Jon Bell

on December 13, 2007

category: creative

Senior Copywriter

Are you a pseudoneologist?

Maybe you heard that the word of the year is w00t. Word of the year, according to Merriam-Webster, that is.

If you, like me, aren't familiar with gamer terms, w00t — spelled with zeroes, rhymes with root — is what players of Dungeons and Dragons tabletop role-playing game say when they're happy. It originally meant "Wow, loot!" Now it means "yay!" (If this is about D&D, shouldn't it be the word of 1997?)

So why zeroes? It's easier to get to the zero than the "o" on a phone keypad. Duh.

My coworkers will tell you that I'm a pseudoneologist, that is, someone who makes up new words. Like "pseudoneologist." You can look it up ... but you won't find it.

Unlike "w00t," my made-up words tend to be more self-explanatory. When I say "I think we need to orange-ify this part of the ad," everyone knows that means to make it orangier. If I ask about uncrunchelating some copy, it's obvious I want to give it a little more space. Air it out. Freshen it up.

When I'm talking I make up words when I can't find the right one. When writing, I really am a word snob. The right word choices are important. Marketers can't afford to write copy that makes the reader guess ... or work too hard to get the meaning.

Remember, in advertising: design captures the attention, but copy is what sells. Then the client says, "Wow! Loot!"
 

Comments:

12/19/2007 at 6:52 p.m.
133t!
Hehe, close... "w00t" is a product of Leet, or Leetspeak. It's based on orthography, using substitutions of other characters, letters or otherwise, to represent a letter or letters in a word. It used to just be language used in the 80's on BBS or IRC for hackers or sysops to defeat text filters when talking about "naughty" topics, like hacking, or just for them to seem cooler than everyone else. Now it's in the mainstream, particularly on MMORPGs (for you noobs out there, that's Massively Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Game.) Lolz!
>>Andi Blija, Bellevue WA

David Nova

on December 12, 2007

category: miscellaneous

Director, Human Resources

Inspiring your people

How do you create an organization that inspires people to do their best? I'll give you a few tips:

1. You need an inspiring goal. Something everyone can relate to; get excited about and channel their passion. Be it DM print or interactive. Help your employees to cultivate that goal. Reaffirm it on a daily basis (e.g., we do what's best for the client). A mantra.
2. You need people who believe the goal is attainable and they'll stop at nothing in order to attain it. They might need to stretch and get creative to figure out how to get there. Some of these people you'll find in house, others need to be hired.
3. Finally, develop a system for measuring, tracking and rewarding their efforts. When I joined Hacker, one of my first lessons in direct marketing was: "What gets measured gets done". Rewarding desired performance, including innovation and risk taking, shows you trust people and gives them a sense of empowerment to be more accountable for their future actions.

That's a unique aspect of Hacker Group. We're always looking for smart, talented people with a passion for reaching their goals. They try something, measure it, fix it, and try again.

Sure, the money is nice. But if you ask them, they'll tell you they're part of something special. They reward the client and themselves.

That's how you inspire your people!
 

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Carolyn Hansen

on December 11, 2007

category: direct marketing

Vice President/Marketing

Emotion-phobia

Do you have an irrational fear of fear? Your phobia may be making you a less effective marketer, pulling down your response rates and impacting the profitability of your campaigns.

Many, many years ago, I worked for a software company as a marketing copywriter. The vast majority of people there were software engineers. The business owner was, too. She's a brilliant woman and I learned a lot from her — including that it's harder to break software than you might think. She would insist that I play with every part of the systems they were developing, so that I could describe everything the software did. No feature was too minor to mention.

The other thing I learned in my brief-ish tenure there is engineers have emotions just like the rest of us. They just have a harder time admitting it.

Engineers want to believe they base all decisions on a rational set of pros and cons. As long as I'm generalizing, I'll go on and presume this is true of a majority of intelligent, highly educated folks — like marketers and CMOs. We'd feel a little weird saying, "It just looked so cool I had to have it."

