Reduce Volume, Reinvest in Relevance

The following post is a re-post of an article recently published on Directmag.com, and you can read the original article on that website — which, by the way, is a great source for insights to improve your campaigns.

Rx for Ailing Email Response: Reduce Frequency

Certainly email is still one of the most productive and powerful tools in the marketer’s arsenal of tactics. Recent research shows there’s no falloff in usage even with the shift toward social networks; in fact, studies from Nielsen and others show an enhanced level of email usage among those with high participation in social media.

That said, some of the main challenges we face with email—volume, relevance, and engagement—become more problematic when people use email more. When a user is in his inbox all the time, it’s easy to get tired of senders, even trusted ones, who send too frequently. And marketers need to be diligent to ensure that their email messages and offers remain riveting and relevant in order to create engagement.

As a marketing director at Reed Medical Education, where I promote continuing education programs to healthcare professionals, I have the typical email issues to account for and test against: inbox clutter, frequency, deliverability, optimal send time, etc. There’s also an additional challenge: My recipients also receive a lot of messages that rank higher than mine—emails about patients, medications, procedures, new research, and countless other things that are critical to making people better.

This fall, when rolling out a campaign for our largest conference, focusing on mental health on behalf of Massachusetts General Hospital, I decided that less is more.

For the 2009 conference, during a six-month campaign we sent out 12 marketing emails plus four transactional emails based on actions, such as purchase confirmations. Most of the messages were in a standard HTML template we have for the brand, and two were text-only, personalized emails. Open rates were down to less than 5% across the board, and we barely hit our attendee goal.

In 2010 the goal was not only to exceed our attendee target but also to markedly improve our email metrics. A better campaign should deliver a better overall result, right? I decided to cut the number of emails we’d send for the campaign by 50%, down to six. In cluttered inboxes, I bet that fewer total messages from us would actually stand out more and give us more opens—and I knew that if we put extra time into developing a better message, the clicks would follow.

First we redesigned our HTML email template into a cleaner layout with shorter, punchier copy and highly visible calls to actions. For three of the emails, we focused on key deadlines to deliver time-sensitive, action-oriented messages.

For the other three emails, we crafted personal, text-only messages from key speakers and leaders of the conference. We segmented the campaign to our internal database based on purchase history (2009 attendees, pre-2009 attendees, never attended, etc.), and we customized the message based on that history. For last year’s attendees, we emphasized what was new in 2010. For those who had attended prior to 2009, we focused on why it was critical for them to come them back. And for those who had never attended, we highlighted key unique selling propositions and benefit-oriented messaging. And again, all versions were sent as a personal message from a key figure.

Also in these text emails, we linked to a five-minute video recorded with the chief of psychiatry at Mass General. He directly addressed some of the cost, time, and other objections we frequently hear from attendees and tied it all back into the positive impact to their clinical practice they’d gain from attending the conference. He said it much it better in the video than we ever could have said it in an email, and it provided a deeper level of content that users could access with just one click.

The results of these changes were exactly what the doctor ordered. Campaign-wide open rates more than tripled over the previous year’s to 15.4%, and average clickthrough rates were up over 2.6%, with some segments having rates as high as 9.7%. The personal emails had the best performance, as expected, with open rates all over 16%, yet year-over-year the HTML emails did considerably better as well. And the ultimate win was in our performance against our attendee goals: We converted far more registrations via email than in 2009, and we exceeded both attendee and revenue goals by 15%.

In summary, here’s my prescription for your email woes:

· Worry less about how many emails you send. Less is more when the message is right.

· Put the extra time into developing better quality messaging. Relevance and personalization matter.

· Segment, segment, segment — and leverage the information you have about your customers.

· Make your emails interactive. Link to video, integrate with social media, and provide compelling content or offers that make the click worth the time.

· Sanitize your data. We scrubbed out some long-inactive records that depressed metrics and messaged those users separately to reactivate them.

More than anything, don’t settle for the same old thing. Just as a doctor does with a sick patient, if one approach doesn’t work, try another to get better results. And remember, relevance trumps frequency to win engagement.

