But when it comes to direct/email campaigns, whatever platform has been in place before has always proven to be an incredible chore.  The design of the email needs to be tested at length by someone who knows what they are doing (a developer, or me – mostly), then you need to ensure your target lists are correct and up-to-date.  The rigmarole of testing and previewing the email is also grimace-inducing.  Then you have all the data protection issues (which differ based on landing location), so you have to ensure that the email is built with all this in mind; it’s easy to forget that you also need to get all of this 100% correct the first time, because once the campaign is sent, there is no way of taking it back.  It’s a little like going to print, which is quite an anomaly for the digital age.

Step in MailChimp.  A cloud-based flexible and super powerful email campaign management platform, with a host of integration options.

This has to be the most elegant setup I have ever come across from any provider and has easily impressed me over its peers, including SilverPop, StrongMail, SugarCRM, Dotmailer etc etc.  The list goes on forever.

The reason for so much praise to be heaped upon this company and platform is because they have taken what is actually a very complex process, with all the applicable toolkits, and thrown it together into a very usable, fast and efficient system.  It’s the first that I have personally come across that allows the marketer to really focus on the marketing for a change, instead of worrying about the endless list of logistics that normally needs to be taken into consideration.

The features are exhaustive and really does harness every nuance of the email campaign process, including:

• Fully customised design with CSS
• Management of lists and groups, including unsubscriptions and form creation
• A/B testing
• API integration with a plethora of other platforms including Salesforce and the new Amazon SES
• Excellent pre-made ready-to-use templates
• Google Analytics
• Full social media integration, including a social toolbar on the web version of the email
  
• Inbuilt campaign analytics for sent/views/clicks
• iPhone administration interface

I’ll be entirely honest; I have only been using this system for one day and it has allowed me to explore everything mentioned above already, and best of all, they even offer a completely free account (these are far and few between for cloud-based services these days) that will enable you to send out up to 12,000 emails a month.  If you are asking for more, then you really need to pull your very large hands out of your very small pockets.

Take a peek, at MailChimp; I guarantee you will not be disappointed.

In what looked like TV-advertising 2.0 (not to be confused with TV 2.0), the programme advertised a ‘Best Bits’ segment, which went on to display Big Brother Best Bits in an odd Big Brother-branded picture frame with the Big Brother eye logo in the bottom-right corner. In between each of the clips, an advert was shown, within the same picture frame.

Maintaining the Big Brother branding throughout the advertising slot was quite a clever technique, as it was less intrusive during the viewing experience and in a case like mine, even caused me to engage further than simply watching the advertisements half-heartedly.

Is this going to be the method for television ads to up conversion rates and start the fightback against digital? In my opinion, such tactics will only have a short shelf-life unless they continuously change the methodology; after a while, the audience will simply learn and gain age old ad blindness.

I guess the channels will need to do whatever they can to maintain ad revenues, whilst the rest of the world continues to disappear online.

Personally, I am a reports junkie. I need constant feedback and even if a given report isn’t available, I will try and ensure there is some way of obtaining it.

However, not everyone shares this sentiment and it is often hard to relay the cold hard facts of a report in a meaningful way to someone (your boss, your board, your wife?) without some form of translation from numbers into plain English and/or pretty pictures.

Well, a genius by the name of Nicholas Felton – part designer, part statistics junkie – decided to put together a series of meaningful ‘annual reports’ into a format and creation all his own; for the unacquainted, they are marvels in their own right and will catch the eye of even the most glass-half-empty naysayer.

Interestingly, we both studied the same course at university and although this would not necessarily seem to be all that interesting, Interaction Design is still not quite a widely known subject.  I am also a maths geek.

Take a look at some of the Feltron reports now.

This applies for many reasons.

Matching Ads with Consumers

Facebook is basing its matching criteria almost solely on 2 factors – Profile Page information submitted by users, and geo-targeting (this could be a combination of IP address tracking and user-submitted information).

Now, when you compare this database of user-submitted information – yes, there are however many millions of Facebook users (then subtract all inactive/spam accounts) – this simply pales in comparison to the quantity of data in Google’s database, alongside its user base, i.e. anyone with a computer. (I’ve even intentionally left out the content network and search partners that Google offers as additional sources of traffic.)

Arguably, you will say that this is actually a niche factor when using Facebook, but unfortunately I think it really affects its ability to achieve any kind of real effectiveness – especially when up against such strong competition.

Now, I don’t want to come across as some kind of Google fan boy, but criticism of the Facebook advertising network continues.

Review Time

Wow, review time on Facebook takes what feels like an eternity. Google adverts are reviewed and can be seen online very quickly – you’d barely notice there was a review process at all. It took over 24hrs for the first advert on Facebook to be reviewed and approved, and only slightly less for the second.

