Gartner CRM Awards finalists

I was reading "Service and a Smile", which opens with:

"Gartner’s CRM Excellence Awards was a major highlight of the recent Gartner CRM Summit. There were three finalists: Electronic Arts, Lennox International, and Shaklee. Each shared their success story, based on a winning customer strategy that gives customers choice and gives front-line staff the information and support they need to deliver a compelling customer experience."

There's a good write up of what the finalists did with technology. But, for me, the real question is what they did with internal attitudes.

I simply don't believe that a CRM system is a magic bullet that can turn companies round. I don't think Gartner does, either. It certainly didn't when I was there.

Since CRM systems tend to be inflexible (SAP anyone?) the job is all down to becoming customer focussed, learning what your customers need, and staying agile enough to respond to sudden market variations. Could your CRM model have handled your own Northern Rock meltdown?

CRM, while not a marketing tool itself, allows marketing teams to work to create better targeted campaigns, too. After all, as I've said so often, Customer Service is Marketing.

Totally against permissions

I've a good friend in Australia. Ok, that's probably not relevant at all, but I think you ought to know that I have at least one friend!

He sent his 79 year old mother a card via 123greetings.com a site which used to be a reputable site and which used to let you send free eGreetings cards. But the site has been raped and pillaged, and I assume this has to be with the site owner's consent, or they would have stopped it. It now appears briefly, and then morphs into a site that probably shoves spyware at your machine.

His mother was told by the thing that she'd visited adult sites. It scared her. He wrote to them. They replied:

"We understand your concern.

We being a free greeting cards site are dependent on our sponsors to keep bringing these beautiful cards to you folks.

It is the advertisers who decides the form of advertisements which in this case are in form of pop-ups. Meanwhile, as you find these pop-up's irritating may we suggest you to use any software of your choice to block the pop-ups to make your card sending experience more enjoyable. May we suggest you to download the google toolbar for your system for effectively blocking such pop-ups.

We hope that this solution works for you and look forward to having you on our site more often."

He's not amused. They "marketed" to his mother without his or her consent, and marketed in such a manner as to scare her. And, since they also have her email address, what else is likely to happen?

If it's their fault, and it looks like it, then they deserve all that gets thrown at them. If it;s a glitch from a particular advertiser then the advert needs to get pulled. Heck, you can't even read the card! And if they don't pull it, then it's their fault.

What they are doing is losing trust. Short term they may make money, but the trust is gone. There's no way I'll trust them with my email address now, nor my friends' email addresses.

Spam is still Spam, even if it is B2B

I have an email address that is part of a limited company - a company I am proud to be associated with, and for whom I do some freelance work from time to time. In return they grant me email, and other facilities. So there is no way we can consider this to be an individual subscriber under the PECR.

Nonetheless I am an individual, and as an individual I have the right to know under section 7.1.c.ii of the Data Protection Act 1998 "Subject to the following provisions of this section and to sections 8 and 9, an individual is entitled — to have communicated to him in an intelligible form — any information available to the data controller as to the source of those data" when some random spammer targets me for his campaign.

Today I got an email from "Angel Sales and Leasing" out of the blue, trying to flog me an Audi. the footer says:

"Angel Sales and Leasing Marketing Compliance Code

Marketing communications are delivered in accordance with EU Directive on Privacy and Electronic Communications.

An active method of opting out of further communications from us and associated organisations is supplied at the base of this email communication. All our communications are targeted to business users only.

To no longer receive further communications, please click "reply", enter "unsubscribe" in the subject line and click "send". Thanks in advance."

Sounds ok? Well, no. This is an aggressive assumption of my permission, and I have not, ever, given this outfit permission to email me. I've never heard of them. But they give a free number to call: 0800 652 0950 so I called it. I asked where they got my email address from.

The answer, according to Ben, their dealer manager, was form a "reputable list that they bought". This is, of course, not the case. Reputable list vendors cannot sell my details because I have never, ever given them permission for this class of use, not to transfer data to a third party.