Is This the Browser of the Future?

Sometimes it’s the little things.

In this case, the little thing may turn out to be a big thing. It’s been fun to take a good, long look at and play around with Rockmelt, the new browser that integrates a variety of social elements to make browsing a true social experience. At first playfully called the “Facebook browser,” it’s built on Chromium, has Facebook integration, and certainly has an interesting feature set.

Now, instead of having a variety of windows, tabs and programs open, you can have full access to major social media sites as part of your one browser window. At various points around the window there are toolbars and icons that provide rollover and/or one-click access to your information streams from Facebook, Twitter, blogs and other places. You can also perform the standard set of functions like share, retweet, like, etc. There’s also a search bar for access to dynamic type-to-search results and a navbar listing your most important friends on the left, with mini-window access to detailed info, wall commenting, etc.

It is definitely a highly social experience, yet I expect a slow adoption rate. There are still a ton of folks who just want to search for things, do research and read online — without the omnipresent stream of information from the socialsphere. I think that eventually the overall ease of monitoring your socialsphere at the same time you’re doing whatever you do online will be something that’s inevitably hard to refuse for most. It’s certainly gotten mixed reviews, but I think Rockmelt has something here, even if it takes time to grow in adoption.

For marketers, it means not necessarily having access to fans and followers in the confines of your fan page or a Twitter client. Your fans or followers may now see your updates and offers in a small window in a nanosecond.

All the more reason to make your social strategy built upon solid content, so you have engagement and your customers find value that lets you stand out from the crowd.

What do you think about Rockmelt — fab or flop?

Interesting Effort: ESPN Audibles

Sometimes it’s just lose-lose, and that’s all it is. You try new stuff to try to improve and be different, and people find something to ding you on anyway.

Marketers always search for that Holy Grail of integration, where the message sings the same across all channels and the customer experience is stellar no matter where the customer finds you.

In pursuit of those lovely things, brands certainly look for ways to facilitate interaction and dialogue to make the experience customer compelling. Enter an appreciable effort in that regard that deserves a good, long look: ESPN Audibles.

It’s a new football talk show on ESPN where — much like a quarterback calling an audible play at the line of scrimmage — fans can change the topic of conversation by posting a question via Twitter or Facebook. Talk about interaction. Who wouldn’t be interested to see their question change conversation among experts on national TV?

I think this is one of the most tangible examples to date of integrating a traditional channel with social media. We all know sports fans are fanatics — hell, they drop billions each year on fantasy sports. So it’s not a stretch to expect a large throng of social-savvy fans to show up on Twitter and Facebook to tweets questions during the show. And for the broadcast lovers, what better way to draw them into social than empowering them to influence their preferred medium?

While Audibles has its share of critics — even for the panel’s choice of socks — it’s not just another contest or discount offer that marries social into the picture. It’s a solid effort to integrate social and traditional channels using content as the backbone. And it provides the audience with real-time control over the content to some degree. That’s a pretty enhanced experience.

And for those football fans out there, it’s an interesting mix of some of ESPN’s most opinionated analysts, including Trent Dilfer, Keyshawn Johnson, Steve Young, and Herm Edwards. Check it out.

My Fun Awards Program Assignment

Recently I had the honor of being a judge in the American Business Media’s Sales Promotion Awards. As Chair of the ABM’s Media Marketing Committee, I’m proud to say that my committtee helps the ABM frame and conduct this awards program — so I do have somewhat of an advantage when it comes time to select the judges.

I want to thank Kevin Arsham, Partner at MediaCom, for also taking time to participate as a judge in the awards program. Kevin has been a willing and consistent supporter and participant in my committee’s activities, and we’re very grateful.

Watch the video below as Kevin and I walk through the top-performing entries, as well as some general points for B2B media marketers to consider when developing promotional materials and media kits.

Click to Play | View Details

Privacy Mistakes, Part 2

In my last post, I raised the question whether or not the following message was sufficient enough to rectify a boneheaded email data-sharing mistake.

I would like to sincerely apologize to everyone blind copied here for accidentally delivering a mass email earlier today with your email address visible.