Keywords

Facebook does allow you to enter keywords, but only from a preset selection, which I assume is derived again from the content that is submitted by users on their profiles. What becomes immediately apparent, is that the selection of keywords is incredibly limited – again, this is easily understandable, as the majority of Facebook profiles neglect ‘wordy’ information as users would rather interact via chat, pokes, photo-sharing and applications. Google on the other hand allows an almost unlimited amount of fine-tuning when it comes to keywords. In Facebook’s favour, however, due to its undeniable restrictions, it does present you with an exact audience figure that will be targeted from your campaign, which is a nice touch.

Advertising Blindness

Additionally – and this is a fairly personal view in terms of my usage of the social network – Facebook is used primarily for social reasons. Keeping up-to-date with friends and family, sharing photos etc. I feel that advertising blindness has never been more present for contextual adverts than they are here. I even started to question myself halfway through running the campaign; could I even recall adverts I had seen when using Facebook myself? This is in stark contrast to Google’s contextual adverts, which run along the top and side of search pages, which I’ve found to be incredibly useful in the past, when the organic search is sometimes a little lacklustre.

CPM vs. CPC

This is where I believe Facebook may have a gem – albeit a tiny one – in its crown.

CPM (cost per mil) is the old method of paying for advertising on the web, which didn’t work for advertising buyers, so internet advertising began to fall out of favour. Most of the networks switched to the CPC method of billing – also known as PPC – where the advertiser only pays when a user takes action and actually clicks through to the target site.

However, Facebook offers this as an option when setting up your advert – and it is much cheaper than I can remember – you can spend just 10p per thousand impressions. Google offers this only on its content network, but not on its search or search networks.

As an example, in the last few days I ran two almost identical adverts in parallel on Facebook, one CPC and one CPM to compare the results, to a very focused target audience. On the CPM side, the advert achieved around 60,000 impressions with about 12 clicks. On the CPC side, the advert achieved around 3,000 impressions, but no clicks. Both of the bid rates were the suggested averages.

Now, although the overall CPC cost was higher on the CPM campaign, the cost was relatively cheap considering the amount of impressions that were displayed and I feel that in the long run – for a branding exercise – this could well help a brand achieve critical mass. But, of course, the issue with branding is that it is fairly difficult to measure success in a short period of time.

Conversion

From a conversion point of view – and the vast majority of online advertisers will probably be focussed on this, rather than exposure – the results are very clear. (The budget was approximately the same for both.)

In the Google campaign, from just 2 days – the advert achieved around 200 impressions, 15 clicks and 1 transaction.

Facebook achieved 60,000 impressions on the CPM campaign, 12 clicks, no transactions. The CPC campaign achieved 3,000 impressions, no clicks and no transactions.

I don’t think anymore really needs to be said.

This leads me to the subject of importing goods to the UK, which brings a whole new range of issues to any company that is new to the import workflow.

Here I will try to give an overview of the major points I have recently encountered, in establishing a brand new import business, since a lot of this information wasn’t readily available in a single source. I will try to make it read in layman’s terms too, so not to scare you with the jargon that complicates much of this procedure.

VAT

Import VAT is payable on any imports from countries outside of the EU. Please refer to this page for the full list of countries included and excluded:

http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/VAT/managing/international/esl/country-codes.htm

Customs Duty

Trade between EU countries is Customs Duty-free.

Customs Duty for imports from countries outside of the EU can be quite a complex beast. I’ll try to explain my understanding of it, but I would suggest you read more on the sites provided below.

Any goods arriving from countries outside of the EU will be subject to customs duty, if over the value of £120, and depending on their classification according to a book published called “The Tariff”. Luckily for us there is a free online version of this available at the Business Link Tariff website.

You will need to try and classify your product according to the online tariff, which will tell you whether you need to pay any Customs Duties. Although the online tariff is a good guide – if you are unsure about your product’s content or make-up, then you should consider using the HMRC Classification Service.

Lastly, consignments below £18 are customs duty-free.

Excise Duty

Excise Duty is strict. If your goods are alcohol or tobacco products, then excise duty has to be paid. Excise Duty doesn’t apply to other goods.

Labelling

Ensure that the labels attached by your supplier clearly state the following:

• The full value of the goods including shipping fees and any local taxes
• A full description of the goods
• The senders full name, address and telephone
• The recipients full name, address and telephone

These are important for both customs clearance and in case the parcel gets lost! Common sense, yes, but necessary.

EORI Numbers and Why You Need Them

The Economic Operator Registration and Identification (EORI) scheme was introduced 1 July 2009 to tie-in with the European Union, and replaces the previous TURN system that was in place here.

The bottom line is that if you are bringing goods into the country for trade or commercial use, then you really need one of these. Even private individuals regularly importing goods are required to register for one of these numbers.

Luckily, the process is fairly straightforward (very unlike HMRC in general) by submitting a Word document to them via email.

EORI Application Information

Surface Mail – Shipping – Air Freight

So, at this point you have your ducks in a row, and are ready to decide on a shipping method with your supplier. This decision very much depends on the quantity, size, weight and value of the goods you are importing.

