Bribery and corruption? II

More by way of 'paying for a review' ... and another example 'what's to review?' 

It's a water filter - it filtered the water

Bribery and corruption?

Give us feedback and we will pay you for it. 

I bought an adidas jacket last week and received this email today.

Is this an ethical way of collecting reviews?

Too far?

For the last 20 years I have been a proponent of websites being simple - it increases the UX. However, has Balenciaga gone too far?

Even my KISS attitude thinks that for this particular company, this may be a tad too far – the key reason being that Balenciaga is selling a product [clothes] that have an aesthetic appeal and so images may draw customers into the 'shop' – such a 'minimalist' approach might better suit a ‘soulless’ product such as government departments [Gov.uk. for example].

That said, perhaps 'minimalist' non-conforming to couture norms is the Balenciaga brand – and so the site makes sense. Note how on pages where the clothes are shown, the models have a distinctly ‘un-glamorous’ pose, and that the site lacks many of the ‘normal’ content, e.g. ‘about us’. I can find little about the company – but as their only outlets in the UK are in Knightsbridge, Covent Garden and  Mayfair, I suspect the brand is very much up-market. If anyone's visited one of these shops I would be interested to know if they are as minimalist as the website.

However, although the first visit to the Balenciaga.com is a bit of a shock – in subsequent visits you just click on the relevant word on the screen: job done.

As far as I know, this site went live in 2017 – check it when you read this to see if it is still as shown above ... or whether Balenciaga's nerve has broken.

My house, my rules

Many organizations, including several universities, use third party websites as part of their marketing. One example of such sites is issuu.com that facilitates offline catalogues to be reproduced online in a click-to-turn-the-page fashion. Whilst these are aesthetically very good, in usability terms they are a disaster. 

On a PC screen, the default is screen size which is about the same size as the printed version. But we can hold the printed version nearer or further away to suite our eye site. Make the screen image bigger and you have to scroll around the page as the text goes off of the screen. Try it on your smart phone – the device of choice for a university’s target market. 

For 20 years I have said ‘do not simply reproduce offline content for online, it is not read in the same context’. This is still true. 

Also, simply reproducing the offline version online means you lose that great tool of the Internet – the hyperlink. In an offline publication you have to say; ‘if you want to apply; ring this number/copy type this address into your email/go to this website’. In sales terms, these are all barriers. Online you say; ‘click here’. 

Furthermore, take another look at the image. Notice the ‘ads’ to the right of the ‘publication’ area? Yep, people search for your prospectus on Google – and issuu.com help YOUR prospects to find another seller. D’oh! 

These are reason enough not to use this method to publish online – but there is also the ‘my house, my rules’ issue. Take a look at issuu.com’s terms and conditions. Oh dear. They have total control over everything published on their domain. Hmmm ... is that what you want for your marketing content? 

So why do organization’s use the likes of issuu.com? In this instance I suggest it is [a] the novelty of the click-to-turn-the-page facility [bells-and-whistles syndrome], and [b] easy to use – you upload the digital version of the printed brochure and issuu.com does the rest. 

But if you have the digital version of the printed material [every publication starts in digital format], why not convert it to html and put it on your website? You won’t get that fancy aesthetic of the page turning, but you can insert hyperlinks – and users will be able to read the words [that is why users are there] on any device . 

Out of interest, I put “University of Sunderland International Prospectus” into Google – and the issuu.com page was fifth in the SERP listing – which isn’t bad. But the first four were all pages on sunderland.ac.uk. If the online-prospectus is on your own domain then you have potential customers coming into your 'shop' where they can see your sales pitch and you can capture their details – and there are no ads for your competitors’ products because it is your site, so they are your rules. 

Ho hum.

Bribing reviewers

In my classes I have an exercise to identify legitimate ways of 'encouraging' customers to leave reviews.

This is not such a case.

It is an attempt to bribe customers to leave 5-star reviews. Long term; it is not good practice and it will come back to bite any organization who uses it.

Note: I deleted the name of the company - and am I the only one who thinks that this looks like a template for this message which each organization can add its own details? If so, who provided the template ... surely not eBay or Amazon?

You're not coming in here using that

If you are going to provide a service - to external or internal customers - make it as easy for them ... and don't dictate how they go about it.
 

This is like security telling a potential customer they cannot come into a shop wearing the 'wrong' shoes. 

But it gets worse ... this is what happened when I tried to login using Firefox.

The boxes are ticked - but where's the fairy dust?

The Irish Fairy Doors Company is a very successful company with an interesting and innovative product. The culture of the organization comes across in the product and website, everything is just right for the target market [take a look on theirishfairydoorcompany.com].

