Bill Gates Stole My Job

James Joyce while writing his great novel Ulysses came down to dinner one evening and when asked how he was getting on, answered,"I've finished."

"What the book" his friend replied.

"No the sentence I started yesterday," Joyce responded adding,"What I am seeking is the perfect order of words in the sentence."

If I had known this when I first started working in an agency as a copywriter I might have understood what my first two days were all about. The first brief I was given was for a bird charity. They needed an ad to persuade people to send for a free wall chart identifying garden birds and with it details of membership. All within 60 words in a single column just three centimetres long. Simple for a chap like me who had already been knocking out four page letters for insurance companies as a freelancer.

60 Words of Ping Pong

I delivered the copy to the owner of the agency half an hour after getting the brief. He called me into his office where we discussed the ad and he told me to go away and rewrite it. I did and after another half an hour I was sitting in front of him again being told I needed to rewrite it once more. Like a game of table tennis, we batted the copy back and forth across his desk for the next day and a half until he was happy that every single one of those 60 words was going to tear at the heart-strings of little old ladies, was persuasive and would get the response the charity needed to pay for their tiny ad.

It was a great lesson and taught me two things. Firstly, the importance of finding the right words and secondly the importance of polishing until the text is perfect.

In those days I left "final" copy in my desk drawer overnight, because on the following morning I would see great errors and imperfections invisible the night before that I would then correct. Today, copy sits on my laptop overnight and only after rereading and revising does it get presented to the client. Everyone should do this.

But how many people have time for this today? Not many, judging by the state of my mail and my inbox. The trouble is that a huge chunk of business owners, salesmen and third-rate marketing managers with a computer think they can write copy and the dumber they are, the more prone they are to do so.

These idiots don't even know how to use the spell and grammar check tools that are part of their system and as for using the dictionary and thesaurus to make sure they are choosing the right words, one might as well whistle in the wind.

Air Guitar of Copy

Bill Gates has enabled anyone who can't chew gum and fart at the same time to believe they can write copy. Like air guitarists they are pretenders with no skills and they bring our industry into disrepute. They think they are being clever and saving money but all they do is add to the growing criticism of junk mail. However, people rarely complain about well targeted, well written communications. They don't even think of them as direct mail and are seen as personal communications in the same way as a letter from a good friend.

But each sloppy item of direct mail that lands on your doormat drives a nail in the coffin of the industry. In a totalitarian society there would be an easy fix with every copywriter licensed and every letter approved by the Department of Direct Mail, but I don't think this is the answer, as I haven't seen direct mail from North Korea win an award.

Perhaps this is the solution,

Dear Bill Gates,

I'm praying that in the next version of Microsoft Word you will provide an authoritarian proof reader that will stop any dodgy copy being copied, printed or emailed. When found, it would issue a curt reprimand followed by a screen directing the user to the nearest direct marketing agency before wiping clean the idiots hard drive and shutting their computer down. Actually, this last bit should be fairly easy for you as it already happens with monotonous regularity.

Can you do this for me? You have made my job easier with all your tools, but you are making it more difficult for me to make a living by providing the same equipment to fools.

Yours in anticipation,

Ian Dewar

This month I promised the editor a longer article, but he gave me too much time! It was Pascal who ended a letter he had written with the often-quoted phrase, "If I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter." Even though he was a philosopher he understood that in haste we write long and that with time we can write more succinctly and to the point.

So if you want a convincing sales letter, email or webpage, make sure it is written by a specialist and give them enough time to write and review it before it has to be delivered. Your investment will be rewarded and it's quite likely that in ten years time you'll still be allowed to do direct marketing rather than being banned by the government, or finding the mailboxes of your prospects sealed against you.

Are You An Ostrich Or An Eagle?

The Italian Philosopher, Umberto Eco, in his book Serendipities, tells the story of Marco Polo finding a rhinoceros and believing it to be a unicorn, since he had heard of the fictitious unicorn and never heard of a rhinoceros. The problem is that most people in marketing behave like Marco Polo when it comes to accepting new ideas and are much happier following accepted wisdom than discovering new horizons.