Needless to say, I am deeply embarrassed my error.

If there is something I can do to rectify any inconvenience that my hastiness may have caused, please do not hesitate to let me know.”

First let’s take a good, long look at the things wrong with this situation, then we’ll get down to the correct way to manage and fix these kinds of predicaments.

This first thing wrong is that something big is missing — and it’s the root cause of the overall problem. There’s a clear lack of marketing control. The original email was sent by a sales rep (happens to be a guy), and it had all of his customer email addresses visible for all to see. The lack of marketing control at his company could’ve led to this for a few reasons. Perhaps there aren’t any marketing professionals employed here at all, and sales folks like this guy are blindly doing their own marketing as best they know how, considering they’re clearly not trained to be marketers.

The second thing wrong is there’s a clear lack of marketing control and/or involvement as it pertains to company email policy. Certainly, with the serious implications presented by CAN-SPAM laws, email should be managed by a marketing team that provides best practices in messaging and metrics, adequate tools for managing deployments and opt-outs, and clear direction on compliance with privacy and security requirements. There’s no way that in 2010, some sales guy should be randomly firing off a mass email to several dozens emails, with no regard for potential liability or consequences. I like to think that perhaps this sales rep just “went rouge” in the overzealous pursuit of sales — yet his subsequent email response shown above belies a clear lack of understanding about anything regarding effective email practice.

The last thing wrong here (that I’ll point out, anyway) is the callousness towards customers on the company’s behalf. I’d never do business with this firm, as they surely don’t consider my needs or my data privacy important. Not to mention that the sales rep’s original email was not effective at all — it was a monologue-oriented rant on the company’s products, not my needs as the customer.

Now that we have that bad stuff out of the way, let’s look at the right way to rectify mistakes when they happen:

• 1. Don’t make the same mistake twice — If someone in the organization goes rogue and mistakenly deploys an email that discloses customer data, don’t follow up with the same damn kind of email that led to the mistake in the first place! From the same person, no less! Not too smart!
  Deploy your next emails, fully-compliant with CAN-SPAM laws, using email deployment software — that way there’s no risk of the same mistake happening again.
• 2. Escalate the level and tone of the response — This mistake was made by a front-line person. So in the follow-up efforts asking for forgiveness, consider sending those messages from someone higher up in the management of the brand or company. This approach signifies that the company acknowledges the error at the highest levels and shows that you’re not taking it likely. Consider complementing any email messages with timely follow-up phone calls to address any customer concerns directly.
• 3. Explain your solution to the problem — The sales guy who sent me the message above not only didn’t know enough not to make the mistake in the first place, he also clearly doesn’t have a clue what to do to fix it. Don’t tell your customers to “let you know if there’s something they can do to help you.” Tell them how you’re gonna make sure this problem doesn’t happen again! Be clear about recognizing the cause of the initial problem, and be clear about how you’re changing your processes to ensure it’s solved forever.
• 4. Offer an olive branch — A simple gesture to make up for an inconvenience often makes the difference between losing and keeping a customer. If you shared someone’s email data by mistake, offer them a free subscription to an email privacy service. It’s a small correctional investment that proves you value the business relationship and are putting your money where your mouth is in terms of rectifying the problem.

  The moral of the story is that a commitment to effective marketing and running a customer-focused business eliminates alot of risk for these kinds of mistakes. A business that looks for dialogue with customers and uses effective marketing practice (that leverages best practices and is compliant with other requirements) has built-in process to manage communication and feedback — making these mistakes less likely. However, it also ensures that when mistakes do get made, there is appropriate process in place to deal with the clean up effectively.

  If you don’t have that kind of commitment to customers in place, don’t become the bad example of the next blog post — charge ahead and correct your process now.

Privacy Mistakes, Part 1

Mistakes are bound to happen, no matter what. In a fast-paced marketing team, details do get missed and things happen that, while ultimately preventable, are inevitable.