I asked Ben for the details of the list vendor. He refused point blank, and said that I was "not covered by the Data Protection Act" and that "his contract with the list supplier prevented him from giving their details".

In terms of brand damage, this has damaged Audi to an extent in my eyes, because I now do not like the quality of one of their dealers. I assume the Angel people are Audi dealers. It was not the refusal, but the innate aggression. Ben asked me "Don't you have anything better to do? Do you phone the Viagra people up, too?" It was not a pleasant conversation.

Ben has thus also damaged Angel, because I feel strongly enough about it to blog about it, backed up by facts and advice from the UK Information Commissioner's helpline.

I've required them to provide the information under the act, and also required them under Section 11 to cease direct marketing to me. Angel is aware that I was about to do this, and told me "You must do what you must do".

Angel really needs to look at the 10 Landmines for eMarketing article

ad:tech Digital Consumer panel, et alia

Just back from today's ad:tech foray. The panel was interesting, though it did suffer from a tired lunchtime audience with exhibition fatigue. iMedia hyped the session as hard as they could, and we did get a good few drop-ins as the session continued.

The basic question we were discussing was "You've lost your customer, how do you reconnect?"

There are several ways of looking at this, ranging from a customer who hates you to the customer who just forgot you.

We also looked at "Blind advertising networks", new jargon for me, but obvious once it's explained as a way of filling up spare advertising capacity without harming the end vendor's rate card (think of selling standby tickets for aircraft - there are similarities, but they aren't congruent concepts), and at social networking. And we looked at privacy issues.

My main concern, as always, is to get more money out than you put in. ROI, or "how many pence does it take to make a £1?" I look at integrated marketing with emphasis on direct marketing or using media to drive the consumer to a landing page and thus into my clients' electronic grasp. I have the luxury of doing this because I sell return on investment, whereas my other panellists, unbiased though they are, sell products and services that are more specialist parts of the armoury. i suppose I'll have to dive in to Second Life, though, much as that goes against the grain.

We were hoping for a lot of questions from the floor. The two we had were good, gave food for thought, but didn't generate any others.

The show itself is quite bewildering. There's a range of exhibitors from the serious Pay Per Click optimisation houses to an outfit supplying dating sites free to any Tom Dick or Harriet who wants one (how is that ad:tech?).

That dating one interests me. I spent two years running partnermine.com as a proper, commercial, full blown membership based dating site! it was a great site, an amazing site, with geographical proximity matching, a great user interface, and an excellent membership fee structure. It was a great technical success. It was not a great commercial success, so we turned it in to a site that sits there and generates advertising revenue. We used PPC and CPM advertising. We researched the market. We did not succeed in it. So tell me, please, how the dating sites on offer free will succeed? They're being given away as generators of supplementary income. Well, I doubt that will happen for the people who take a site. Prove me wrong, please. Tell me your experience with dating site management! The only person I know who is success is Markus Frind in Canada with Plenty of Fish

BT Spams - offers no excuse or rationale

I received, at a business I am associated with but not part of, and for whom I used to act as webmaster, a spam email from BT. It comes from BT Business at btbusiness@comms.bt.com , but I have never, not ever, given BT permission to market to me, nor have I ever been a customer at that email address.

The email has the subject line "Want to get more business from your website?" and gives me the phone number, 0800 876 6301, of my local area BT Sales team.

My first action was to reply, asking why I was being sent this email. I want to know what data they hold on me, what permissions they believe I've given, and the source of the data record.

There has been no answer by email.

Today I dialled the number. I met a very nice and highly professional salesman. he was:

• amazed that the email had gone out at all - no-one had told him! How bad a marketing campaign is that?
• apologetic that I had been spammed, but unable even to tell me whom to contact
• sorry that he had no access himself to the database to be able to answer my questions

The email is irrelevant to me. I suppose I could unsubscribe, but I want to know why BT is abusing my contact details.

No-one is available to tell me. No-one.

Legally, they may email me. The address is not one of an individual subscriber. Emotionally they may not. They do not have my permission, and I do not want them in my inbox.

ad:tech 26 and 27 September 2007

I've been invited onto a couple of panels at ad:tech at Olympia next week.

