A Treasure Trove of Information

Why do customers vanish?

"Customer attrition is largely based on indifference," says Ardath Albee, author of e-Marketing Strategies for the Complex Sale in her blog.

Marketers pay so much attention to prospects' learning needs they seem to forget that customers' needs differ:

• Customers expect you to know how and why they use your products.
• Customers expect personalized, useful content, not "blanket emails that could be for anyone."

"The content you create for prospects is not the content your customers want or need," Albee says.

What, develop specialized content? 

Sounds like a lot of work. 

But the good news: you have ready access to customers.  You can easily learn what content will be helpful to them. 

All you need do is ask.

"A veritable treasure trove of information exists if you'll just go after it," Albee says.

Advice for PR Pros

In a recent blog post, social media guru Chris Brogan warns PR pros, "If you’re just a pretty face who helps people get their free gift bag, it’s time to level up."


Web 2.0 is about to make your job a lot harder.


"2011 is about looking at all the wealth of data the social Web brings you about your clients’ activities, and it’s about giving them informed decisions on what to do next," Brogan writes.

He recommends that PR pros:

Develop proprietary communities. "Platform fatique" is driving customers from "commons" like Facebook and Twitter to micro-communities.  The PR pro who builds a tiny online community that targets a client's customers is developing a property with remarkable long-term value.

Devote more energy to content development.  Formerly the baliwick of marketing, content is now the "coin of the realm."  PR pros need to think content.

Focus on generating sales.  "The PR agency or department that helps drive sales into the business are the ones who'll flourish in 2011."

Get a grip on analytics.  Knowing how to blog or post on Facebook is no longer enough.  "2011 is about looking at all the wealth of data the social Web brings you about your clients’ activities, and it’s about giving them informed decisions on what to do next."

Grumpy Old Friends

A new report from Forrester Research, 2011: Now Social Media Marketing Gets Tough, predicts that spam filters will begin to block many Tweets and Status Updates this year.

The new filters, designed to cut clutter, will stop not only many of the messages sent by marketers, but those same ones passed peer-to-peer.

Forrester also predicts a spike this year in worries about privacy, especially among Boomers and seniors, who are rapidly warming to social media.

Growing mistrust will make it harder to engage customers and gather friends and followers in 2011.

To E or Not to E?

Should an association replace its magazine with an e-book?

One group who'd answer no: advertisers.

That's according to "Five Reasons Not to Go Digital Only with Your Association Magazine," a new white paper from Ideas Communicated, a design firm in Washington, DC.

As the white paper makes clear, while e-book readership is on the rise, response to the ads in e-books isn't.

This finding should make any association executive think twice before substituting a magazine with an e-book.

Of course, when it comes to curbing expenses, a cheap substitute for almost anything can be alluring.  

In fact, cheapness is the chief reason e-books are such "bright and shiny objects."

But the switch may cause advertisers to abandon the association, triggering losses far greater than the gains made through savings.

In other words, killing a magazine may spare some expenses, but could cost more in the long run.

Or as Ben Franklin, a publisher himself, once said, "The best is the cheapest."

Disclosure: Ideas Communicated is a client of mine.

Humanizing the Medical Meeting

Event planners are experimenting with people-friendly designs to improve the productivity of medical meetings, as my recent article in CONVENE illustrates.

Planners' efforts to reinvent the "soft side" of these gatherings makes sense in light of hard data we have from neuroscience.

According to Cornell University’s just-published white paper, The Future of Meetings, the value of medical meetings derives in large part from the “emotional contagion” they feed.

“In a nutshell, people tend to express and feel emotions that are similar to and influenced by the emotions of others,” according to coauthors Christine Duffy and Mary Beth McEuen.  “Research has confirmed that emotions, attitudes, and moods do, in fact, ripple out from individuals and, in the process, influence not only other individuals’ emotions, thoughts, attitudes and behaviors, but also the dynamics of the entire group.”

By humanizing the meeting space, planners can create a positive “emotional contagion,” instead of a negative one.  And if positive emotions rule, the whole medical meeting becomes significantly more productive.

Disclosure: FutureShow, the event design firm profiled in CONVENE, is a client of mine.