There are so many daily deal sites available today, its seems like a new one pops up every week although Woot, Gilt, and Groupon are some of the major players in the game. My immediate circle of friends don't try to buy everything online like me, but I noticed something interesting in my facebook news feed today. One of my friend's mentioned having an urge to eat lunch at a particular restaurant and another mutual friend commented that Friend 1 must have seen the Groupon email in their e-mail too. I thought to myself " hmm.. that's interesting!"
I've read white papers who condone the notion the e-mail marketing is dead, but I see daily deal sites giving e-mail a little of its sexy back. For advertisers, daily deal networks are going to be a much better way of driving consumer engagement with brands through the social media connection. As consumers have the ability to share and spread messages instantly across networks, companies will achieve a much larger reach using a daily deal site, than with traditional advertising. Additionally, as consumer's see more of their social network centers of influences using daily deal sites, this will increase adoption of the process among those in the Early and Late Majority categories.
Try doing that with your paper coupon, Mr. Newspaper Circular!
Sunday, September 26, 2010
Thursday, September 23, 2010
Twitter Tax. And you thought the IRS was bad!
Before getting out of bed this morning, I swiped my alarm off and navigated through my iphone to check my emails. There was an interesting article on Ad Age that I apparently missed earlier this week, so I dived in to catch up. What was this about a Twitter Tax?! <-----Check the Article.
As I got deeper into the article, I was relieved to see it wasn't about Government take-over of social media (*shivers*) after all. However, a scarier picture emerged. Although Social Media is high on everybody's radar, brands face an even bigger challenge than trying to engage with their target markets. The taxing drawback to the "Social Revolution" is that it has unveiled an ugly truth: It doesn't matter how great your online strategy is for creating brand loyalty through engagement, if your customers have a different expectation of your brand compared to what they receive through actual experience, you are fighting a losing battle in this digital realm.
Brand Strategist, Jonathan Salem Baskin stated,
" Tools like Twitter aren't some dream of customer empowerment, but rather the nightmare reality of the broken relationships between consumers and brands. Responding to online complaints is a tax that companies pay because of the chronic mismatch between what consumers expect from brands and what they ultimately get. An individualized response might momentarily bridge the gap, but it won't fix it. Never will."
The article also highlights something monumental that I have the unique opportunity of witnessing in the daily trenches of the telecommunications retail war-zone: Marketing, Customer Service and Operations are not mutually exclusive in the eye of the consumer. Yet in the real world, these are separate entities with completely different sets of priorities.
And people have the audacity to wonder why customers complain online and tell their 1,500 closest facebook buddies and fellow Yelp-ers that your company sucks because you didnt deliver on your promise.
Every once in a while, when a brand steps up to right the wrongs that have been done, its admirable, i'll admit...but amidst the loud roar of the new social consumers and their very vocal and viral expressions about their user experiences, it remains to be seen how brands will win in the end.
As I got deeper into the article, I was relieved to see it wasn't about Government take-over of social media (*shivers*) after all. However, a scarier picture emerged. Although Social Media is high on everybody's radar, brands face an even bigger challenge than trying to engage with their target markets. The taxing drawback to the "Social Revolution" is that it has unveiled an ugly truth: It doesn't matter how great your online strategy is for creating brand loyalty through engagement, if your customers have a different expectation of your brand compared to what they receive through actual experience, you are fighting a losing battle in this digital realm.
Brand Strategist, Jonathan Salem Baskin stated,
" Tools like Twitter aren't some dream of customer empowerment, but rather the nightmare reality of the broken relationships between consumers and brands. Responding to online complaints is a tax that companies pay because of the chronic mismatch between what consumers expect from brands and what they ultimately get. An individualized response might momentarily bridge the gap, but it won't fix it. Never will."
The article also highlights something monumental that I have the unique opportunity of witnessing in the daily trenches of the telecommunications retail war-zone: Marketing, Customer Service and Operations are not mutually exclusive in the eye of the consumer. Yet in the real world, these are separate entities with completely different sets of priorities.
- Marketing says: "Let's get them in the door with snazzy ads and promos!"
- Opps says: "Well we'll only ship X amount of product to the store to create bigger demand!"
- Customer Service (Outsourced to another company of course) says: "Churn 'em and Burn 'em! We have a quota on these calls and your little "problem" is tying up the phone lines!"
And people have the audacity to wonder why customers complain online and tell their 1,500 closest facebook buddies and fellow Yelp-ers that your company sucks because you didnt deliver on your promise.
Every once in a while, when a brand steps up to right the wrongs that have been done, its admirable, i'll admit...but amidst the loud roar of the new social consumers and their very vocal and viral expressions about their user experiences, it remains to be seen how brands will win in the end.
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