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Felicitations, me!

Posted on October 28, 2005 by Sarah Eaton.

Well, a year ago today I wrote my very first post.  Happy blogiversary to me!

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October 28, 2005 in award winning design, award winning magazine | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

BeTuitive Book Review: “All Marketers Are Liars: The Power of Telling Authentic Stories in a Low-Trust World"

Posted on October 26, 2005 by Sarah Eaton.

By Susan E. Fisher

What if Seth Godin had entitled his latest book “All Consumers Are Liars: Successful Marketers Just Tell ‘Em What They Want to Hear with the Help of a Memorable Yarn?” Would you still fork over the $23.95 to buy the hardback? Maybe you would, or maybe you wouldn’t. My revised title certainly doesn’t have the catchy ring that “All Marketers Are Liars” has.  However, the label would be closer to the essence of Godin’s own tale.

“All Marketers Are Liars” is really about crafting and communicating appealing stories about your products or services that capture the imagination of customers and, not incidentally, fit their preconceived notions (or “worldview” in Godin’s lexicon.) These fantasies should fulfill (often irrational) desires rather than needs, he contends.

Consider Godin’s advice for weaving these effective marketing tales:
• “A great story is true. Not true because it’s factual, but true because it’s consistent and authentic.”
• “Great stories make a promise. They promise fun or money, safety or a shortcut.”
• “Great stories are trusted. Trust is the scarcest resource we’ve got left.”
• “Great stories are subtle. Surprisingly, the less a marketer spells out, the more powerful the story becomes.”
• “Great stories happen fast. They engage the consumer the moment the story clicks into place.”
• “Great stories don’t appeal to logic, but they often appeal to our senses.”
• “Great stories are rarely aimed at everyone. If you need to water down your story to appeal to everyone, it will appeal to no one.”
• “Great stories don’t contradict themselves.”
• “And most of all, great stories agree with our worldview. The best stories agree with what the audience already believes and make the members of the audience feel smart and secure when reminded how right they were in the first place.”

Godin goes with the “All Marketing Are Liars” title because not only does it give the idiosyncratic marketing guru a chance to snatch our over-stimulated brains with an attention-grabbing headline; it gives him the chance to have fun with the reader. Godin’s title is a lie. It is a lie that makes a great story. It is a lie that works because it is something we like to hear. And, that is what he is suggesting you offer to your customers.

The 176-page book is a quick, entertaining read, and the guts of it are in the first 30 pages. The remainder of the book provides a process for creating stories, a few caveats and plenty of interesting examples. A notable caution: Remember you are dealing with a moving target: “A worldview is not forever. It’s what the consumer believes right now.”

If you love Godin, you’ll love this book. You can add it to your collection of his other well-received, thought-provoking works including “Permission Marketing” and “Purple Cow: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable.”

My biggest problem with Godin may not be yours. His conceit is that marketing is really, truly, deeply important. He states: “Marketing is about spreading ideas, and spreading ideas is the single most important output of our civilization.” (From this are we to believe that marketing equals the best of civilization? A frightening jump in logic if one is to believe one of marketing's best tools is the ability to bend the truth so it fits preconceived notions.)

Marketing is important, but the author, who makes his bread and butter talking to marketing true believers, tends to brush aside the other issues in a business as if they are trivial compared to the challenges of marketing. If you want to tell a great story, you have to have a great story to tell. That involves a whole bunch of non-trivial processes and people in other areas of your company who face hard truths.

To be sure, nobody should confuse marketing with journalism. When you get your marketing B.S., you don’t pledge to honor truth, pursue justice or declare freedom of expression, but Godin has his principles. He is quick to declare that the power of storytelling should not be used to nefarious ends.  So, while he admires a wine glass company that fudges the truth to encourage customers to believe their wine will taste better in a $20 glass than a similar $2 one, he admonishes the formula maker that hinted to impoverished women that a man-made formula was better suited to their starving infants than the mothers’ milk nature had already supplied.

So, spin those tales. Ultimately, you aren’t the one bending the truth. Your customers are, and they’ll be happy that you let them enjoy it.

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October 26, 2005 in award winning magazine, award winning newsletter, Blog Outsourcing, blog publish, build credibility, Business editorial, Business newsletter, Business relationships, Corporate newsletter, Corporate publications | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack

You're Wasting Other People's Valuable Time By Blogging

Posted on October 25, 2005 by Sarah Eaton.

From AdAge (reg. required):  35 million people read blogs at work, wasting 4.8 billion work hours in 2005 (reading blogs unconnected to their jobs.)

I guess if you're doing a marketing blog you needn't feel too guilty about causing all of that slacking on the job, because you're being relevant...

Ooo--here's another good stat: Currently there are 19.6 million blogs, and:

If that growth were to continue, all 6.7 billion people on the planet will have a blog by April 2009.

And at that point, all work will cease and that's all we'll do all day, blog and read each other's blogs.

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October 25, 2005 in award winning magazine, Award winning publications, blog publish, Blogging Tools, Building B2B Relationships, Building Customer Intuition, bulk email marketing, business credibility, Business publications, company newsletter, company newsletter sample, Company newsletters, Company publication, corporate magazine, create a newsletter | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Aggregator Addiction and You

Posted on October 20, 2005 by Sarah Eaton.