In my books I cover the subject of email as a medium of carrying a marketing message - be it sales, branding or relationship building.

It is now pretty much standard practice to send emails confirming an order has been received/dispatched/delivered - so The Irish Fairy Doors Company ticked those boxes when I placed an order recently ...

The links to view order and visit our store were included - so more boxes were ticked there.

But I cannot help but think they missed an opportunity to engage with customers ... where is the message from the fairies?

Bargain, what bargain?

I have bought Adidas Sambas online from JD Sports before - so I was targeted with this email ... 

 £15 I thought, bargain, I'll have a pair of those, but when I clicked on the link ... 

  Offline, if you advertise a product that is not available you are breaking the law. Online ... ?

UPDATE May 7th 2017

I was surfing around the web the other day and went to the JD website [again] to look at what Sambas might be available available. There was none that interested me - but [obviously] my visit to the site triggered another email. 

By another I mean the same email, with the same £15 bargain ... and yes - you are ahead of me here aren't you - there was none in stock.   

One this this does prove is that JD Sports do not monitor social media for mention of their brand - which is poor practice for such an organization - or they have read my original comment and chosen to do nothing about the not-available special offers, which is inexcusably bad practice. Ho hum.

UPDATE June 4th 2017

They just sent me the same email again - same result
 

No entry to buy a car from this website

I thought tricks like this were a thing of the past. 

 Yep ... I couldn't get onto this car sales website without giving my postcode. 

Question to owners: would you stop every car entering your forecourt and tell drivers they can't come in to buy a car unless they give their postcode?

No. So why do it online?

Email: timeliness is next to ticketless

I received this email on Friday December 30^th – the day of the featured match – at nearly half past two.

Note how the message mentions; ‘ ... tomorrow night’.

And it gets worse. Open that message and it tells you that if you want a ticket, you have up til midday to get one. That would be two and a half hours before the message was sent.

Fortunately, I already had my ticket:-)

Put a little more heart into this advertising

I have a reasonably healthy lifestyle and so I’m not really the target for health campaigns – but on the BBC this morning there was a piece from the British Heart Foundation (BHF) that mentioned an app to track how far you walk each day. Well, I walk quite a lot and have thought of such an app many times, so this was a prompt to check out the BHF’s.

So I typed “walking app” into Google – and top of the adverts was one for the BHF walking app. Its header said ‘free walking app’, so-far-so-good for BHF’s digital marketers.

But when I clicked on the link [for which the BHF will have to pay] I got this ...

 Oh dear; hero to zero in one click.

Unconventional navigation ...

... from an unconventional writer. Seth Godin is an original thinker, but his blog’s navigation requires the visitor to do some thinking. 

It even has to be explained [the ‘click on my head’ notice] – which suggests it is poor navigation.

Perhaps the zany-ness of the author should be reflected in the link-image?

Check out the site ... Seth Godin.

 

Follow these simple instructions...

As a non-techie, something that has always annoyed me is instructions written by a techie that are supposed to be simple. Well, at least they are simple to the techie.

Here's an example from Google. Note that how on only the second line of the instructions things go wrong ... 

What a waste ...

Whilst a lot of attention is given to the use of email for direct marketing, I have always emphasized that 'non-direct-marketing' emails can also be used as a medium for marketing messages. This is even more the case in the era of 'big data'.

Recently, I purchased a pair of training shoes on JD Sports website - this is a range they sell in store, but the full range of colour and size are only available online. I received a host of emails: order received; order accepted; order arrived in store - and then this one ... 

Whilst the other emails could  have included marketing messages, this one - as it comes at the end of the transaction - is ideal for doing something to engage me as a future customer. As I have purchased the same brand and type of training shoe [in a different colour] from them in the past, and that they should have been able to link my home PC's IP address with the order, there is a wasted opportunity in offering me some kind of discount for a future similar purchase? Or, as the shoes are often released in limited edition colours, an offer to be contacted before a new colour goes on general sale?

Nothing like rocket science - just good old sales. 

Oh, and let's not ignore the wasted ad space with the 'free delivery to over 500 stores' message - yes, I know, this email is to tell me my order was delivered free to one of their 500 stores. D'uh.

PS as an aside, this email could have included some kind of security message; e.g. ' ... collected. Was this you?'   

Content marketing shows its age

Online newspapers are now little more than blocks of ads extolling us to read about the '7 most ... ' - or something similar.

On such a site I came across this 'news' story ... only it's a couple of years old. 

Note also the two poor examples of advertising. Yes, they are for cars - but nothing like the car in the ad, and so unlikely to have been of any interest to folk who chose to look at the article about the sports car.