An example of broken customer service

Filed in Customer Service on Aug.04, 2009

Last night I wanted to go to Borders and buy a book.

The only problem was that yesterday was Monday and Borders has made it clear to me that they don’t want me to shop there on Mondays.

Even though I was willing to use a half gallon of gas to drive there and make a purchase.

What stopped me from doing this is that I have a Borders Rewards card.

There are two major ways that the Borders Rewards program is broken.

First you have to remember to print out the coupon they email to you every week and present it at the checkout (or display it via your smartphone).

You can’t just show your plastic Rewards card and automatically get the discount like you do at the grocery store.

But the worst part is that the coupons are almost always valid only Thursday-Sunday.

In other words, it’s as if Borders says: “We don’t want you to shop here Monday-Wednesday.”

There’s a book I wanted to buy last night. But I looked in my email for a Borders coupon, wondering if there was a coupon for today. There was not.

So I ended up buying two books on Amazon instead.

Amazon will take my money 7 days per week and I don’t have to go through hoops to get the discounted price.

So….are you putting up any barriers that make it harder for your customers to buy from you?

Do customers have to go through hoops to place an order?

What are the “rewards” for your customers if they purchase from you? Are they truly rewards?

Those of us running small businesses should be able to rock at customer service in ways that the big businesses don’t.

Never forget: every business is ultimately a customer service business regardless of what type of product or service you sell.

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Marketing Lesson from “The Little Old Lady in Pasadena”

Filed in Stories on Aug.01, 2009

The other day I pulled into a parking space at Trader Joe’s and noticed a white convertible Oldsmobile Cutlass in the space next to me.

It had two doors and looked to be from the late 1960s or early 1970s, making it a muscle car.

I’m not a car enthusiast but I couldn’t help but linger and take a look. Today’s cars all look alike so it’s fun to gaze at such a distinctive-looking car. The top was down and the red interior was very inviting.

Eventually I walked away and noticed an elderly woman, age 80 or so, leave the store and walk in the direction of the Cutlass.

I stopped and watched to see if she would get into the Cutlass.

As I waited I made up stories of how maybe she kept the car for nostalgia (she would have been in her 30s or early 40s when that car was new). Or maybe it belonged to her husband and she takes it for a spin sometimes in the summer, like the Little Old Lady in Pasadena.

I couldn’t help but think how cool it would be to watch her get into that muscle car, wearing a floral print dress and cardigan, and drive away.

But, alas, the black Toyota next to the Cutlass was her vehicle.

I shouldn’t have been surprised. I’ve written copy for the muscle car niche before and know full well that the target market for muscle cars is Baby Boomer men. One doesn’t normally see 80 year old women driving muscle cars.

I made a mental note to myself afterwards: “elderly ladies don’t drive muscle cars.” I told myself to remind myself of that the next time I got excited about a product idea before doing market research.

So what happened two weeks later?

I noticed a white Ford Mustang from the 1960s ahead of me and, lo and behold, there was an elderly lady driving it.

Woo hoo!

This reminded me of how no amount of research or marketing theory or advice from a gooroo can tell you for certain if a product will sell or if you’ve nailed the message to market match.

Your market will always keep you on your toes.

That’s why marketing almost always feels like a crapshoot. So you gotta just enjoy the ride. And in my case I’m wondering more and more if my ride should be a muscle car even though I’m not an old lady yet. ;-)

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Do you have an underhand serve at the ready for your business?

Filed in Uncategorized on Jul.22, 2009

My favorite marketing lessons are the ones that can be applied to our personal lives as well as our businesses.

I also like it when the marketing lessons come from unexpected sources. Like tennis. :D

I admit that when I watched a two minute video of Michael Chang from the 1989 French Open the other night I didn’t expect to glean three marketing (and real life) lessons from it, but, happily, I did.

Back in the 1980s and 1990s, Steffi Graf and Martina Navratilova were my favorite tennis players but I always had a soft spot for Michael Chang.

Why? His performance at the 1989 French Open, of course.

Sure, it’s cool that he won it at only the age of 17, the youngest ever to win a Grand Slam. Anyone who followed tennis in the 80s and 90s knows that fact.

