their reviews in order to add authenticity to their reports.

Amazon.com was the pioneer here but now product reviews are ubiquitous. Last week I noticed another article citing that reviewers in general are overwhelmingly positive – 4.3 out of 5 ‘stars’ is the average rating. But the article also went on and noted that one particular reviewer was going the other way and not throwing around platitudes of positivity when it came to different products he encountered. And that the trend was that reviewers would become harsher as time goes on. So it could be said that these are the salad days for product reviews.

Are product reviews a component of social networking? I say yes. Is there a risk in having negative reviews posted about your product? Absolutely. But there is even greater risk is an attempt to steer or manipulate the conversation. Not everyone will love your product and while deep down we all know that it is quite another thing to have someone publicly slam your product for all to see.

What we hope to learn from (hopefully) YourCover.com having an active Power Review flow is how we can make the product and service better for our present and future customers. Not every review will be positive – nor should it be if the conversation is truly genuine. Of course we hope and expect that most of the comments will be positive, (hey we’re not masochists here), and that we are able to learn from what people think about their experience with our site and products.

I suspect for companies using Power Reviews that there will be bogus reviews – both on the positive and negative side. This is why there are recommendations to tie reviewer’s comments to their Facebook, MySpace, or LinkedIn page. Then there would be background on the reviewer such that you will ‘know’ them better. After all then you are getting a recommendation from a known and ‘trusted’ resource.

The question I have is – why should these folks be trusted?

Facebook fan pages – who are they serving?

I sat through a 3+ hour presentation last week by a noted social media ‘expert’. He had much to offer and kept the presentation moving and also took time to answer questions along the way which I always like to see. However despite the fact that he had spoken to groups like ours a number of times the presentation did not resonate as much as it could have because he did not do his homework on the audience. Our group is a diverse group of executives that run companies of varying sizes and distinctly different focuses.
When the conversation turned to Facebook fan pages it was his opinion that ALL companies should have a Facebook fan page. It was all I could do to not jump and say – WHY? WHAT FOR? For instance my company is a direct and digital marketing agency. Why would somebody ever want to be a fan of my company?

Furthermore the strategy was to contact people in my Facebook friends and ask them to be a ‘fan’ of my company. Since I use Facebook as a place to keep up with friends and family I felt strongly that it was a cheesy notion to ask them to be a ‘fan’ of my company. I don’t think of my Facebook relationships as a platform for business offers.

I do have friends that have retail oriented businesses that have Facebook fan pages. This makes sense to me. If you have a retail business (restaurant, gym, boutique) having a fan page allows the distribution of special offers, sales, and other types of promotions. A FB fan page in retail businesses offers the potential of real added value to those that have decided to become ‘fans’.

Where I don’t see FB fan pages working well is in the business to business sector. Would you want to be a FB fan of your health or car insurance company? GEICO actually has a fan page with more than 6,000 fans. What are these people receiving for their fandom? More offers on additional insurance? My guess is they are not receiving deeper insurance rate discounts than the general population so where would there be value?

How about a DMV FB fan page? (Ok that would never happen anyway).

What I am missing here?