On the Wednesday I'll be on the Digital Consumer Forum panel working my way through lunch (memo to self: Always consider the food angle!)

On the Thursday I'll be on Digital Privacy - How to Respect Your Customers at teatime. There's that food motif again!

Both panels look like great fun and are addressing essential topics. Just how should we react as vendors to consumer needs?

Northern Rock

I've been watching the Northern Rock saga. Wouldn't it be great if they could have done something to get those queues of people who wanted to deposit money? That would have been real marketing.

But I was annoyed by the one thing Adam Applegarth left out early on: The fact that the first £2000 is 100% guaranteed, and the next £33,000 is 90% guaranteed, by law. Would he have had a run on his bank if he'd made this clear every time he spoke?

A few sheep, they would have queued, but the rest would have seen how stupid it was.

In these days of soundbites, a bit of soundbite marketing would have done no harm at all.

Blog by Email

No, I don't mean I am. I mean you can, if you like what you read, get this blog by email. It's a properly permissioned system, there's no spam, and it comes on Mondays at 9:30am UK time, prettily and economically formatted.

You subscribe to the list, if you want to, either in the clutter in the left hand margin, or by using this form:



And you unsubscribe when you want to using instructions at the foot of the email it sends out. The whole thing's automatic.

Challenged in the Transport Department

Since 1996 I've run big, old, lazy Jaguars. I've bought them well used, and used them well. I drive cars until they disappear around me in a cloud of rust. I've had my last one since 1998, and it was by no means in the first flush of youth then. I've had to call the fire brigade out to it twice! This one expired at a ludicrously slow pace when it chose to inspect a manhole cover closely just after it has passed over a speed hump - the work of the devil - and twisted itself up something rotten. I'm still waiting for the pittance from the insurance company. It was an old, venerably old, car. It deserves a Viking funeral, but instead it will be raped and pillaged for parts.

We set out to buy a replacement. I am now of an age where I am meant to have a sensible car. So I am looking at a used Smart Roadster. We went to a theme park to look at that - Mercedes Benz World, at Brooklands - and were trampled underfoot by the Volkspolizei when we tried to park in the "Sales Car Park". This is, as we apparently ought to have known, a car park for sales staff. We were instructed in the error of our ways. We expected to see Steve McQueen riding a motorcycle along some barbed wire, or at least to hear The Sound of Music. And kids, coffee and a museum of the Hitler Youth did not endear it to me. I am a grumpy old man!

I shan't buy the Smart. It's broken. I'll test drive it for fun, and, if I can ever get out again, will go home again without it.

We looked for sensible conveyances for portly gentlemen. The list comes down to Toyota, Honda and Skoda. Obviously it helps if the name ends in an "A".

Skoda blew it. First they aren't local and second they don't open on Sundays.

Toyota is ok. We have one already and it's soulless and reliable.

Honda is the favourite. We've always gone to extremes: I had a Citroen AX10, and got a Jag XJ6. We had a 12 seat Landrover Safari, and went to a mini estate. We went from a 23 year old Volvo estate to a Toyota Corolla, and I am now going from a Jag XJ6 to a Honda Jazz.

Now sales and marketing takes over. Finding a Honda dealer through the multifaceted, multi layered, multi disciplinary Honda website is almost impossible, but we did it. And yesterday and today we visited multi scrubbed Honda salesmen in a couple of local dealerships.

Today's experience was a belter! One nicely polished young man took us for a test drive. He had no idea what CVT transmission was, but it has it and he likes it. (DAF Variomatic anyone?). The car would do the job and we were ready to make a deal. We left for lunch saying "Please work out your best price. If we have a deal we will know when you've done that and we've returned."

We returned. We were met by a soft spoken and equally scrubbed salesman. He was very pleasant and told us that the car would cost us a pleasant and very economical £1,000 more than the ticket price, and that was the best deal the dealership could do.

As discounting and negotiating goes, this was in the reverse direction.

