Get Closer

Feeling Loved not Targeted... Good Email Marketing from CDBaby

This email came from CDBaby this morning...It's got a little bit of irony, a little bit of flattery, a little bit of self-deprecation---all of which, combined with the highly targeted music recommendations keyed off my earlier purchases, work perfectly for ME. Which is, of course, the point given that the email was sent to ME! CDBaby seems to be doing a good job listening to their targeting/data-mining technologies and then putting a very human layer of communications on top--so that as an email recipient you don't feel targeted but loved.  Here's the email.

Hi Barak -

Last time you were at CD Baby, we all stopped to admire your fine taste in music. (A few of the guys in the warehouse still say, "Remember Barak? Yeah, those were the days...") Now, months later, I finally summoned up the courage to tell you about a few albums I think you'll love:

 FRANK LONDON: A Night in the Old Marketplace http://cdbaby.com/cd/franklondon This brilliant theatrical score mixes Jewish, jazz and world beats and an eclectic collection of singers from NY's underground scene, to Celtic legend Susan McKeown and They Might be Giants.

CONSUELO LUZ: Adio http://cdbaby.com/cd/consueloluz3 She returns to her roots with these sensual and mystical Sephardic Ladino songs weaving a haunting tapestry of Hebrew kabbalistic prayers, Latin flamenco ballads, South American indigenous flutes, Middle Eastern oud, classical melodies.

 JERUSALEM AMSTERDAM HEIDELBERG CONSPIRACY: DREAM8 http://cdbaby.com/cd/ofer8 Jazz meets Klezmer and goes on tour in Germany. Contrabass and acoustic guitar with whiffs of accordion provide a foundation for healing in the Kabbalist tradition of nigunim and soul transformation. Touches of Flamenco on Cajon, Palmas and Arabian Nay.

These are all available as either CD or full MP3. (If you haven't tried our full-album MP3 option yet, read about it here: http://cdbaby.com/mp3 It works in every MP3 player, with no restrictions.)

 If those aren't enough, maybe your new love-of-your-life album is found in...

 Editor's Picks http://cdbaby.com/picks

 Top Sellers http://cdbaby.com/topnow

 The $5 Sale http://cdbaby.com/sale Just click a Style/Genre to start browsing.

And if none of that is good enough for you, well... just type your favorite famous artist into "sounds like", here - http://cdbaby.com/search - and I'm sure we can help.

Thanks!
-
Derek Sivers, president, CD Baby

http://cdbaby.com cdbaby@cdbaby.com

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It's a Toy, It's a Sculpture, It's Got a MySpace Profile

I bought some Babel Blocks (a slightly hard-to-characterize-exactly sculpture-toy) at the new Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco last week. Chen, Jose, Mary, Moishe and Nafisa (there are more!) are inspired by the people on the streets of the NYC according to producer/manufacturer Boym Partners. Each character has his/her own Myspace profile waiting to be befriended by you!! , they live in a bunch of cool online music videos (see below) and they're also hanging out in the "physical" world (in my case my dining room).  It's another nice example of digital and physical  blending into one reality. What's really relevant to marketers here is that you gotta believe the Boym people conceived of this product/idea/marketing initiative from the start as ONE thing---product is one, marketing is one, digital is one, physical is one... it all works together, communicates together. (And yes, it is ironic, that the product is called Babel).

"Psychology Today" magazine... Could be "Marketing Today" magazine

"Psychology Today" magazine... Could be "Marketing Today" magazi, originally uploaded by bkassar.

Snapped this picture the other day... this isn't easy to do.. but a lot of what we do at rassak is helping companies figure this out.. and do it.

The Stickers vs. the Logo

Uber-techie and uber-blogger Robert Scoble recently posted  pictures of two of his laptops online and they are wall-to-walled with stickers. If his computers had wheels they'd be NASCAR cars (except the brands on Scoble's PCs aren't mega ones like Pennzoil, UPS or Wonder Bread, but much smaller ones like Google Sketchup, Amazon Web Services and DataPortability.org...  also, Scoble says these groups don't pay him "for placement" they're  companies/ products/ organizations/ ideas that turn him on.) He'll probably keep stickering... he says is Lenovo laptop is still pristine.

           

Here are Scoble's computers, a Mac and a Dell (not that you'de know, of course... the logos are long-buried by the stickers). If you click the   pictures and link over to Flickr you can read little popup messages   about each sticker--plus read loads of  comments including ones with pictures of others' laptops and stickers.

Stickers are an increasingly big part of digital culture. They let people personalize their "hardware" and express themselves.

And given that laptops are often open in public (cafes, airports, schools, work) the outside of laptops are valuable real estate. Laptop manufacturers have figured this out and have made their logos much more prominent on the outside of their machines.

Many people actually use stickers to "unbrand" their laptops by covering over the manufacturer's logo. Some laptop makers now design the outside of their machines as full-scale works of art (with their logo of course) which are less likely to be stickered over.

If you're a laptop manufacturer you want to mean enough to people to not be covered up. And if you're anyone else, you want to mean enough to warrant a sticker.

