Twitter Tweets On 2008-09-05
- is preparing for the Melbourne platinum group think tank this morning (and my wife’s parent’s 50th wedding anniversary tonight!) #
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Check Your Messages Make Sense
Online selling platforms like eBay include some great automation tools, as eBay magician Matt Clarkson pointed out on the weekend at the eBay workshop he and wife Amanda presented on the Gold Coast.
For example, Selling Manager Pro includes a handy feature to help automate the messages sellers can send out during the buying process once an item has been sold.
I got one of these emails today from a seller, for an item I purchased for my wife Mel on the weekend.
It started like this:
Subject: Thank you for your payment. eBay item #____________ “name of the item”
Dear (eBay user),
We hope you enjoy your purchase. Your payment has been received for the following item:
(A table showing the Item title, Web Address, Item number, Buyer User ID, Seller User ID and total price.)
Thank you very much. Your business is much appreciated.
Please send payment for eBay purchase.
I accept the following payment method: PayPal, Money Transfer, Money Order/Cashiers Cheque
Please go to the URL below to complete payment: (linked eBay payment address)
Did you notice the error?
First of all, it starts off by saying thanks for my payment. That’s a good automated email to send as a courtesy, which establishes a little rapport (even without a personalised message).
And then it describes the payment received and the related item.
That’s great too — confirmation I did pay for the correct item as a buyer.
But then, it falls apart.
The message tells me to send payment, the acceptable payment methods and a link to paying via eBay.
I’ve already paid! So asking me here to pay again doesn’t make any sense. (For some inexperienced users, that may cause confusion and affect the buyer-seller relationship).
In fact, it would have been better from a marketing perspective to have a link back to the seller’s other items (or their store if they had one — in this case they do have an eBay store) … to encourage further purchases.
If you’re going to use automated templates (or any other manual or sequenced series of messages), make sure you check and verify yourself that the messages make sense from the buyer’s point of view.
Twitter Tweets On 2008-08-28
- Settling in to our Gold Coast hotel after a slightly bumpy landing at OOL! Nice sunset views of the Hinterland! #
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Aircraft Safety Anomaly
While we were hurtling over New South Wales today at 939 km/hour and 10,721 metres off the ground on our Virgin Blue flight (in Sardine Class) to Coolangatta, I was thinking about the safety demonstration the cabin crew go through at the start of every flight (as you would when your mind wanders during downtime on flights in Sardine Class!
The first thing the cabin crew do is advise that you should pay careful attention to the safety demonstration/presentation, no matter what your flying experience. Then, they advise that each person has a safety card in the seat pocket in front of them and that you should look through it BEFORE take-off.
You are, of course, already taxiing to the runway.
They then continue with the rest of the demonstration — seatbelts, life jackets, exits etc … yet verbally they just told you to stop paying attention and read the safety card before take-off, which is looming rather fast!
How can you possible follow both conflicting instructions? Shouldn’t they ask you to read the safety card AFTER you’ve watched the rest of the demonstration?
As we’re now in the Litigious Age of mankind, isn’t that a potentially costly safety sequence? Someone gets injured, because their seatbelt wasn’t properly fastened, and they sue the airline as the cabin crew told them to read the safety card instead of watching how to correctly fasten the seatbelt … I’m surprised no-one has considered this issue (especially the legal or insurance types who work for the airlines)!
To me, this relates strongly at times to copywriting — saying the right things in the right sequence. Get it out of order, and you can reduce your response.
Done For You Banking
With the amount of “noise” in online marketing there’s not much these days that gets into my inbox for my direct attention. Most incoming mail is heavily filtered into folders: I’ll look at it if and when I think it’s worthwhile. I’m very protective of my inbox and it ensures I remain focused on what matters to me.
One of the emails that I do allow that privilege is the weekly Springwise newsletter of new business ideas: based on what subscribers spot and report from around the world. Along with its sister site, Trend Watching (monthly briefings on emerging consumer trends), it’s great entrepreneurial juice for the brain. Ideas sprout from the Springwise website daily, but I’m happy to take in a weekly digest.
This week again included a great idea for “done for you” style marketing: this time for wealthy clients of a private bank (Insinger de Beaufort in Amsterdam). As it says in the article, the bank realised many of its wealthy clients lacked the time or patience to deal with their personal finances — so it found a simple and convenient way to solve that problem. The bank even takes care of the entire follow-up process, including paying the bills, filing tax returns and processing business expenses!
And here’s another stroke of brilliance about this idea:
Sensing a gap in the market, Insinger de Beaufort offers its shoebox service to clients at other banks, too.
Where can you add “done for you” into your services? A related service? Something else your client normally has to do in the overall process? This should spark a ton of cross-marketing ideas with complementary businesses, to come up with your own “simple” and “easy” examples.