You could argue that they are risk averse or like ostriches and bury their heads in the sand when under attack from something they are not familiar with. Where in fact the successful manager soars like an eagle and with pinpoint vision picks out their prey.

When the editor asked me to make some predictions for the direct marketing industry in the months and years ahead I immediately thought about some of the fantastic opportunities that new technology and changing lifestyles would bring to us. But then I paused and considered what I believe to be the truth, which is that managers, ostrich like, will try to use new technology to satisfy the needs and demands of their current problems, rather than harness them in new ways to win customers and grow business.

Take a look at online marketing. For most organisations this is just an extension of what they are doing in the bricks and mortar world. They have a web presence and have added an email address to the snail mail address and phone number they have in their customer database. Then because it is cheaper to send email messages than direct mail communications and because they get a response more quickly, they concentrate online rather than integrate online with other media. This is both foolish and short-sighted, ignoring the essential fact that all of the time, or some of the time, many customers would prefer to receive a letter than an email and even if they didn't, by varying the type of communication a business can create a better dialogue with their customers and extend and develop the relationship with them - which is why we are in business for after all.

$80 BILLION ON SOFTWARE - BETTER SPENT ON COFFEE!

In the past decade $80 billion was spent on software in and around the customer CRM process. But do we have any better understanding of customers? I think not. $80 billion would have been better spent on getting marketing managers out of their offices and visiting their customers for a cup of coffee and a chat so that they had a better idea of what they wanted and how to communicate with them in the future. I say this from the experience of learning more about customers from talking to them as they placed orders on the phone, visiting them to deliver competition prizes and various other person-to-person communications, than any time spent looking at spread sheets or market research.

Actually, perhaps I denigrate marketing managers too much. It's their bosses, the board directors that need to meet the customers so that they understand them and then set strategies for the organisation that concentrates on enhancing the customer experience rather than cost cutting programs designed to deliver short-term shareholder benefit.

But given that $80 billion has been spent on software, there must be so much data out there that the time has come for investment in analytics and automated intelligent communications.

Improved analytical capabilities are needed to segment targeted markets more effectively. To execute effective target marketing campaigns companies need to personalise their messaging as much as possible - not just the name and address, the content as well. This is especially true for email campaigns where prospects and customers can filter messages out forever if they feel they are being spammed.

DIFFERENT WEBSITES FOR MEN & WOMEN

On the automated intelligent communications front, expect to see tools that help create individualised portals for customers and prospects. Gareth Holmes, a UK expert on Search Engine Optimisation and web presence told me that by the end of 2006 I could expect to see home pages that gave the option to visit a version of a website targeted at males or females. This makes a great deal of sense since the use of language; imagery and right and left-brain activity is markedly different between the sexes.

I also expect that data gathered from web visits will be integrated into CRM systems.

We are all becoming accustomed to the fact that viewers are increasingly switching on their computer screens instead of their TV's. This is having dramatic effects on media spend. Online advertising in the UK rose 73% during 2005, taking ad revenues to $2bn - overtaking media such as consumer and business magazines, radio, posters and cinema. And with better segmentation of online viewers, this is bound to increase.

According to Simon Davis, Managing Director of MarketDeveloper a hosted CRM provider, this is all bad news for suppliers of services in the traditional direct marketing arena. Their services are not as sexy as those providing online services and are increasingly being commoditised putting suppliers to the industry such as mail houses, printers, list suppliers, etc. under heavy pricing pressure.

He also expects to see acceleration in the acceptance of hosted CRM systems. The UK is two years behind the US but companies such as Salesforce, NetSuite and his own MarketDeveloper are now getting real traction.

Simon thoughtfully adds that management will continue to exert pressure on direct marketing teams to justify their work through measurable ROI. This is not just about breaking even on recruiting a customer, or an individual mailing; but showing that the entire direct marketing activity including all costs and overheads actually does make a profit. Improved analytics will help towards this measurement and even though we have always known that this is what direct marketing was all about, we have often turned a blind eye to some of the costs or pulled the wool over the eyes of our bosses or clients!