Certainly, how you recover and manage damaged relationships is critical in any situation. Sure, there are measured actions to take for crisis control on serious issues. Yet it doesn’t always have to be an enterprise-level problem in order to damage customer relationships, and no matter if the issue is big or small, when measures are taken to resolve the issue it can lead to backlash if not positioned or implemented correctly.

One of the most sensitive issues is the security of data. For purposes of this blog post, let’s say it’s marketing data. Specifically, let’s say it’s your email database. Your customer email addresses are valuable — priceless, even. And surely, your customers would rank the privacy of their data as a pretty high priority. What do you do when, say, one of your sales reps sends out an email to your entire customer list, yet instead of blind copying everyone he makes the email addresses visible to all? That’s what happened to me recently — although, thankfully, the sender wasn’t from my company, my email address was in his list for all to view. Here’s the message I got later in the day:

I would like to sincerely apologize to everyone blind copied here for accidentally delivering a mass email earlier today with your email address visible.

Needless to say, I am deeply embarrassed my error.

If there is something I can do to rectify any inconvenience that my hastiness may have caused, please do not hesitate to let me know.”

Is that sufficient enough a reply for you?

Ponder that question and let me know your thoughts, and I’ll answer the question myself in my next post.

What’s Your Approach to Social Already?

You’ve had ample time to learn all about social media.

Surely by now, you’ve read articles from experts, tested the waters, followed conversations, found customers, began dialogue, produced content, set up outposts on Facebook and the other places where your customers congregate, integrated social with your other channels, and set up a social listening station for your brand/company. You’re a social authority now.

Right?

Unfortunately — and unbelievably — the answer is still “Wrong!” for many marketers. More importantly, many who have make the foray into social media aren’t doing it right. I go back to the great point made in one of my earlier posts about the ways to approach social media:

Social media is like a cocktail party. Do u shout “BUY MY PRODUCT”? Ask for business cards? Or just meet people and talk?”

If I could only count how many times I get cheesy emails through LinkedIn offering nothing but a pitch, or shallow @ replies on Twitter with a salesy comment and a link. Even when used as a “sales tool” social media is no less consultative than face-to-face selling — does the ease of typing and sending email diminish my own interest as a customer in finding the right solution?!?!

Even in this salesy slide deck on using LinkedIn as a sales tool, the salient point is that you have to invest time in building a meaningful network based on knowledge and trust, not used-car-salesman-quality emails and tweets.

Please, marketers — if you haven’t yet gotten up to speed with social and how to leverage it, take the time to read a few articles, talk to some experts, and integrate it into your strategy and with your other channels.

My next post will explain exactly how.

Mass Personalization

We see it all the time, yet we don’t always do it. It’s a critical part of building relationships with customers.

I’m talking about personalization. It really makes a difference.

No, not a simple “Dear Marie” at the start of your email. I mean real personalization that creates relevance. Relevance that leads to great things — engagement, relationships, sales, upsells, etc. Some studies in retail show that as many as 77 percent of consumers report they have made additional purchases when they encountered personalized product recommendations. And there’s no arguing that a significant percentage of customers now expect to be communicated with on a personal and targeted basis, with personalized messaging based on what they’ve done, bought or told you they want.

A significant percentage of consumers not only welcome but expect…personalized experiences and product recommendations.”

Plus, we all know it’s easier and less expensive to reactivate a current customer than to acquire new ones. So why wouldn’t you leverage what you know about your customers to differentiate what you say to them? Each one of them.

To reinvigorate your email campaigns, start by either adding in a personalization element, or better yet supercharging the personalization you already use.

• 1. Take a look at your data. What do you know about your customers, and how can you organize it to help customize your messaging to them?
• 2. Reformat your templates to allow for simple personalization like first names in an introduction and meaningful mentions throughout the email. Make it sound genuine and not contrived, however.
• 3. Begin to add in more relevance-based personalization like purchase history, recommendations and content. Stuff like “since you bought this item last month, you may be interested in this to complement it” or “since you clicked on this article link, you may be interested in this new content too.”

It’s easier than you think. It doesn’t take alot of time. Change your process, organize your data, and put the thought into what makes the most sense from your customer’s perspective. Then charge ahead.

