Natural Products Expo East is happening this week, October 14-16. It's another chance for this marketing consultant to meet up with old friends and colleagues, press the flesh with some future clients (always hopeful), hear what other marketing consultants are doing and find out some new facts about the industry and products. The last time I was at the Natural Products Expo, I noticed someone who I had not seen in ten years. I said, “Hi” but it took her a few seconds to say “Peter?” Pause. “I didn’t recognize you.” Now I’m no Pollyanna. I know I’ve aged. A lot less hair. But I also don’t wear glasses anymore, and I’ve been working out. Not all bad. And fundamentally, I’m the same good guy I was when I first met her. Over the year’s I’ve grown accustomed to my changes, so it’s always a little shock when someone says they did not recognize me, but it shouldn’t be a surprise. Basically my packaging has changed, and even though to me it’s subtle, that’s not the case for others. They had an image of me, and now I don’t fit it, or more accurately, it takes work for them to find me. The same can be said for companies that change their packaging. Too often, the change is so dramatic that even though the label shouts out the name of the company and product, it’s not registering for me on the shelves. If I am a loyal customer, I’ll eventually find it, and pretty soon I’ll recognize the new packaging as easily as I did the old one. So what’s the takeaway here? If you change your packaging too dramatically without taking into account your brand equity, loyal customers will find you, new customers who have never heard of you will find you, and everyone else will find your competition. So does that mean don’t change your packaging and if you do, do it only slightly? Nope. The answer is far more complicated, and will probably cost you the services of a good branding expert. The only free advice I can give you is change, like aging, happens whether you like it or not. It’s all about how you deal with it. For example, the person I met at Expo who didn’t recognize me – I told her how great she looked, and pretty soon she remembered what a cool guy I am. Next time I bumped into her, she waved. Now if only I could remember her name. Wish me luck this year. Hopefully everyone will recognize me.
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"Great news, boss. Our unsubscribe rate was only .2% compared to the last email blast that was 1%." Forget about open rates. 'Unsubscribe' is the new metric. For years marketing consultants, departments and agencies have measured their success in email marketing based on open and click-through rates. No news there. But just yesterday at HubSpot's HUG conference, one speaker talked about how they look at the 'unsubscribe' as one of their key metrics to see if their email is working or not. That got me thinking about how I read emails. I use Outlook and I am one of those people who don't like to have too many unread emails, so I just open them all up by just clicking on them. I rarely read corporate emails, but all those companies mark me down as an "open." I'm sure that many 'opens' counted in open rates are similar to me. But I don't unsubscribe, since maybe one day I'll actually read that company's email, unless I feel the information is terrible or the frequency of emails is overwhelming. I still think that click through rates (or actual number of click-throughs) are the most important of all the email metrics, since it's the one that actually tells you if your email was read and if your call to action actually worked. From a copywriting standpoint, they say the subject line is what gets people to read your email (I think the 'from' line is even more important, but you can't really mess around with that too much), so it's often attached to open rates. But what click-through rates show is the true test of whether the copy worked or not. And if your copy and offer sucks, then your unsubscribe rate will start to increase. In this age when outbound marketing, like email, is on the decline, I guess I shouldn't be surprised to see that expectations for email have sunk to looking at the unsubscribe rate as a measure of an email campaign's success. Recently I spoke to a company about an unsuccessful launch of a new product. After a number of questions, it was clear to me that they had not created a strategic marketing plan for the launch. In fairness, they thought they had a plan. It was all tactics. Do this to this audience at this time. Send out this and see what happens. What was missing were the basics – a thorough situation analysis, SWOT analysis, goals, objectives, strategies, messaging, and audiences. As they implemented their tactics, there was nothing to compare results to. And I’m not talking just benchmarks. What this company had done – and I’ve seen this time and again with overworked marketing and sales departments – is create the tactical plan and think it was not necessary to write the strategic end, because, after all, they had it all in their heads. The problem with this approach is that when things go wrong there is nothing except their collective memory that they can refer to – and collective memory is about as reliable as job security these days. I know that a comprehensive marketing plan is a pain in the ass. No one wants to hear about it, because they know they should do one. No one really has time for it. Sometimes it’s best to hire an outside marketing consultant to do yours – but if you do, make sure you have the ability to work closely with that consultant so you completely agree with the plan. Once it’s done, you’ll not only feel a great sense of accomplishment, but you’ll also have the blueprint for a successful launch. Furthermore, the beauty of a good plan is you can always freshen it up, and use it as a basis for the next year’s plan. |
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