He even explained it. £50 was for the floor mats it apparently didn't have. When I want floor mats I'll ask for floor mats. More money was to embalm the paintwork in embalming fluid that apparently filled in all the little microscopic flaws and gave it a teflon coating. "Does the car not have this already?" But he had no idea. More was to guarantee the asset value if this car was a total loss in the next twenty minutes. And there was more, and then there was more. Oddly the fuel tank was to remain empty.

I hope you aren't expecting a happy ending!

We asked for room to discuss it and then allowed him to understand that, since the price had moved in the wrong direction, we were also moving, from his perspective, in the wrong direction. I had the door very clearly in view and was amazed to see that he was looking terrified, and almost in tears.

Oh, he apologised. He got the boss to drop a bit off the price, but still to £1,000 over our limit, and continued to be very upset and almost tearful as we headed doorwards. He'd not only lost the deal for us, he'd lost it for the lad who took us on the test drive.

But the message is that bad salespeople undo all the careful marketing. We will buy a Honda Jazz (0.9 probability). We will not visit that dealership again, though (1.0 probability).

Of course I still need a new car. Well, a used one, obviously.

Carnival of the Mobilists, Number 91

Blog Carnival #91 is live! It's my first time hosting this and I feel a little humble. The great thing is, it's easy to host, so let me start with a plea: "If you have anything at all to do with mobile telephony in your blog, offer to host it!" You'll learn a lot from the blogs you read in the detail you need to in order to make a sensible job of hosting. Now all the links in this carnival open in a new window, so you won't lose your place.

I'm going to start with Michael Mace in Mobile Opportunity. The war between Nokia and Apple and, as he says, "When two elephants fight, the loser is the jungle." The fallout could be huge. With elephants fighting, who fancies getting in the way by accident?

Luca Filigheddu presents Apple iPod Touch vs Nokia N800 posted at LucaFiligheddu.com. It's another take on Apple v Nokia.

Changing the mood to Bernado Cavalho in rawsocket dot org, he's talking about Eternal September 2.0. Baffled? Not as baffled as the people he reports on! "The iPhone toting crowd are the new AOLers. Totally clueless of what the hell is this mobility thing they harm themselves unwillingly:" That just cries out to be read!

Thad Davis presents Download-to-Own Portable Media Player Content, Reviews, News. It's Anytime Anywhere Media posted at The Small-Screen Media Guide. It's an interview with the CEO of Mobovivo, Inc., a company providing download-to-own international TV content for portable/mobile devices (iPod, iPhone, PSP, mobile phones, etc.). Mobovivo may be compared to the iTunes video store -- its episode price point is $1.99 CAN -- but the content it offers is more eclectic and comes from various international media firms, not just US companies. Also, the Mobovivo webstore sells downloadable content to an international audience. NOTE: The article includes a promotional offer for a free GC to the Mobovivo webstore.

Bolo presents P2P-style Mobile Phones posted at The Agonist. He asks, "So when do you think this technology will make it to the US? My vote is 'never' or 'after it has gone to Europe, Asia, South America, and maybe Africa.'

Chetan Sharma presents Global Wireless Data Market Update - 1H 2007 posted at Always On Real-Time Access. "As you read this first half (1H) 2007 Global Wireless Data Market update this week, somewhere in China, the 500 millionth subscription is being signed up for services. In India, the 200 millionth subscription mark was crossed in the last two weeks. In the US, the 250 millionth subscription will be reached by end of the year. In total, these three top mobile markets account for 32% of the total number of global subscriptions." That makes you think. Hugely.

Who could resist it when Madeleine Begun Kane presents Ode To The Mobile Web (Cell Phone Browsing Humor) posted at Mad Kane's Humor Blog. I had been hoping for a much ruder limerick or two, but this one's fine! You could always give her a set of alternatives in the comments!

