QVIews

According to Arun Sinha, head of marketing at Zurich Financial, fewer than 15% of consumers trust any insurance brand. Whew! I didn't realize it had gotten that bad. That must be Europe … wonder what percentage it would be in the U.S.? So now Zurich is taking action to strengthen their image as a company…

By and large, people don't take email for their entertainment. In fact, most of them view email as a burden. Every message has to earn its way, and many of them are freeloaders and failures. When a customer asks for an order confirmation, it's an opportunity to finish the job with a smile, not a…

The segmenting of customers by demographics and psychographics has become an important way to minimize marketing waste. But as Professor David Corkindale points out, you can't segment customers who have no meaningful differences. When I was at Ogilvy & Mather, we assumed customers had a set of 'preferred brands' or a 'repertoire', and that actual…

Over time, all contact lists, even those composed of the most pristine opted-in volunteers, will accumulate inactive records. Properly handling these inactive subscribers is one of the most important ways to keep your communications program strong. Stefan Pollard describes the correct maintenance steps to take and avoid below, but I'd also like to emphasize a…

You and your audience may be perfectly happy in your twentieth-century communication web of phones, brochures, and even email, but don't be surprised if you soon lose a prospect who found a great online recommendation to your competitor's product. You just can't depend on your audience to stay in the bowl, no matter how isolated…

We suspect your customers buy things from other companies. Unless you're Wal-Mart you can't pretend to fill their every need. So why not help them find companies that fill the empty spaces the same way you do? What an excellent way to keep them 'in the family.' Strategic Public Relations: Brands Are Curating Cool.2008-Sep-3, by…

As interruption-based advertising loses its efficiency, marketing innovation has re-focused onto marketing partnerships. An excellent example is the Bacardi sponsorship of Groove Armada, which has been discussed in the Wall Street Journal (U.K. DJs Aim to Lift Some Spirits, 2008-Jun-27, by Max Colchester) and UK-based Marketing Week (Why bands need brands, 2008-Apr-16, by Camille Alarcon)…

Marketing should not be tasked with "closing the sale" or "establishing awareness" for that matter. Marketing should lay the foundation for an ongoing conversation between the enterprise and its audiences. It begins as an invitation and follows with more questions and opportunities, always setting up the audience to feed more into the system. Stay away…

In developing good incentives to get prospects to sign up for an email newsletter or any kind of free club membership, the issue of ‘fair exchange’ is often overlooked. The incentive you’re offering and the commitment they’re making need to have approximately the same value. "Tell me your birthday, and I’ll give you a birthday…