In Email, Engagement is Key

I want to think that by now, most marketers are advanced in their use of email. We all test incessantly, make everything personalized and relevant, and leverage customer data to drive strategy and messaging.

Sometimes, it gets busy though. Other problems and needs take the forefront. Your email languishes. Next thing you know, a big chuck of your email list is inactive and your metrics are lower than opinion polls on the TSA.

So I’ll get right to the point — it’s critical to segment your list and message inactive customers differently from active ones. Many times, you likely segment and message based on other things like job title, location, etc. However, engagement is arguably the most powerful metric to leverage since it signifies activity, recency, endorsement and interest. Or, as it will, non-interest. There are certainly different ways to define “engaged” today — for now, start simple and define it as someone who interacts with your email (opens, clicks).

If you’re not currently segmenting your emails using this approach, stop you’re marketing machine right now and re-do it all over again. Build in the time and capacity to do the following three things:

1. Accurately define what “unengaged” means in a way that lets you meaningfully frame and solve a problem. For example, it may mean someone who didn’t spend a dime with you in 2010, or it may mean someone who didn’t open or click on one of your emails in the last 6 months.

2. Accurately define what “reengaged” means. It has to mean something achievable and realistic. For example, if a user didn’t spend a dime with you in 2010 it may be a challenge to get him/her to spend $1,000 in 2011. You may need to define an easy entry point(s) and/or multiple levels of reactivation. For someone who hasn’t shown any level of email activity, a simple first step may be to get them to open and/or click on one of your emails again.

3. Look at what you know about each customer and leverage it to create relevance. You can customize messaging based on whatever you know: purchase history, location, profession, click behavior, age. Anything you know about them. Look at what theyve done, and suggest something that has relevance as a benchmark for reengagement. For example, one approach I used in my current role was saying stuff like “We noticed you’re a primary care physician and we havent heard from you in a while, did you know we just released a new webcast that’s really relevant to challenges in primary care? Check it out.”

I guarantee that if you start to segment by level of engagement, and then leverage customer behavior to personalize and customize messaging, your campaigns in 2011 will markedly improve.

When to Fold ‘Em

A marketer’s daily life is filled with the pursuit of success. Our mission is to make things happen — drive sales, move product, generate leads, and a million other things.

Never do we like to admit defeat.

Yet sometimes that’s exactly what needs to happen in order to achieve success.

Too many times, marketers keep doing the same failing tactics for one reason or another. Put off redesigning your website due to budget or time. Keep your same mix of spending and tactics because new channels are “too risky.” Launch the same old email campaigns because you’re not sure what the best practices are. And as we emerge from the economic doldrums, the resistance to change will only grow as nobody wants to lose any revenue by trying something different.

Yet sticking with the same tried and true tactics only leads to false hope. Now is the time to admit defeat — what worked before won’t work in today’s world. So throw out those old strategies, and test and test some more to find the new best answers, whether it’s channel, medium, or message. Take the time to explore alternatives, try something new, and revamp what’s been stagnant. Research a blog, do something social, revisit your email strategy…hell, if you’re still heavily invested in direct mail, try a new format or shift spending to another channel, like PPC.

That’s the only way to emerge as a leader when your customers are ready for action.

An Email Resolution

Many, many marketers are not sad to see 2009 leave. A tough year to say the least.

Looking for ways to improve is an important thing to do as we move into the new year. Certainly it’s always an important thing to do, not just in January. Yet the turn of the calendar typically provides a convenient checkpoint for marketers to revisit our plans and practices. On that note, check out this MediaPost column on email metrics. It’s full of suggestions on how to use those metrics to find a deeper level of guidance and strategy-changing perspective.

If you’re one of those who uses the turn of the calendar to seek new life for marketing plans, maybe this will help you find it.

The New Four P’s of Marketing — Part 4

So far, we’ve looked closely at Proof, Presence and Persuasion to identify why they now make up the first three parts of the New Four P’s of Marketing.

Now let’s look at the final piece of the puzzle. The final P is actually an old-school holdover from the original Four P’s: Price.