Barbara Ballard at Little Springs Design (hmm, now did I get the capitalisation right?), goes in some depth into application posture: She says "Alan Cooper introduced the world to application “posture”, at least for desktop design. This is a characteristic of how the user interacts with the application. In About Face 2.0, he and Robert Robert Reimann document four postures:" Ok, I found I was thinking of limericks, but it turns out this is good stuff, serious stuff, and well worth a deeper investigation.

Abhishek Tiwari comes close to my heart. My subject is Marketing by Permission, and adverts on mobile phones definitely do not have my permission. Odd how I have adverts on my blog, then! is that a paradox? But I'm straying. Abhishek has a detailed article Do You Really Want Ads on Your Phones? My position is clear. It was tempting, just because of the subject matter, to shortlist this for post of the week, but I'm not saying! (see below)

Short and to the point from Jason Devitt at Skydeck: Verizon Appeals Against Open Access, but catch his video! That is the meat of this post. It's hiding in plain sight at the link. Maybe the large "play" button over his face confused me for a moment!

I thought that How to Read eBooks on Almost Any Phone just had to be Dennis winding us up on WAP Review, but no. You can read eBooks on almost any phone. Would you want to? I have no idea, but you can!

Tarek Abu-Esber is fluent in mobile speak. And, at Tarek Speaks Mobile, he goes deeply into A Quick Look: Motorola Z8 - a deep quick look, eh? Ok, I'm not nuts, but this phone deserves a deep review and it got it. You could cut to the final paragraph with the result if you like, but the full article is worth it.

Mobhappy shows Russell Buckley to have found Google's Mobile Advertising Launch Disappointing. Not pulling any punches, he says "Frankly, it’s about as disappointing as finding out that the fabled GPhone turns out to be two tin cans and a bit of string - actually, it could also be argued that this would show about as much understanding of the mobile ecosystem as their AdWord announcement yesterday."

You know, I hate bureaucrats. Mayor Bloomberg of NYC gets this week's "Jobsworth Cap"! New York City Council pushes against mayor on school cell phones. "You’ve always had the right to take a phone to school and take a phone from school," Mr. Bloomberg told reporters. "You just don’t have the right to bring it into the school, and that’s not changing.". This is great reporting from Bryan Alexander at SmartMobs. Kids have phones. Get over it!

Do I have a post of the week? This has been very hard. Choosing is amazingly difficult. As a marketing guy I sometimes find the deeper articles pass me by, but my job was to read everything, in depth, and I learnt as much from the light as from the deep. In the end I chose Ramadan Kareem! from TGhazali at Symbiano-Tek. My reason? That it showed things that I found unusual, related mobile telephony to religion (I am not religious, but I respect those who are), and have a human face. On a mobile phone! The competition was hot. I daren't mention my shortlist in case you all beat me up!

Just after I selected my Post of the Week, this item charged into the mailbox! Well, I'm not reconsidering post of the week, but it just scraped into the carnival this week by about 20 seconds! Paul Ruppert sent us China Shakes up Telecoms Market: Mobile is the Driver, from Mobile Point of View. So I'll let you consider whether it should have been in my shortlist!

Next week we're hosted by Abhishek Tiwari. Submit early, submit often! Submitting for next week's carnival is dead easy. Look to the left margin of this blog and you'll see how to submit your blog item. I love that user interface. If you haven't pasted the Carnival code onto your blog, well, why not? But, for those of you reading this elsewhere, submit here

This was not only easier than I ever expected, but it was fun, but I'm terrified that I have spelt some names wrong. The blog carnival site shows you how to contact Troy Norcross, who, with Judy Breck, manages this carnival. If you want to host it, ask here! As Nike says, Just Do It!

And the Carnival themed pictures? Torbay Steam Fair 2007, held in a field near Brixham in Devon in the UK, taken on my birthday this year, August 5th. I am, of course, still 15!

Oh, and if you like what you read in the carnival, there's a link to DIGG IT at the top of this carnival. Go on, just for me!

UK Information Commissioner hits Fax Spammers

I picked up this story today. I'd love to be saying "Oh Joy, oh rapture" in a rather camp and Gilbert and Sullivan way, but I read the article fully.

