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News*GOLD
Table of Contents
(1—7)
- Double ID
- Matrix
- Lovξ
- Revival'87
- Direct Marketing
- Linked Resources
- MyQuiz
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- i) they are sending their e-mails every working day and for months
- ii) they are writing different types of letters, at first a simple invitation series, then an alert series, at the end the minacing messages are coming up
- iii) similar letters from two very different companies that present same subjects and contents, almost the same words inside!
- iv) they are bombarding different e-mail addresses at the same time, having probably intercept, from e-mails and Web uploads and downloads, a list of e-mail addresses in bulk...
- v) they are big enough to defend theirself from a consumer's denounce about their intrusion into the privacy of ordinary people.
- High involvemnet-Think to the left up
- High involvemnet-Feel to the right up
- Low involvemnet-Feel to the right bottom
- Low involvemnet-Think to the left bottom
| I. Double ID.
There is in the datasphere something worse than spam, because it's a double ID abuse! They termed it 'phishing'. Take two of the large-sized Italian companies from two main sectors as banking and mail services. Take a Web user who is receiving tens of e-mails coming apparently from anonymous addresses referring to these companies, the kind you read as info(at)domainname. Read this newsletter's start and learn more of this bad story of phishing! I have been collecting a wide range of evidences to ask my service provider if those companies are using an e-marketing program really so uncorrect to spam e-mail users, but without any result until now! The experts agree to define 'phishing' as a double crime against the e-mail account owner and the apparent company sending her the bait e-mail, at least an image damage, because the business seems the official responsible to the people going to be mistaken!
II. Matrix. When I was product manager for a privale label I set up a method to better evaluate performances for each product line thanks to a two-dimension matrix made of market share and contribution margin. It was also intended to represent graphically the retail positioning status along a range of 300 product lines. My grid was actually a by-product from the well known Boston Consulting Group matrix, but on that small marketing team that work was highly appreciated until it got maximum publicity when my boss, as marketing director, went to the sales managers board and sold them that new marketing tool... Many years later I would have used a different grid to represent the positioning map for websites --see at www.dmlr.org/top/NPG.htm. Tip. As several types of positioning maps might meet your business, set up the axis names that really help distinguish your products from competitors! Now it's time to focus on a matrix affecting direct marketing. Just grasp the ballpoint pen and outline on your block notes a square divided in four quadrants. The vertical axis refers to personal involvement in buying (low vs. high). The horizontal axis refers to the main factor of the buying process (think vs. feel). Each product to buy belongs to a quadrant of this matrix, i.e. it belongs to a different model of buying decision...
III. Lovξ. ♥Lancôme loves men. Lovable is doing the same to women. Genertel keeps on whispering 'ti amo' to prospects. And lots of other love enhancers are hiding behind unreliable products, from money loans to drugs. ♥Out there an abundance of love flows virtually amid advertising messages sent by major companies to their clients. As if love should be the new frontier of the marketing communication in order to get new customers or prize the old ones. ♥Nothing absolutely new since the marketers broke the limit through a non conventional blue jeans campaign that had commanded all the disciples of that brand: 'who loves me follows me'. Or since the t-shirts sold their space to display such sentences: 'I♥NY'. (And DMLR*News reported frequently information about Lovemarks.com, a Saatchi & Saatchi website aiming to collect faith statements by persons loving so much their favorite brands around the world...) ♥But this time the direction of love is going to U-turn! No more from customers to products but from the brands back to them as bait of their first act of buying or reward for their long-term fidelity... What's the point of loving customers so much? Marketers seem asking customers to trust them by means of a lovesign if not eternal at least mundane for the most common act within the consumer society, also known as sell-out. Lovesigns are only not discounted feelings many businesses can offer everytime people are comparing brands with one another. And love will always win... ♥If commercial websites will really start promising so much love on-line too, I guess the Web surfers will be going to live the Net as a lovely place, where the main act will be not a click-through but a kiss-me-stupid (www.mramore.it)! Let's expect to download beating hearts from every webiste aiming to catch the consumer's attention... ♥Until now the Internet has been a bit late in offering broad love, except for some go-getter websites (www.lovefromaustralia.com) and the services of dating that are always in the line of duty (www.loveline.com). Americans, who launched this social game, view dating as a bit of fun --indeed they are supposed to go on three or four dates a week! So don't be afraid to be loveable, if not sexy, make it known that you are on the market, and on a first date state your personal preferences as a clear wish-list (www.loveable.com, www.lovesexy.com). If you want to date like an American in Europe, just refine your dating style and suck it up along the large range of characters from Sex and the City, Nip/Tuck or The L-World... and get the guys to form an orderly queue. ♥On the media there is always a theoretical hierarchy, where TV sets the rules, while mobile telecom and internet services make the dirty job (www.kice.it). Now it's much in fashion launching websites where visitors can go public and leave their message for meeting their twin soul at virtual or even real place --in Italy the bridges are curiously considered the best place for having some kind of love affairs (key-place = Pontemilvio)... ♥For sure e-mail based dating services must to reform their audience selection, if it's true that every week from the Internet someone is inviting you to date her/him at Hong Kong within the same day! ♥As for me what's the point? I'm sprung on sending virtual love messages on the Web. I have been writing for a decade this newsletter loving marketers, and knowing their hard work for teasing the consumers. Plus, I have been the author of a unique football club fan site standing always close to www.dmlr.org... and this is another condition of the heart! ♥But now I'm going to send a lovesign to that grand brunette, who finally has got on her website a blog, YES, the worst blog I've ever met on the Internet. It's an English text written in a ♥beat and launched from here in the public form of little haiku (or as you like it) Take off that glam dress Cuz I'm just willing and able To steal the label. (PS. Little haiku is of 5,7,5 syllables!)