• Price — Of course, Price is always a factor in customer decisions. If there’s no price and something is free, that’s a huge motivator, of course. If something is not free but provides good value, that’s great. Yet even if something is expensive or priced at a premium, customers will jump to get it if the perceived value is high enough or the experience is unique or the brand represents something important to customers — like prestige or value or quality. Why else do people go into five figure debt to buy certain cars, or kids save money to buy brand name jeans and sneakers?

  Because Price is always a factor in customer decisions at some level, it has to remain in the Four P’s. And your first three P’s MUST justify your Price. Why else would you bother going through all the effort and time required to establish Proof, Presence and Persuasion? When customers buy into those three things, it justifies what they have to spend on Price. When they don’t buy into your Proof or you don’t persuade them effectively, you’re going to have a problem getting them to pay your Price.

  And that’s why Price is the fourth P. It’s what you say, do and stand for that set up your Price. That create the demand for what you offer.

  Yet it’s still an aspect to work with also. Customers can buy into what you stand for yet still not be willing or able to pay your Price. So you need to be able to construct different offers and target different customers with different value propositions in order to influence individual buying decisions.

  Price is a timeless, traditional and important member of the Four P’s, yet always has contemporary meaning and relevance. That will never change.

Hope you enjoyed the series of posts on the New Four P’s of Marketing. Charge ahead with these new paradigms in mind.

The New Four P’s of Marketing — Part 3

So, we’ve looked at Proof and Presence and why they’re the lead tandem in the New Four P’s of Marketing.

Now let’s look at what you need once you have Proof and Presence: some Persuasion.

• Persuasion — What good is Presence if you don’t use it wisely? If you don’t use it to demonstrate your Proof to potential customers? That’s what Persuasion involves: using your Presence effectively to deliver your Proof and persuade customers to, well, become your customers.
  How do you persuade? Well, I’m not suggesting you do anything that’s not genuine, as the word persuasion is sometimes viewed. What I mean is you need to develop market knowledge and a customer-first mentality, and leverage it to be an expert and give customers a reason to trust and do business with you.
  What kind of knowledge? Data and statistics about your market and about your customers. Unique experience or perspective. Customer needs and how to address them. Hell, even just having an opinion is market knowledge and worth something in terms of mental capital with customers. Even a forum or community on your site can be knowledge, even if it doesn’t come from you — if you bring customers together to discuss things and share thoughts, you’re the driving force behind their connection. You’re an expert.
  How do you leverage it? A variety of ways. Start a blog, and use it to craft an authoritative perspective. That’s Persuasion at its best, when your organization’s leaders — and even its front line people — share their expertise with customers via social media. That’s real enagagement. You can start an enewsletter, develop white papers, open Twitter accouunts, build a unique content area of your website. It may seem like irrelevant effort if it’s work that doesn’t focus on your products or company. But it’s not. You have to make a case for customers to trust you. You have to persuade them why you’re relevant, why you’re the best choice. Showing them Proof and having a Presence isn’t enough — you must deliver content and perspective that makes the case.
  Aggregating and sharing this knowledge is the Persuasion that helps you keep customers that your Presence found for you.

Next post discusses the final new P: Price.

The New Four P’s of Marketing — Part 2

So we’ve discussed Proof and why it’s critical to demonstrate that what you do and what you say means something to customers.

Now let’s discuss what you can do to demonstrate that Proof — go get yourself some Presence.