How do you mean enough? A'ha that's the sticky  part :-)

LinkedOut. Quality over Quantity

LinkedIn is a pretty powerful part of a digital marketer's toolkit---especially when you consider an integrated marketing approach that ties everything together and leverages every ounce of communication juice a company has. That's because LinkedIn can be used by the people in your organization to strengthen their own personal and professional networks and therefore your company's---especially if you arm them with the right stuff/words/attitude. (BTW, here's just one way I personally use LinkedIn---lots of good examples there, scroll down for mine if you like.) A big aspect of how people use LinkedIn is who they choose to connect to. Yesterday I actually removed a couple of connections. They're people I've never actually met and they seemed to be connected to EVERYONE. And invariably when I'd search for somebody I wanted to meet, there these two people would be as my possible connection. I found myself never asking to be connected through them---either choosing another route or seeking a direct connection. So I deLinked. It felt good. I might be doing more of it.

The Right Idea from the "Wrong Coast"... Worth a Read

East Coast VC Josh Koppelman has some great ideas and concrete examples for using email to market the right way. Check it out. He talks about "using the algorithm" with precise targeting, measurement, etc. and then putting a very human face on top of the technology. Using the algorithm to present the right face to the right people at the right time...

Is Web 2.0 Getting Simpler to Use? Will It Mean Broader Adoption of Social Features?

Maybe. Here's some indication in the  simplified "do more with this page" menu on the webpage for the current Web 2.0 Expo  (on this week in San Francisco). The web designers broke the menu down into three icons, each one offering a simple, plain-english choice once clicked. Without getting into whether these are the best icons and the best choices, the idea of "less-is-more" in a web 2.0 environment is powerful. So many web 2.0 sites/services are characterized by a surplus of choice, making it confusing for the uninitiated to really know what's up and what to do---putting a drag on growth and usage.  This approach, as it's refined, could signal that the chasm might be about to be crossed. What do you think???

You Seem To Have Already Purchased the Product

An important component of the work we do at Rassak is recognizing and working around the fact that the audiences our customers aim to connect with are frazzled beyond belief. That's life... we're all busy and not necessarily paying attention as well as we should/could---certainly we're not paying as much attention to those marketing to us as those who are marketing to us would like.  Usually my conversations about this subject have to do with getting and keeping customers' attention via stand-out creative work and ongoing, respectful relationships.  Well... I just stumbled upon a nice example of the latter. ExpensAble, Inc. makes a handy product for tracking expenses while on the road. I knew I'd tried the product once before, but had totally forgotten that I'd actually bought it a year ago (I burn through laptops and don't always remember which software I had). Anyway... today I decided I need ExpensAble and requested a free trial off their site to get started. I got a warning on the page in red letters that said I'd already downloaded the software... as I started to read I was thinking "grrrrrrrrr, they're not going to let me try this again, how annoying, time to dig for the credit card , where is it?!?!?!?" Instead the warning went on to say that it appears I bought the software and they're about to email me a link to the download and my confirmation code (see screengrab below). Nice. Very nice, in fact. That warning message probably didn't cost too much to code into the website and they bought at least my loyalty for a long time. I'll remember ExpensAble over their competitors and talk about them. That's marketing.

 

Many-to-Many Media Opportunities in Professional Sports

Virtual reality meet actual reality ....

My 10-year old (that's him messing with me in the photo) loves soccer  (playing, watching, and reading about the game). He also loves soccer video games, including playing manager, which he can do with Electronic Art's FIFA '08.

The other Sunday I heard excited shouts: "I signed Schweinsteiger, I signed Schweinsteiger."  He'd negotiated to bring a virtual version of Bayern Munich midfielder Bastian Schweinsteiger on board his virtual team. He was soon playing Schweinsteiger and the rest of his team against the computer's virtual team.

Now, for £35, my son can make (or at least contribute to) personnel decisions on a real team, Ebbsfleet United. Through an arrangement with online community myfootballclub.co.uk, real people can pick real team members from the comfort of their home computers. It's conceptually similar to picking a  virtual video game team---except the players and the outcome happen with actual humans on an actual pitch. Details can be found in this Max Colchester story in the  Wall Street Journal story (registration might be required).

Both experiences (FIFA and Ebbsfleet) offer, or will offer, new ways of connecting with consumers in the digital era. Much has already been written about so-called "in-game" advertising (as in the FIFA example).  I'm fascinated by the new community-media opportunities afforded by the Ebbsfleet development.

Professional sports have for a long time been a major media business---in the traditional one-to-many broadcast/endorsement media model. Could Ebbsfleet (and a few other similar examples mentioned in the WSJ story) be an early example of professional sports becoming a many-to-many community media opportunity similar to what's developing with Facebook, Digg and other websites?

Target!

This Christmas I got everything I needed, and everything I thought I needed: Sheets, socks, a slow cooker, an orange juicer, night cream, and a gift card at Target. The list does go on. And I realized that getting it right when it comes to giving gifts is a lot like marketing; it's all about getting closer to the people that matter most to you. This means going to a little extra work, doing some more research to figure out exactly what they need, or think they need, most. And in return, a smile, love, attention, a sale. We're all looking for something.

I was doing some last minute shopping at Target a few days before Christmas when I realized I was being followed. My mother's boyfriend, Bob, and his kids had spotted me and my cart and had been spying on me to see what I was admiring, maybe wanting. From an aisle away I heard Bob's son Patrick tell his dad, "I saw her looking at this slow cooker in this color and she said, and I quote, 'This is really cool.'" It was true; I was talking to myself. That's market research! They studied my actions to discover my wants/needs/tastes and they were indeed rewarded as I cruised the aisles for their gifts, with a smirk on my face.