IV. Revival '87. Every year this newsletter looks after some facts happened twenty years ago within the consumer markets. This time we are holding back the year 1987. What's going down those days? [:)] The European Court of Justice allowed the international free trade of beers to Germany. Until then purist German brewers were able to keep almost all foreign beer producers out of German market --according to the purity act of 1516 that required to make beers only from malt, hop, water and with no other additive. At that time Italian beer makers could first counting on 700,000 Italian workers living in Germany. [:(] Credit cards marketers began segmenting the Italian consumers by purchasing power, setting the distincton between debit- and credit-cards... So they went to introduce the Travel and Entertainment cards for very wealthy people who earned more than 40 million ITL and had no limit in their capability of spending. Business travelers and high spenders were the typical users of T/E cards and the numbers of these cardholders as follows: 280,000 American Express, 190,000 Diner's Club, 3,000 Visa Premium. [:o] Launched in March 1983 the compact disc had been surpassing the sales of traditional records on the main Western markets. The supremacy of vinyl was over for the first time in its 40-year history, so LeMonde on 25 Jan. 1987 titled: 'Le microsillon est mort, vive le compact'... The average price for a CD was about 15US$.
V. Direct Marketing. The DIRECT MARKETING glossary is available on DMLR in a 3-document edition (PDF) you can browse here or easily download onto your desktop. It consists of 19 pages as a whole, 311 paragraphs/terms, 236 Kb, 7450 words, 44772 types! Select and print the three parts of the glossary in English from PDF::Menu. Sure the Internet has been changing the traditional snail-mail based direct marketing. And yet the Internet marketing is a consequence of the old direct marketing somehow. Many terms you'll find inside the DM glossary are suiting for the e-mail marketing too... What you don't find on the glossary are such Internet born terms as 'Password', strictly related to the new medium... Well, 'password' is a secret word or code that is delivered to an on-line service together with the user name in order to ID the same user as true and reliable. The rules to fix one's password are: 1) don't repeat the user name itself or use common words; 2) don't forget it; 3) don't reveal it to anyone!
VI. Linked Resources. (E-mail received after listing their website onto DMLR Guide to Web marketing.) fabstuff.net features unusual and interesting design-led gifts. A fresh new collection of exceptionally stylish and innovative lifestyle products for the home and family. The main objective is to provide consumers with a constantly increasing range of the most exclusive gifts and products from around the globe which can not easily be found on the high street. The range spans the extremes of artisan products, designed and made especially for fabstuff.net, to premium products from leading manufacturers. Customer service is taken very seriously - and feedback from customers shows that they love the fabstuff.net experience - receiving the order promptly as one package, undoing their individually wrapped products from its green tissue and receiving their fabfreebie - FAB! Regards, Julia Scott E-mail: hello@fabstuff.net Web: www.fabstuff.net
VII. MyQuiz. As regards to 'phishing', how many people (as percentage) are supposed to believe in that kind of e-mail warning, so that they end up for sending their own personal data to the cheat company committing the abuse? Find answer on www.dmlr.org/webmarketing/MYQUIZ.htm (in July). |
Roberto Dondi --word processing, HTML and the ropes.