But of greater interest to me is how he performed earlier in that tournament against Ivan Lendl, who was ranked #1 at the time. Everyone thought Lendl would win.

Chang lost the first two sets and trailed in the third set, heaping more fuel on the belief that Lendl wouldn’t lose.

Then in the fourth set Chang suffered severe muscle cramps and really had loser written all over him at that point.

But get this: Chang was the one in severe pain yet the one who started cursing, questioning the empire and became visibly distraught was Lendl, not Chang.

Remember, Lendl was the #1 player and not in pain, so why did he get so rattled?

You see, Chang reacted to his pain by doing 3 things that we should all consider doing when in a painful situation or experiencing a dip/rut in our business:

1. Ignore the prevailing assumptions and be different.

Assumption: Pro tennis players ALWAYS use overhand serves.

Chang played an underhand serve during one of his serves and it really rattled Lendl. Lendl lost that point.

Assumption: Pro tennis players ALWAYS return serves from near the baseline.

During the final and most important point of the match, Chang didn’t stand at the baseline. Instead he stood almost inside the service box, in the area usually known as “no man’s land” in tennis. It’s suicide to return a serve as powerful as Lendl’s from that area of the court.

Lendl moaned to the official about Chang’s position on the court and then proceeded to double fault instead of serving up one of his famous aces. Chang won the match.

2. Practice the Discipline of Disillusionment. In other words, he saw his situation as it really was, not as he wished it would be, and acted accordingly.

So instead of just sucking it up, shrugging off the pain and trying to play through it, he thoroughly acknowledged his situation and didn’t mind looking silly doing things like playing a sissy underhand serve.

3. Quickly adapt to change and have a contingency plan. I very much doubt Chang entered the match thinking he’d hit a bunch of moon balls, use an underhand serve and stand well up from the baseline when returning a Lendl serve.

But as a result of his sudden pain he chose to react by adapting and improvising.

Chang went on to win the French Open seven days later. I bet the match against Lendl and making it through that severe dip had a lot to do with his ultimate victory.

Below is the two minute video of the highlights of Chang’s victory.

But first let me ask: Do you have an underhand serve at the ready for your business?

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What’s your autoresponder problem?

Filed in Autoresponders, Email Copywriting, Email Marketing on Jul.02, 2009

If you have an email list, I’d love to hear what your biggest problem is in creating emails for your list.

I created a short survey with only three questions about your biggest autoresponder problem and what would help you solve it.

It should take you only a minute (literally) to fill out the survey. I’d greatly appreciate it if you would. Click Here to take survey

Feel free to leave a comment here instead if you prefer.

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A peek inside my copywriting tool box

Filed in Uncategorized on Jun.13, 2009

There are several free tools I use on a daily basis while writing email copy and today I will show you what they are.

After I finish an email draft I go to Format-it to set the column width (55 characters in most cases). There is free software out there that does the same thing, such as XmailWrite and Text Pad, but all of these are more complicated to use. If you use Format-It be sure to paste the email into Notepad afterwards before transferring it to your document, otherwise the formating won’t stick.

Online thesauruses are a must and my favorites are Visuwords and FreeThesaurus.net, which is supposedly the largest thesaurus out there.

I love this headline analyzer. It measures the Emotional Marketing Value of your headline and assigns a score to it and tells you which emotions it evokes in your customer. I use it for email subject lines as well.

What are your favorite free copywriting tools?

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How to make a lifelong impression in one minute

Filed in Stories on May.13, 2009

Even from many feet away - I was at one end of the grocery aisle and she was at the other end - I could tell she was chic and elegant and the most beautiful woman I had seen in quite some time.

It was a cold winter day and I had been in no mood for grocery shopping but suddenly I felt grateful to be in the store and standing in the same aisle as this woman.

She walked regally down the aisle and was wearing black dress pants in a current style, black boots with 2″ spiky heels and an elegant long winter coat. She was slim and her posture was perfect.

She was very tall, perhaps 6 feet tall or more in her heels.

Her all-white hair was stunning.

White as in gray, that is. Not platinum blond.

Oh and she carried a sleek black cane that she used for support when necessary.

She was 80-years-old or so.

As she passed by she made eye contact with both of my young daughters and smiled at them as if she was completely delighted to see them.