Okay, I'll admit it: A more accurate headline for this post should be "Aggregator Addiction and Me."

Over the last week, I've been switching computers and the final thing to be instated on my machine today was NewsGator.  When I hit the icon and the little folders started populating, I felt a little misty with relief. 

It turns out that, in my world, blog reading is a great way to decompress and get my brain moving in a different direction.  A tiny little break between working on larger projects.  However, recently I heard from a friend that she disabled her news aggregator because it was too distracting and too tough to keep up with.

What do you think?

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October 20, 2005 in audio publication, award winning design, award winning magazine, Award winning publications, Blog Outsourcing, Blogging Tools, Brand enhancement, build credibility, Building Customer Community, Building Customer Intuition, business magazine, Business newsletter, Business relationships, company blog, company newsletter, Company publication, Corporate Blogging, corporate magazine, create a newsletter | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Small Rant About Unsubscribing

Posted on October 14, 2005 by Sarah Eaton.

It's only a small rant, but the sentiment behind it is big.  And that sentiment is this: Unsubscribing should be easy.

I'm switching computers, so I'm also taking the opportunity to clean house.  One of the things I'm doing is unsubscribing to newsletters that I never read, or newsletters that are ugly.  Or both.  In doing so, I'm very much surprised by how difficult certain companies make it to unsubscribe.

The worst one I've run across asks you to email them with a certain phrase in the subject line, and then they send you back a message saying that they got a message from you indicating that you want to unsubscribe, and could it possibly be true?  If so, then reply to this other, totally different email address, with something else specific in the subject line. 

Essentially this is a double opt-out, and it ain't a good idea, friends.  Because before I just thought their newsletter was ugly.  Now I have a bad taste in my mouth about the entire company.

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October 14, 2005 in award winning blog, award winning design, award winning magazine, award winning newsletter, Award winning publications, Blog Outsourcing, blog publish, Blogging Tools, build credibility, Building Customer Community, Building Customer Intuition, company blog, company newsletter, Company newsletters, corporate magazine | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

The Closeness That Blogging Brings

Posted on October 12, 2005 by Sarah Eaton.

So, one of the best things about blogs, as far as I can tell, is that they allow you to feel a certain...closeness with the person who writes it.  You hear their thoughts on a regular basis, when normally you might hear from them only sporadically or not at all.  (Newsletters do the same thing, in a different way.)

Case in point: Musician blogs.  Here's a list of a bunch of musicians who are blogging out there, so you can cozy up to your favorite music-maker.

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October 12, 2005 in award winning blog, award winning design, award winning magazine, Award winning publications, Blog Outsourcing, Blogging Tools, Building Customer Intuition, bulk email marketing, Business publications, company newsletter, company newsletter sample, Company publication, Corporate newsletter | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

There's a hole in the bucket, dear readers

Posted on October 05, 2005 by Sarah Eaton.

Melinda Krueger thinks of email customer lists as leaky buckets.  Sure, you're always filling the bucket with new addresses, but there are still those addresses that are leaking out the hole.

How do you turn a cataract of escaping email addresses into a trickle?  Check out her article for some ideas, among them developing a reactivation program. (Registration required.)

Thanks to Mark Brownlow for pointing it out.

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October 5, 2005 in award winning blog, award winning magazine, award winning newsletter, Award winning publications, blog publish, Blogging Tools, Building B2B Relationships, Building Customer Community, Building Customer Intuition, company blog, company magazine, company newsletter, company newsletter sample, Company newsletters, Corporate newsletter | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

It's People! Your List Is People!

Posted on October 04, 2005 by Sarah Eaton.

To tell you the truth, the working title for this article was "Just Like Soylent Green, Your List Is People."  But I had some trouble reconciling the goodness/badness of it all.  (Example: "Your list is people, and that's a good thing; however, it is not a good thing that Soylent Green is people, not at all."  Such a sentence does not a compelling opener make.)

Thus, the title became "Great Email Customer Service Begins With a Realization: There's a Human Being Behind Every Address."

It originally appeared in September's BeTuitive e-newsletter (for which you can sign up here), and it's about the opportunities that you have to make a great impression on the people who make up your list when they hit reply.

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October 4, 2005 in award winning blog, Award winning publications, Blog Outsourcing, Blogging Tools, Building B2B Relationships, Building Customer Intuition, bulk email marketing, business magazine, Business Marketing, company blog, company magazine, company newsletter, Company publication, Corporate publications, create a newsletter | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Image Control, "The Shining" as rom-com

Posted on October 03, 2005 by Sarah Eaton.

As proof that you can make anything look like something else if you try hard enough:  View a trailer of "The Shining" that makes it look like Meg Ryan might pop into a scene at any time.  (Plus, it's hilarious.)

Think about your own methods that you use to "preview" your company.  How do they tell your story--do they accurately portray what your customers will receive from you?  Setting expectations correctly makes for higher customer satisfaction.

An e-newsletter can be a great vehicle for telling your story to your customers and prospects...

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October 3, 2005 in award winning design, award winning magazine, award winning newsletter, Award winning publications, blog publish, Building Customer Community, Building Customer Intuition, Business publications, CMO, company newsletter sample, Company newsletters, Company publication, Corporate newsletter, create a newsletter | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack