segmenting emailMany small businesses leverage the power of email packages from companies like iContact, Constant Contact and MailChimp.  All have robust messages builders, built-in analytics and subscriber feature sets.

If you’re like me, you receive emails from clients, partners, colleagues and vendors. There is the invariable newsletter, a big sales announcement or notices of upcoming meetings. But most small businesses don’t leverage the functions in those email systems by creating segments.

Almost every business I speak with has a big list that receives the same email once or twice each month. Consider segmenting your customers and sending regular email through the system.

For example, one client has a great data product that has a daily update.  By segmenting the email lists into various customer segments, this company can use the analytics to understand more about their customer behavior.

Other clients can create a newsletter for their customers and easily swap out one or two text blocks for prospects versus customers or non-prospects, non-customers versus those who receive product information. Whether you use Outlook, Gmail or something else, your takeaway as a small business leader is to use your email marketing system’s lists to look at open rates, identify interested prospects and avoid sending that horrible “notify sender when read” message. Segmenting your email addresses is something anyone can do that provides flexibility and tools far beyond your normal email client.

Google will begin using information compiled by data aggregators to provide information to consumers in the growing Google Products area. The company has done this before, but things are different now.  The search engine once tried walling off internal information from products like Froogle and Google Product.  Now comes Google Product Search with product pages that compile “all the information” Google has on a product. Google manager Brian Lam blogged yesterday that the company would “[work] with suppliers and manufacturers to get product data straight from the source.”   The company chose Edgenet, a data company that organizes information from thousands of companies in multiple sectors, including consumer electronics, furniture and “general merchandise”. Read More

I hit a dry patch while preparing a presentation over the holidays,  I needed examples of national brands the audience would immediately consider outstanding customer service organizations. Many did a good job.  Some did pretty good jobs, but finding the company doing a great job was difficult. Nordstrom is one obvious fallback, but has almost reached the level of cliche.

Customer service, like marketing, is science and art. But smart local businesses do both

Customer service advocates once tried using the Malcolm Baldridge Award as a proxy for a national customer service award.  That worked early when customer-centric organizations like the now defunct AT&T Universal Card and FedEx won awards for service. Now? Zappos’ service culture is revered, but the company is slowly absorbing into Amazon, a pretty good service company too, but better at logistics and making markets.  There’s not much there to make customers swoon. Multiple elements create a world class service envrionment, but first among them is having a world class service or product offering.  Then the organization has to dazzle customers with every transaction, including full empowerment  down to the line staff level. Ritz Carlton properties still have some of that cachet, but keeping a service quality culture at that level  is darn near impossible when you grow from 4 to 40 sites and sell out to Marriott. Some companies–Amazon, FedEx,  Disney depending on who is talking–have great national reputations, but they are the exception.   The inability of most national brands to deliver great customer service is an opportunity for small businesses. Your takeaway as a small business leader is to make customer service a differentiator. If you run a pizza parlor, you can compete with the chains by offering good quality food and great service.  Not every independent bookshop was squeezed out of business by Amazon.  Instead the national chains took a beating, just as Netflix was administering the same style of beating to Blockbuster.  But Joe’s Pizza, at the corner for two generations?   Doing just fine thanks. Read More