Generally speaking – and especially for the new importer – the likelihood is that Surface Mail (often referred to as EMS) will suffice. This service uses the normal postal service (with air-mail services connecting the two countries) and has some limitations on weight/size/value depending on the operator, so this is something you will need to research and ask your supplier about.

Larger imports will require either a shipping service or air freight, but this is really out of the scope of this post.

The Parcelforce Monopoly

Now this is the fun part that almost nobody out there will tell you, except for perhaps a few forums or blogs.

You’ve finally got your tracking number and are checking it far more frequently than you probably should.

But you’ve realised, what actually happens when it arrives in the UK?

• Does it just appear at your door?
• Who gives it to customs?

Well, as it happens. Parcelforce are the logistical ninjas working behind-the-scenes to help do all this for you.

• They will kindly pass the goods over to customs for inspection.
• They will kindly pay any fees including VAT, Customs Duty and Excise duty on your behalf.
• They will kindly deliver the parcel on to you finally; but only once you kindly pay them back for the fees owing, including either £8 or £13.50 (EMS, GLS or items over €1000) in handling charges from Parcelforce themselves.

My suggestion is that once you know the goods are in the country, contact Parcelforce, and keep contacting Parcelforce until you finally receive the notification slip at your door, that you need to pay fees.

Once this is received, your goods should be ready for delivery or collection from your local Parcelforce depot – so quickly pay the outstanding fees online or by telephone.

Done!

I’ve worked out a little formula to understand the costs involved.

Import Cost = Cost price + Shipping + Shipping Insurance + Customs Duty + VAT + Excise Duty + Parcelforce Charge

And there you have it – my little guide to importing your first Purple Cow into the UK. Good luck!

I am sure you would have heard a lot of these before; Customer Experience; Customer Retention; 360-degree Customer View.  As frequently as these are used I feel it’s important to bring it back to basics and review what all this really means.

Customer-centric strategy is nothing new and is usually the basis of any marketing strategy.  After all, without the customer, the business would fail to exist - but it is often easily overlooked with a growing business where other factors come into play that can all affect business performance.  IT infrastructure, operational efficiency, human resources; this list grows with any business and in a micro-sense, form a kind of diseconomy of scale – primarily as an opportunity cost from losing sight of the customer needs as more resources are focussed around other areas of the business.

So, what do our customers need?  Well, as is often taught in business or marketing school, Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is a good place to start as this helps to understand, psychologically, how the human brain works and essentially, what any customer wants.  What we would want as a customer.  However, being a slight sceptic of formal education in such a fast-moving field as marketing, I think the secret to understanding your customers’ needs is simple.  Ask them.

Firstly, enhance communications between the marketing department and customer services.  The customer service team spend hours and hours everyday communicating with the customers and of all the people employed across the business, should know better than anyone what the customers are thinking.  The problems I have seen working in large global, multi-billion pound/dollar companies is the distinct lack of convergence between different departments.  Often Sales and Marketing will have a fairly tight relationship, with a healthy feedback loop, and marketing efforts will support the needs of the sales staff, but the customer service team is more often than not exiled to a different floor, if not a different building or even a different country.  Regular feedback reports should be as much a part of the marketing process as sales reporting.

A more current method to deal with customer feedback, is to look at technology solutions which can automate a lot of this feedback.  Websites are often used as an online storefront or a company business card, but with the rapid uptake in internet usage (11% up to 62% between 1997 and 2007 in the developed world), this feedback loop simply cannot be ignored anymore.  Methods such as online surveys, customer browsing and ordering behaviour and online account tracking are beyond the scope of this post, but should all be considered in picking up cheap and easy feedback information.

An interesting method I recently came across was that of a BMW Mini Car Dealership in the UK who actively involve themselves on a dedicated online Mini forum.  Here they listen to what their customers are saying about the product, the customer service and the whole value proposition and quickly respond to their needs by communicating with them directly via this platform, whilst boosting the relationship by offering exclusive offers on parts and accessories.

I think there really aren’t any secrets when it comes to understanding what our customers want.  As marketers we just need to take a step back from the jargon and business politics and simply open our eyes, as the answers are really there in front of us.

It’s been a strange year economically speaking, with a resurgence in the property market alongside upwards trends for many companies spanning from retail to finance; but all of this with an air of ambiguity hanging over from the nightmare that was (and still is) the credit crunch and trillions of dollars/pounds/euros in world debt.

A continued trend that is difficult to ignore, however, is the dramatic drive towards technology, using it as an enabler for business – and in many cases, a substitute for human resources.  This obviously makes a lot of sense due to the high cost of employing staff, combined with the increasing volumes of people spending money on the internet.

It isn’t just the e-commerce and website markets that are benefitting from the technological push though; other systems, formerly the domain of locally installed software such as ERP and accounting packages are moving homes from local server to online and increasing in sales via SaaS (software as a service) solutions.

More on this later.