Then she looked at me and gave me a “way to go mom!” type of smile.

No words were exchanged between us but my spirits were lifted on that cold day and I could tell this is a woman I would love to know for more than the one minute I was granted in her presence.

After she passed by I turned around and stared at her for several seconds.

All kinds of questions raced through my mind and I longed to know some of her story.

Why was she wearing heels when she was using a cane? Why did she need a cane? What was she like when she was younger (chic and elegant, I bet)? I was sure she had raised children because only a mom would smile at me and my kids the way she did.

There are many people who know this woman by name, know her so well. To me she is just the “chic and elegant woman at the grocery store” yet her impression will be a lasting one.

I want to be like her when I’m that age, not just chic and elegant, but encouraging toward strangers.

When I find myself slouching I sometimes think of her and start sitting up straighter.

When I feel lazy about doing yoga or other exercise I sometimes think of her (as well as other inspiring elderly woman I’ve known) and get off my duff and exercise.

Today, thanks to social media and the internet, we have access to more strangers than ever.

At any given time you might be creating a lasting memory for someone without realizing it. Maybe in a video, a blog post, an email, a phone conversation… or just in the way you stroll down a grocery store aisle.

If you want those memories to be lasting ones, and positive ones, then just focus on valuing the person. Value the person more than your profits, your agenda, your traffic, and you’ll be all set.

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Want to improve your sales skills? Go grocery shopping with a little kid

Filed in Email Copywriting on May.06, 2009

I am not even kidding (as my seven-year-old would say).

Go shopping with a little kid and watch how masterful they are at upselling and cross-selling and outright selling. Even if the child is normally as stoic as Sam Sheepdog they will turn into a selling machine in the grocery store.

To be able to stand back and observe what they are doing without pulling out your hair requires heroic levels of emotional detachment, but it’s worth it.

A few months ago I went grocery shopping with my two youngest children (ages 5 & 6 at the time) and kept track of all their upsells and cross-sells. We were in the store less than 15 minutes and they attempted 14 upsells and cross-sells, which would have added $30 or more to my bill, easily.

Kids are smart. If, say, you put Velveeta in your cart to use in a soup, they will notice that there are no crackers in the cart and start cross-selling you on that.

If you put bread, peanut butter and grape jelly into your car and foolishly assume that’s adequate, they will start cross-selling you on buying Nutella chocolate hazelnut spread (I told you kids are smart).

My kids went through a phase of trying to sell me on buying popsicles in January. Any time we’d pass the frozen section they’d launch into a chorus of why they needed popsicles.

“It’s too cold out, you won’t be able to eat them outside, and they will make too much of a mess inside,” was my argument against that idea.

“Oh, don’t worry, we won’t get the kind on the sticks, we’ll get the ones in plastic that you slide up as you eat, then there’s no mess! Please? PLEASE??? They will cheer us up and make us think of summer!”

See, kids can even spot the hidden benefits. They’re smart.

So I recommend you take a little kid to the grocery store sometime and pay attention to their sales skills.

A word of warning, however: avoid the toy aisle.

I am not even kidding.

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How’s Your Copywriting Math?

Filed in Email Copywriting on Apr.29, 2009

Here’s a quick math test for you:

Are you adding to the businesses and products you write for?

Or are you subtracting?

Are you multiplying?

Or are you dividing?

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The Mel Blanc of Copywriting

Filed in Stories on Apr.28, 2009

I suppose you are curious about that title, especially if you are a Looney Tunes fan. I’ll get to that in one minute and 37 seconds. (Yes I timed how long it takes to read from this point until that point. I’m weird that way.)

I write about my clients’ stories every day and realized I should pause and talk about my own story, as a way to give you a reason why you should give this blog even the merest edge of attention.

I have been a short copy specialist ever since I learned to write. When my mom would go off to her part time job as a nurse I would sit at her desk and write her short notes about our dog’s misbehavior, the foods I carefully avoided eating during dinner, and other such enthralling details.

During my teens I wrote lots and lots and LOTS of poetry. I also read Erma Bombeck’s humor columns and books and dreamed of becoming a syndicated humor columnist someday (Erma Bombeck was a famous syndicated columnist from the late 1960s until her death in the late 1990s). I think I wore out the library’s copy of a cassette tape of a Writer’s Digest interview in which she discussed in great detail how she wrote her 450 word columns three times per week. (Is it a coincidence that much of my email copy ends up being 450 words? Hmmmm.)

