Tag Archives: thanksgiving

Offline Marketing, Online Marketing, Random Thoughts

Give Thanks… For Your Customer’s “Attention”

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Seth Godin wrote an interesting Thanksgiving post where he thanked his readers for giving them a wonderful gift, their “attention”.

This is a very important concept that many business owners I talk to seemingly overlook. In today’s world there are a million distractions. Between TV, radio, books, billboards, iPods, bus advertisements, web sites, email ads, text messages, cell phones, Blackberry’s…well, the list goes on and on. The point is, there is always something vying for your attention. With only 24 hours in the day, that makes someone’s attention a highly sought after commodity.

Often times I hear business owners say something to the effect of “I don’t understand why my customers didn’t read all the way to the bottom of my email advertising campaign”. Then, I’ll take a look at their email and it appears to contain half the text from the Encyclopedia Britannica! I then ask the business owner if they would have time to read the whole thing, to which the reply is often a hesitant delay (realizing their blunder!) and then the statement “maybe not”. Well, if you won’t give you own content enough attention to get all the way to the bottom, you better believe that your customers are willing to invest a whole lot less than you are!

This is why it’s vital to put the most important pieces of information at the very top of your web page, your email, your hand-written memos, etc. If you assume that people are only willing to give you 15 seconds of their time, then you can strategically approach the way you present your content.

So, this Thanksgiving, while you’re giving thanks, don’t let “attention” slip your mind because if you don’t appreciate your customer’s attention, then it may not be long before you lose it.

I thank you all for reading this =)  […I guess it’d be hypocritical to not say that!]

I’ll close with this quote:
“On Thanksgiving Day all over America, families sit down to dinner at the same moment – halftime.”
— Unknown

Have a great Thanksgiving!

Email Marketing

Email Marketing Campaigns For Thanksgiving

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Today we started getting calls and emails from customers asking when the best day is to send out their email marketing campaigns saying “Happy Thanksgiving” to their customers.

Obviously one of the benefits of email marketing is that your message can be timely, but that doesn’t necessarily mean you should wait until the absolute last second to hit send.

There are primarily two schools of thoughts when it comes to email marketing strategy on this topic.

1. First Mover Advantage
While this actual term typically refers to a company gaining a competitive advantage by entering a market segment first (see Wikipedia on First-Mover Advantage), I like to use it on a more micro level as it applies in this case. If you want your customers to get their first “Happy Thanksgiving” email from you, then go ahead and send it early. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with launching your email marketing campaign before the actual holiday is upon us. If you think that waiting will make your customers say “Yet another email wishing me happy thanksgiving” then go ahead and send it early.

2. Timeliness Is Everything
My birthday is on June 5. But, if someone were to call me up on May 26 and say “Happy Birthday Rob!”, I’d probably think they’re crazy. I mean, nice gesture, but come on? That same sort of methodology applies to your email marketing campaigns around Thanksgiving. Just about everyone realizes that email is an instant technology (that’s one of the key benefits over traditional snail mail!). So, you may make your customers wonder why you jumped the gun on pressing send on your email so early.

In my opinion, no matter which option you choose for your email marketing strategy, the important thing is to realize that your customers will appreciate the gesture. So, in this case, there may be no wrong answer, just two variations of the right email marketing strategy.

Go ahead and adopt whatever you think will work best for your audience, but don’t spend too much time worrying about the exact timing. After all, while I thought the person who wished me happy birthday in May was a little bit nuts, I still appreciated the gesture (and, heck, it may be the only birthday wish I remember because I’m even writing about it now!).