• Presence — You can’t prove anything to anyone without having a Presence. And not just in terms of being there when there’s a need, or having an ad in the right place, or dropping a direct mail piece at the right time. Presence is also being there when there’s not a need. Presence means providing knowledge. It means creating or defining needs in addition to meeting needs — for example, by providing content and establishing credibility as an expert.  Or using customer interaction and knowledge to develop meaningful solutions. Presence helps you deliver the Proof.
  There are many ways to have Presence — and you need to be knowledgable about all of them, from traditional tactics like emails and direct mail, to online tactics like Google keywords, to social media engagement tools like Twitter. Maybe you don’t need them all, depending on your audience, but you better know their strengths and weaknesses. 
  And you better make sure your Presence evolves with your customers.  Otherwise, they move on and your Presence is meaningless.  There are alot of things you should be doing to stay up-to-date on new aspects of social media that allow interaction and dialogue with customers. Like Google Wave, for example. Your customers may be in all these social media nooks and crannies, and if you’re not there with them as part of the conversation then you have no Presence.
  Sure, you can still have 20th century Presence.  We still need it!  You can still send direct mail and email, run ads, hand out samples and all the other marketing tactics we develop and refine with great effort.  Hell, traditional marketing works wonders when done right. Yet if your bag of tactics has not expanded to include social media in whatever ways and websites and widgets your customers love and interact with — then you will now find that your traditional marketing has alot tougher time succeeding.  Competitors who create interaction are too easy to find, and they’ll steal your business with with their Presence.
  Presence is scalable, and it depends on your customers.  It may require people who live and breathe social media every minute of every day — bloggers, Tweeters, Tumblrs and Diggers. Or it may require a simple Facebook fan page.  And it certainly requires a mix of traditional marketing in some form.  So it must be guided by someone with comfortable vision of both traditional and new.

Next post discusses the third P: Persuasion.

The New Four P’s of Marketing — Part 1

In a way, it’s not even appropriate to say “Things change fast” any more. It’s like saying “The sky is blue” or “AT&T sucks” or something else equally obvious.

Change is such an engrained part of the marketing landscape now, sometimes things change and you don’t even notice. Hell, you even start doing things the new way without even missing a beat or sometimes acknowledging the change. Stakes are so high and time is so precious. You evolve in real time and stop at some point later to reflect and evaluate what you did and how it performed.

The Four P’s are one of marketing’s hallmark principles. For decades, marketers were raised on Product, Price, Place and Promotion as the backbone strategic drivers behind what we do. And since so much of marketing was driven by companies and not customers, there was never a need to evolve. The Four P’s have driven our education, our strategy and our tactics for years.

Enter the rise of social media and the connected customer.

Now, even the Four P’s of marketing — the pillars of our discipline — have changed. Companies, marketers and our co-owned strategies have to find and keep customers using a new set of driving principles. It’s time to relearn what we do, whether you like it or not. We have to embrace a new Four P’s of Marketing: Proof, Presence, Persuasion and Price.

We’ll look at each one in-depth in a four-part series of posts.

• Proof — It’s no longer good enough to just produce a product, put a price on it and put it out there. That’s recipe for failure.  In an era of ultra-competition, you have to prove that your product or solution is the right one. That you’re reliable and ethical. That you provide a unique value or experience. That you’re consistent. You may even have to prove many things to many people depending on your customers’ values. For example, that you’re service-oriented or socially conscious or financially sound (especially now). You have to prove that your product is right too — that it’s meant to solve a customer’s problem or need, that it’s quality, that it’s worth their time.
  Hell, even when the customer believes your product is right, even if they believe what you stand for, you have to prove that you offer the best place to buy it — several other options are always a nanosecond away online. How many mashup sites are there that compare product prices for people?  Several dozen, maybe.  So you have to prove your retail or online experience is all the things discussed above also.
  Plus. how you prove it matters. Do you engage customers where they live and communicate, or do you implore them to come to you? Do you blare monologue or encourage dialogue? Are you reactive or interactive? You can’t just say something and call it Proof — you have to engage customers in conversations and meaningful interactions, and let them decide and label it.  That seal of approval — the customer-driven one, the viral one –is worth more than any other.
  Experience matters too. If you have a great product yet a lousy purchase process, you lose. A great event with a lousy registration process, you lose. A great retail store with average service or vanilla employee passion, no way.  A slick-looking website with poor functionality, you lose. Excellence matters, from first contact through shopping cart checkout, upsell messaging to customer service, website personalization to employee friendliness.  It all has to be right.  Otherwise the only thing you’re proving is that you know how to get it wrong, you know how to do it the old way.
  Hence, Proof now leads off the Four P’s of Marketing.

Stay tuned for a look at the next P soon: Presence.