How Drip Marketing Can Sink You

Although your customers won’t love you if you
give bad service, your competitors will.

― Kate Zabriskie

Making the rounds on LinkedIn this week is a photo of a whiteboard.

On it, an anonymous scribbler has written, "Amazon didn't kill the retail industry. They did it to themselves with bad customer service."

Dear Whoever You Are: You got that right.

Drip by drip, retailers are driving away their few remaining customers, right before our eyes. Call it an odd form of drip marketing.

Case in point.

The faucet on my kitchen sink is leaking.

On Saturday afternoon, I took the faucet apart and discovered the likely source of the leak to be a failing "valve cartridge." So I removed the part and went out in search of a replacement.

The first two hardware retailers I visited didn't stock the part, and wouldn't consider ordering it. The third store I visited was a plumbing specialty retailer, Plumbing Parts Plus.

At Plumbing Parts Plus, I was made to stand in a queue for 45 minutes in front of the parts desk, all by myself. A brusque sign said, "Sign into the log with your time of arrival." But there was no log. During the 45 minutes, no one acknowledged I was there.

I stopped an employee and asked him to venture a guess as to how long it might take to receive help. "He's busy," was his response. When the parts man finally deigned to help me, he couldn't identify the cartridge I had. The store was about to close, so he wrote down my contact information and promised to call me Monday morning.

Of course, he didn't.

I phoned the store Tuesday morning. The recorded message said―repeatedly―"Thank you for calling Plumbing Parts Plus. We value every one of our customers and promise the utmost in personalized customer service. Please stay on the line until someone answers your call."

When my call was at last answered, I was told the parts man, Pete, took Tuesdays off, and since no one but Pete could assist me, I should return to the store with the part.

I just bought the cartridge on Amazon, after only four―count 'em―four clicks. I should have it in two days.

Dear Plumbing Parts Plus: Your form of drip marketing's all wet!

Cloud Cuckoo Land

Felix had gone to live in a lotus land of his imagination. Where what is desired is dreamed of as already happened, where obstacles dissolve under the weight of desire, and where reality has vanished entirely.

― Iain Pears

President Trump's grip on reality is so slim, you might say he lives in Cloud Cuckoo Land, the creation of the ancient Greek playwright Aristophanes.

In Aristophanes' "The Birds," a character named Pisthetaerus incites the world's birds to challenge the Olympian gods. He persuades them to build a city-in-the-sky that blocks the gods' view of Earth, denying them dominion over men. Pisthetaerus names the great city Cloud Cuckoo Land.

For his brilliance, at the end of the play Pisthetaerus is made king of the Olympians, exceeding even Zeus in power.

Since Aristophanes' time, the name is used to denote any idealistic Neverland.

Torment Tuesday

Call me a curmudgeon, but I've grown to loathe social media marketers who use weekday hashtags.

You know who you are.

Week upon week, you insist on reminding me it's:

• Motivation Monday
• Transformation Tuesday
• Win Wednesday
• Thankful Thursday
• Fearless Friday
• Social Saturday
• Fun Day Sunday

Your vapid diurnal emissions make every day feel like Munch Monday.

The word curmudgeon, by the way, originated in the 1500s; but its source is unknown.

According to Samuel Johnson's 1755 dictionary, the word is a corruption of the French coeur méchant, meaning "evil heart."

But according to other dictionaries, it's a mashup of the English cur, meaning "mutt," and the Gaelic muigean, meaning "grouch."

The Slippery Slope

You prohibit tradeshow attendance.

You cancel the newspapers.

You fire the agency.

You outsource customer service.

You automate marketing.

You discount.

You rush it out.

You praise only the rock stars.

You let everyone over 50 go.

You delete the phone numbers on your website.

You cancel the Christmas party.

You sublet to a multi-marketing firm.

You close your office door.

You never ask why.

You initiate Chapter 7.

Our Customers? Who Cares?

On CEIR's blog, adman Gary Slack laments the tradeshow industry's thundering indifference to customers—an indifference, alas, I can vouch for.

"More than any other B2B medium or sales channel, the exhibition industry—meaning trade show producers, contractors, CVBs—is remarkably unconnected with senior B2B marketing leadership, the people who set marketing budgets and make the ultimate decisions on how much gets invested in face-to-face marketing," Slack says.

No matter where or when B2B marketers gather, you can count on the show industry to be a no-show, Slack says.

"Go to any B2B marketing conference and rarely if ever do you hear exhibition industry execs attending, much less speaking or even exhibiting. Yet practically every other recipient of B2B marketing dollars is represented, either in the audience or on the dais or in the exhibit hall, or all three."

This week is bittersweet for me.

It would have seen the inauguration of DARE, a marketing conference I planned with two partners to help bridge the gap between B2B CMOs and the exhibition industry.

We had to cancel the event 120 days out, for lack of sponsors and endorsements by show organizers.

Despite 12 months' effort to reach hundreds of tradeshow industry players, both large and small, only three suppliers—Freeman, Kubik and SpotMe—bought sponsorships before we cancelled DARE; and only one show organizer—NAB Show—endorsed the conference.

DARE sank in the vast sea of indifference to customers.

I'd chalk it up to a severe case of "fat, dumb and happy."

"As long as exhibitions themselves remain so essential to B2B sales success, maybe you don’t have to work as hard trying to grow your slice of the big B2B budget pie," Slack says.

"But by not engaging directly with senior B2B marketers at the events they attend to learn the latest, you are jeopardizing mindshare that some day may be critical to your survival."

There's a melancholic jazz song entitled, "Due to Lack of Interest, Tomorrow Has Been Canceled."

It might be DARE's theme song—or, if things don't change, the tradeshow industry's.

DISCLOSURE: I am the managing editor of CEIR's blog. Please contact me, if you'd like to contribute content.