I went to college at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and majored in English. Being a short copy specialist it was always hard for me to write my papers the prescribed length for I always made my point quickly. During this time I also wrote movie reviews for the Badger Herald, a campus newspaper. It was during an independent study course with the late Prof. Alexander Chambers that I really learned to cut my chops as a writer. He assigned a paper each week and didn’t care how long or short it was (yay!) but would dramatically mark up each paper in red ink before my eyes during each session (ouch!). Then, at the final session, he dramatically refused to remove the red pen from his drawer, fully confident that it would be unnecessary. That was the highlight of my college career.

After college graduation I did indeed start writing humor columns in local weekly newspapers in Massachusetts and Wisconsin. I did this for about 15 years, for very little pay, but it helped to perfect my short copy skills.

I was an online bookseller for three of those years, selling used books on eBay and Amazon. I wrote literally thousands of product descriptions for the books I sold and learned the internet ropes as well as blogging.

Then in 2005 I discovered that freelance copywriting existed as a career. And that it had the potential to pay well and give me the opportunity to work from home for clients all over the world. Huzzah! I set about to learn the craft from a variety of sources, books and coaches, including AWAI, Michel Fortin, Jay White and many copywriting colleagues on Michel Fortin’s Copywriters Board.

Since the fall of 2007 I have been an email copy specialist, which means I discover and write the stories of my clients and their products.

One way of describing it is to say that I’m the Mel Blanc of copywriting. On any given day I’m writing emails for a variety of clients, and they all have very different voices.

(By the way, Mel Blanc did most of the voices for the Looney Tunes characters and was known as the “man of 1000 voices”).

My clients’ voices are as distinct from each other as, say, Sam Sheepdog’s, Pepe Le Pew’s, Tweety Bird’s, Bugs Bunny’s, Mr. Spacely’s and Speedy Gonzalez’s are from each other.

Because email is a personal medium, even in a business, it’s important for me to capture my clients’ voices in my copywriting, in addition to using the proper techniques to tell their story and increase response and click thru rates. Many of my clients retain my services month after month so I’m always thinking of how to weave the things I read and experience into my copy and in the appropriate voice.

Few copywriters specialize in email copy, preferring long copy sales pages. Fine by me. More fun for me that way.

If you’d like me to write email copy in your voice, and obsess over creating stories for you, just hit the contact button over in the right sidebar. I’m pretty busy but I might have room for your project.

Anyway, as Mel used to say, “That’s all folks.”

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How Trader Joe’s toilet paper can improve your copywriting

Filed in Email Copywriting on Apr.20, 2009

When I was checking out at Trader Joe’s the other day the clerk pointed to the toilet paper roll package and said, “Have you read the story on the package? It’s hilarious.”

I’m always a sucker for a good story. Also, as a copywriter, I’m always up for getting inspiration from anywhere, even from a toilet paper package, so I read it as I walked out of the store.

Here’s what the front of the package says:

Image and video hosting by TinyPic

There are several people in the illustration and there’s obviously some sort of party going on. Trader Joe’s leaves the details to your imagination.

Now for the best part. The side of the package has this:

Image and video hosting by TinyPic

I love the pithy headline and the hyperbole. Moreover, Trader Joe’s copywriters are clearly having fun with the copy and I’ll take this over toilet paper with bears or clouds or babies on it any day.

It reminds me of perhaps the most fun I’ve ever had writing copy. When a friend of mine was moving a couple of years ago she tried renting a shop vac at the last minute but was unable to and cleaning up the mess without one was a major ordeal for her.

I told her she should have asked to borrow mine and wrote a quick sales letter with a mega headline touting all the benefits of my shop vac and emailed it to her.

I wrote it to amuse my friend but it ended up being a great exercise, to take an everyday object and find the benefits and write about them in an exaggerated way. Give it a try sometime.

P. S. Thanks to my oldest daughter for taking these photos. She didn’t bat an eyelash or ask any questions when I asked her to please photograph this toilet paper package for me. Gotta love that. ;-)

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