"The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has ordered two debt recovery companies to stop sending unwanted faxes to individuals and businesses. This action has been brought under the Privacy and Electronic Communication Regulations (PECR) following hundreds of complaints from individuals and businesses to the ICO and the Fax Preference Service."

Hundreds of complaints.

What does it take to get this office to act?

One complaint, one warning and one extra breach is enough.

And the imbecilic Tories want to repeal the law! Come on, Cameron, get a grip on policy. And come on Thomas, get enforcing more often.

"Who cares? Let's just spam them all!"

"...the law is a ass — a idiot. If that's the eye of the law, the law is a bachelor; and the worst I wish the law is that his eye may be opened by experience — by experience." Thus saith Mr Bumble, the Beadle, in Oliver Twist. I've no idea at present which law Bumble was upset about, but I'm applying it to the UK's Data Protection Act 1998. You know, the one the estimable David Cameron wants to repeal because it's a 'burden on business'.

Repealing the DPA is as lunatic as the Federation of Small Businesses supporting the corporate part of the Telephone Preference Service. It's ill conceived, ill argued and a total nonsense.

So, let's repeal the Data Protection Act. Let's spam them all.

Some stats for you. I have approximately ten email accounts. Each of those accounts gets between 20 and 300 spam emails per day. Some of the accounts are not even used, and they are published nowhere on the web. Even those accounts receive their fair share of unmitigated trash.

In the email account I use for my blog, even though I publish a prohibition against use in lists, I find the address is being sold by at least one list vendor as "suitable for marketing purposes" despite both the prohibition and the fact that I am an individual subscriber and thus it is unlawful to spam me currently. I have never, ever given permission for this address to be used for marketing purposes, you see.

So, lets repeal the act.

This will make it lawful, at a stroke for people to:

• trade email and other personal data
• reveal publicly matters medical, sexual, political
• hold downright lies in their database
• conceal information they hold about you
• pass your data anywhere in the world - more Indian call centres flogging timeshares, anyone?
• deluge you with telesales calls, faxes, emails, SMS messages, Bluespam, letters

There's much more.

It also means, as my advice tells me, leaving the European Community! OK, so that could be seen as a good thing by some, a bad thing by others, but it is a big thing and not to be considered lightly.

But, you see, the law as it stands is pretty much total rubbish.

Argue with me if you will about the wonderfully drafted clauses, the all embracing niceties, the wonderful things it does. And then realise that poor Richard Thomas, The Information Commissioner, the man who needs to be a Rottweiler, has been given the dog power of a Chihuahua.

Pretty much the only thing he can enforce immediately (or after several warnings) is the registration process. Failing to notify is a strict liability offence. A solicitor in Rochdale found that out ironically and the hard way.

Let confidential medical data escape (I've covered Roch Diagnostics before) , and this is fine, as long as you stop doing it.

Compare this with murder. Stop murdering people, and you still get jailed. Compare it with speeding. Bring your car safely to a halt after driving up the A1 at 150mph and noticing a blue flashing light in your rear view mirror, and you lose your licence.

Stop breaking the Data Protection Act and nothing happens.

The law is great. The ability to enforce is abysmal. But a law that is not enforced or enforceable is bad law.

It's not Richard Thomas who "is a ass", either. It's the people who drafted the law so carefully that it is almost unenforceable who are a herd of asses. Thomas tries seriously hard. His job is made impossible by the useless enforcement capabilities within the law. It's not made any easier by leaders of the Conservative Party spouting rubbish about repeal. This is one law David Cameron should be strengthening.

Why?

Because people want their data to be private, that's why.

We're damned good at marketing, especially in the UK. We're superb, when we do it, at Permission Based Marketing and get an awesome return on marketing investment from it. And we do it so well because of this law. Enforce it better and we'll get even better. We'll outstrip all other nations because we know how to say "Please may we?" Repeal it and we remove the incentive to be inventive.

And it won't even be popular!

Forget it, David. Listen to real, leading edge, professional marketing people. Strengthen this law. If not then it is you "who is a ass".