It would be even harder to say, "I thought there was a chance I'd (look like an idiot/lose my job/lose my nest egg) if I didn't buy it."

All of us are motivated emotionally. One of the biggest emotional drivers is fear. That surge of adrenaline you get when you realize you've forgotten something important comes from fear. It can physically lift you out of your seat without you being conscious of getting up.

Emotional motivation is a powerful marketing tool. Greed can make us work hard, but fear of loss is an even stronger motivator than want of gain.

As protectors of our clients' brands, we don't want to appear to pander to people's darkest emotions. On the other hand, if you believe your product is helpful to people, putting the full picture in front of them — including the potential negative consequences of ignoring your message — is of benefit to them. If it strikes an emotional chord, they'll feel good about your brand.

Go ahead and raise the emotional temperature of your marketing materials. If you don't, you'll leave money on the table.
 

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Brian Gilbert

on December 4, 2007

category: integrated marketing

Vice President/Integrated Marketing

What in the world are you measuring?

Recently EmailStatCenter.com released results from an August survey that indicate that email marketing "professionals ranked click through rate and deliverability as the most important metrics to track."

Third on the list was conversion rate and measuring ROI was fourth in importance on the list. Revenue was sixth out of eight options. Yikes! Can you believe this?

It's as if most email marketing pros are more concerned with getting people to click on emails than they are whether their campaigns are actually performing their most important function – DELIVERING REVENUE! Wake up people! Isn't that the function of marketing – to help drive sales? Feed the beast.

As an e-marketing professional, I have to be grateful for my roots and passion for direct marketing. These survey answers would be comparable to stating that measuring the performance of a direct mail campaign is most importantly gauged by whether the mail entered the USPS stream successfully and a consumer opened the envelope. Ummm, last time I checked, I'd get bounced out of the room (and out of a job) if I suggested that ROI and revenue were in the middle of the pack of key metrics.

I am picturing conversations out there…

“Sorry, boss. I know we're not hitting our revenue target for the quarter and profit is down, but I got 18,000 click-thru's to my blog and 7,200 downloads of my widget – isn't that fantastic?”

“No, Spam boy, it isn't. We're in the business of making money, not measuring clicks. Figure it out.”

Perhaps I'm being unfair.

It's hard to know whether every email sent had a revenue component. I guess a newsletter email without a transactional offer might not have a revenue goal. Yeah, that might explain some of it.

Or alternatively, this could be an indication that while many companies have figured out how to launch email campaigns, they struggle with the technology that can actually link email activity into site or commerce behavior.

Or this could point to a structural problem organizations haven't fixed yet. Perhaps email marketers can't make the leap to measuring performance by revenue and ROI because ecommerce revenue is the domain of the “web team” and not marketing – similar to the “over the transom” mentality we see every day between Marketing and Sales departments. “Not my job.” Do you say that? I hope not.

Who knows . . . I'm still baffled by these results – and I'm grasping at straws to justify the results.

At least the responders to the study were honest in their answers. They rank Strategy/Planning as very high on the list of challenges these marketers face.

Wow. I couldn't have said it better myself.
 

Comments:

12/8/2007 at 11:39 a.m.
You Gotta Wanna
You’re right Brian, it is alarming when no none wants to connect the dots on ROI for email marketing campaigns. I have found that there are two reasons why people don’t do things: 1. They don’t know how. 2. They Don’t want to. Maybe it is their reliance on CRM systems that may deliver leads but don’t close the loop and produce a sales results. Let’s face it, when it comes to accountability, many people don’t want to take the risk. Jim Lenskold’s book on ROI is still the best out there but someone has to read it to make an attempt. We formed the Sales Lead Management Association www.salesleadmgmtassn.com just for the reason of bringing a spot light on the failure to manage leads even while companies spend millions on CRM systems. Keep up the pressure Brian, maybe someone will listen: ROI counts and always will. Jim Obermayer Sales Lead Management Association
>>James Obermayer, Orange CA