WHAT I'D REALLY LIKE TO HAPPEN

But predictions rarely come true. I'd like to predict that we will do more testing of offers, creative propositions, headlines and copy, just like I did when I first entered the industry. But as each year passes we seem to do less and less of it and put at risk customers, relationships, profits and growth.

I'd like to think that one of the many organisations that have my mobile phone number could do something useful with it. They have data about me, but this has never been used to send me a message while I was shopping in a high street or drinking in a pub, making me a special offer.

I'd like to think that radio frequency identification (RFID) will soon make queuing at supermarket checkouts a thing of the past by automatically scanning my purchases and enabling payment authorisation. Better still, being greeted at the supermarket with my trolley already filled with the items they know I regularly buy leaving me to enjoy the rest of my shopping experience.

Unfortunately, I expect that too many managers will bury their heads in the sand and ignore the opportunities in our brave new digital and data driven world. I hope you won't be one of them and instead grow wings and soar like an eagle.

Getting Personal

As I'm writing this at the turn of the year, I thought I should have a go at predicting what might happen in the direct marketing world, if not in this year, perhaps in years to come. I've also been thinking about the relationships that organisations have with customers and that as the process becomes more automated, it becomes less personal which was never the intention when we embarked on customer relationship management. So here goes.

I remember that when computer personalisation first started, all that could be managed was the printing of names like this in capital letters:

DEAR PER ANDERS PRABERT

It was simple, but had a wonderful effect on response rates and over the past thirty years personalisation has become increasingly sophisticated, not just with typefaces but also with the use of personal information that companies have collected from transactions or purchased from government or other organisations. This has been analysed and profiled in an attempt to make more appropriate offers to customers and prospects.

But in a few years I think that using data like this will seem as laughingly outdated as the upper case personalisation example above. This is not just because computing power has increased, but because there is so much more information out there on the world wide web that can be collected about individuals.

USING THE WEB TO GET MORE PERSONAL

Make a search in Google and in a fraction of a second eight billion web pages are searched. Two billion images are also searched, so suddenly you can find out a lot about Per Anders and see a photo of him. And this is true for an increasing number of people who have left a trail of their presence on the web. For example, search my name and you'll find that I have an interest in contemporary African Music and that my music reviews are quoted on web sites. Suddenly you see a different Ian Dewar with this insight into my life.

Loads more information can be discovered with clever searches. You can search the book, music and DVD reviews at Amazon and perhaps discover something about people's interests and views. There are web sites and forums where people have expressed views about holiday destinations, restaurants, electrical products and the cars they drive.

Take a look at genealogy sites and you can search family trees and see the relationships people have and the names of their partner and children. You can search sites that reunite school and work friends and find out about their education and employment history.

Start searching postcodes, house and telephone numbers and you'll find out even more about a persons lifestyle and get an insight into their wealth.

MUCH BETTER THAN A ONE DIMENSIONAL VIEW

Taken all together, this information would enable you to get a much better idea about what your customers are like and how you should be talking to them. For many organisations, this would be far richer than the simple transactional data that gives a one-dimensional view of the customer, especially if their contact with customers is only occasional.

It only takes a little time to learn how to do these complex searches that return fewer, smarter and more relevant results than the general web searches that most people make. Then it's just a matter of automating these and searching robotically across the web so that customer data can be enriched beyond anything available in 2006. And as every day passes the volume of data that can be searched grows and with it the ability to build an enhanced customer view.

DIRECT MARKETING SHOULDN'T BE A LOTTERY

If you're anything like me, you probably find that over 90% of the direct mail or Email you receive is part of some sort of lottery that organisations play when they mail, not minding what volume they mail as long as they get the tiny response they need to stay in business. It's not just annoying to receive these communications, but over time they diminish the impression of the brands that send it. As an industry, we should be mailing less by working harder to make offers more personal and appropriate to people that will value the communication.

So I look forward to Google, or anyone else who wants to steal this idea, sending their robots across the web and collecting useful data to write to you and I more meaningfully. Then I could look forward to opening my mail again and seeing that I'd been sent an offer of African music or an old malt whisky.