Tom Markiewicz

This is one of the worst marketing emails I’ve seen in a while:

Priceline.com wants me to fill out a survey for a recent car rental I made through their site. Simple and innocent enough at first glance.

What really bothers me with this email is their reason why I should fill out the survey.

Usually, I hesitate to fill out any survey unless I have had a bad experience. If I’ve had a positive or neutral experience, I usually ignore these unless there is some offer, reward, or benefit for me (i.e. improved customer service in the future).

Priceline.com, on the other hand, says I’ll get “good karma” for filling out their survey. This is a ridiculous marketing message. I’ll give you, a for-profit business, more information to improve and generate more revenue. In return, I get “karma”. Are you kidding me?

Don’t insult me. If they had left this wording off, I might have actually clicked on that brief survey and provided some information. After reading that statement, I was turned off by the approach.

The sad part is that I actually had a great experience renting a car through Priceline and would definitely recommend them to anyone looking to save some money on a car rental.

I know many will read the email and wonder why I’m making an issue of this. It’s simple actually. Effective marketing is about providing benefit to the consumer and not the other way around. I don’t care about the business, I care about myself. Businesses need to remember to use this to their advantage.

There are numerous ways of doing this in Priceline’s case. Lower costs, more options going forward, better shopping experience, or improved customer service would all be relevant to their customers.

As a consumer why should I care whether I’m helping this business?

A more effective approach would have been to distill to a sentence or two why filling out this survey would benefit me and not the business.

Popularity: 13% [?]

I’ve praised Twitter many times already, but we’re starting to see more companies use the service effectively for marketing and customer support.

Silicon Alley Insider posts a list of the top corporate Twitters worth following. At the top of their list are @comcastcares, @zappos, @jetblue, and @southwestair

While many bloggers have praised Comcast for its use of Twitter, I would just add that some caution is needed (especially in the case of Comcast).

It’s very easy to use a service like Summize to track mentions of your brand. But sending a Tweet about an issue or trying to help is only part of the solution.

Providing fast and actually useful customer support is extremely important. But just as with viral marketing, it is even more important to have a quality product or service behind that support.

Companies must start with the service itself and not just the customer support. The best support in the world will not change a crappy product (yes, Comcast you are the poster child for this).

It’s good to see companies moving in this direction and using emerging Internet services like Twitter for marketing. I just hope they keep focus on actually providing something consumers will want to purchase in the first place.

Popularity: 43% [?]

Pat Matthews writes about changing the name of Webmail.us to Mailtrust:

“The first challenge in the naming process was coming to the realization that we needed to change our name. Even though we knew our name was flawed, we spent a lot of time, money, and energy building our brand over the years. And all things considered, I think we did a pretty good job. We’re no Nike or Yahoo!, but in our industry, people know who we are. Starting from scratch seemed like a daunting move. But then one of my business mentors said something I will never forget. He said, ‘Pat, it’s never too late to change a bad name.’ He’s right. As soon as I heard him say that, I never looked back.”

Great advice. I’ve been through the name change process (both companies as well as products) several times across a few different companies. This is always a challenging process, but it appears Pat and company have nailed it. I love the change to Mailtrust as it much better indicates what the company is all about.

Popularity: 28% [?]

I was doing some cleanup around the house this weekend and finally got around to a large pile of junk mail sitting on the counter (you know you have one too). One of the items sitting there was a set of calendars and a form letter from the sales agent of the builder of my house (bought two years ago).

Realtors are trained that this farming is a good sales practice. Send out something to every potential prospect on your list and keep multiple touch points. While I question the actual returns of this tactic, it really only works if there is at least a neutral opinion of the salesperson.

The problem is that this realtor was not helpful during the sales process. Additionally, she was not pleasant (I actually thought her to be mean) and generally gave me a very negative impression.

So no matter how many calendars she sends me, I’m never going to do business with her. In fact, any time I’m referring someone to a realtor I make sure I mention her name as someone to stay away from.

For no cost at the time of our interaction, she could have turned me into a potential customer simply by her actions and how she handled herself. Sending me a useless calendar is not going to win my business when all I wanted was some respect.

Popularity: 30% [?]

Last month I participated in a podcast with Tom Myer of Triple Dog Dare Media and Myles Bristowe of VividContext on leveraging Web 2.0 concepts in marketing programs.

We had a lively discussion that covered a full range of topics including the benefits and potential pitfalls of using RSS, blogs, social networks, and other buzzwords commonly associated with “Web 2.0″.

The full podcast can now be found here.

Popularity: 6% [?]

One of the toughest marketing issues for any business, let alone a company providing web services, is pricing. I recently found a link on Brian Oberkirch’s blog to On Pricing, a site describing itself as “an ongoing discussion of web app pricing strategies.”

Using Tumblr, a popular tumblelog service (I use Tumblr as well here), On Pricing serves up links, screenshots, and quotes discussing web application pricing. So far, this is an excellent resource for web entrepreneurs looking to learn from others.

The author is Paul Farnell, the founder of Litmus, and a recent contributor to Vitamin on how to price your web application.

Popularity: 14% [?]