I was recently asked by a magazine editor about the differences between snail mail and email. Is one replacing the other? Is one better or more effective than the other to accomplish my company’s corporate marketing objectives?

At JMG we use both email and snail mail effectively in reaching prospects. So it is not an either-or situation. It really depends on our communications objective. There is no question that the primary challenge with both methods is cutting through massive clutter. If messaging is not unique, relevant and motivating, it won’t matter how its delivered…it will not be effective.

Email

Email requires careful upfront planning for effective use. The sender has to be sure they are using proper authentication tools that help inbound-email servers classify which of the messages they receive are authentic and which are not. If receiving networks cannot verify the source domains can be blacklisted. Consequently emails sent are not delivered. Then there are opt-in opt-out issues that must be addressed. On to the subject line. A good subject line (unique, relevant and motivating) is the most important driver of open rates. Once opened content is key.

For simple messaging, short copy can work. For more involved messages or newsletters, longer copy is involved. The more personal the relationship with the prospect, the more likely it is that longer copy will get read. Call to action. We typically want to drive a prospect to our website or a microsite on a given topic. That way we can track interest in our topic and do personal follow-ups with prospects who show interest in our message. Finally there’s integration. Email campaigns should be consistent and integrated with other digital efforts…Twitter, website, likepages, etc. to be most effective. Email is definitely not a one trick pony.

Snail Mail

Most of our snail mail efforts to prospects have one major objective: To reinforce our creativity as a company. So snail mail for the most part is limited to dimensional mailers that stand out and beg to be opened. Inside there is a something unique that reinforces the message we are trying to convey. For example, several years ago we pitched an aviation client who thought that the biggest challenge they had was the managing the complexity of the markets they served. So we sent them a dimensional mailer that contained two three dimensional airplane puzzles…one in pieces and one already built. The message on the top of the box said, “We understand that your business is made up of many different parts.”

When the box was opened, the recipient saw a bunch of loose parts in a tray.

Removing the parts they saw another message, “But we’re confident we can figure out how they all work together.”

When the tray was lifted from the box a fully assembled airplane was revealed.

This mailer proved to be a very intrusive and engaging approach which addressed the prospect’s biggest challenge.

Another technology we have used for our clients that has made snail mail more effective is the ability to personalize and customize messaging to prospects with variable data printing. This highly personalized approach allows for high quality brochures, mailers and postcards to have much more impact because each mail piece is not only personalized with the recipient’s name, but may also include copy that speaks to their special interests. Once again there should be a call-to-action to a website, a personalized URL or toll free number so tracking can be monitored.

In summary both methods have a reason to exist as part of any marketing program. The challenge is to carefully evaluate the big picture communications objective and then determine the best strategic and tactical elements to deploy based on available budgets. Obviously email is generally less expensive to implement since there is no print production or postage involved. But there could be a strong rationale to spend extra dollars on snail mail to impact high value targets. So, for best results always choose your mail-weapon carefully.

What’s worked best for you?

Authors: Susan M. Drake, Michelle J. Gulman, Sara M. Roberts

If you have any doubt in your mind about the value and importance of internal marketing to build employee loyalty and performance this book will make you a believer! In just under 250 pages this “how to” book covers it all: the benefits of internal marketing; interesting case studies; proper messaging; audience segmentation; appropriate delivery systems; measurement tools; survey samples; recognition strategies and integrated planning timelines.

A brief summary of the authors’ description of what internal marketing is all about:

“Here’s the long and short of internal marketing: Employees must buy your message before your customers do. They must understand why your product or service is important, know what it can do for customers, believe in its integrity, and be inspired to make it even better. Employees have to understand where the company is headed and why. And they must be treated as grownups who can handle the truth, even when it is unpleasant. They have to be dedicated to working together to build the business. And finally they should feel proud to tell people what they do and where they work. When they feel like that, everyone will know it—especially your customers.”

The “E” Factor

The process for creating motivated employees is based on practicing what the authors call the four “E” behaviors:

1. Engaging: Involve employees in helping create your company’s vision and then paint a clear picture of how to execute it. Let them help define the heart and soul of your brand…what makes it different, special and wonderful…valued by customers and employees alike. Then craft the story and keep talking. Authors cite Steven Jobs, CEO and founder of Apple as one who has an amazing talent for sharing a clearly defined story and cause as he articulates to his employees what Apple stands for and where it’s headed. He really gives employees something to believe in. The result: Apple is a “cult brand” and an inspiration to many of its employees and customers.
2. Enabling: Once the vision, mission and values are created a company must provide a supportive and positive work environment along with proper training, tools, direction and the power to make the vision a reality.
3. Empowering: Great companies provide the autonomy and platform for employees to do what it takes to do their jobs well. They give people permission to make mistakes. They let them know the desired outcome, but allow employees the flexibility to do it their way.
4. Ensuring: Great companies have methodologies in place to establish clear goals, accountability, measurements for success and give appropriate rewards and recognition for performance.

“E” Employees

“E” employees are the kind of people who:

• Take risks
• Make suggestions
• Support others
• Smile a lot
• Motivate their co-workers
• Enjoy work
• Attract trust
• Like customers
• Define service as whatever the customer needs (whether it’s an external customer buying the product or an internal customer who needs assistance with a project)

“E” Employees Wow Your Customers

The authors state that the greatest differentiator a company can achieve is its reputation—its brand—for phenomenal service, superior products and quality in everything it does. And that kind of brand is built on the shoulders of “E” employees.

Engaged employees are passionate about the company and their work and this comes through every customer interaction, every product or service and the quality of everything they do. At the end of the day, a company does not take care of its customers—employees do.

Enabled employees have the resources and information to provide better customer service, deliver higher quality products and services and help the company grow. Being enabled imbues employees with the responsibility and accountability to be successful.

Empowered employees have a sense of ownership that makes them extremely passionate about their work. They also have the freedom to provide the highest level of service for customers.

That’s why:

FedEx management focuses on internal marketing because they understand their “E” employees will deliver fantastic service, wow their customers and turn tremendous profits. They named their corporate philosophy after a concept called PSP—people, service, profits in that order.

Richard Branson, the highly successful entrepreneur, and CEO of Virgin has the same philosophy, “We give top priorities to the interests of our staff; second to those of our customers; and third to shareholders. This is not only a reflection on the importance of our people; it is also the most positive way of fitting together these three priorities.”

Southwest Airlines is also a firm believer in marketing to its employees. As a result the company has created one of the strongest internal brands and cultures in the world—a culture of happy, loyal employees who want to treat their customers well. Southwest has been able to sustain its culture by constantly strengthening its internal brand through its core values.

It Starts With Culture

The process starts with a company’s culture…a reflection of a company’s leadership, philosophy, history and shared beliefs and values. A company’s culture inevitably affects whether employees will support or hinder desired change; it drives behavior. Misalignment within a company’s culture can cause employees to be resistant and slow to change. They may even sabotage desired behaviors. Internal marketing communicates a vision of the company culture, strengthens an already powerful brand culture and gives employees a roadmap for action.

When management lives and communicates the culture every day two very important things happen:

1. Employees see that management adheres to the company’s stated beliefs, also known as “walking the talk.”
2. It proves that management believes employees to be the heart and soul of the company.

Brand promise + Company’s ability to deliver = Business results

Eight Steps to Success

The authors have identified eight steps to implementing a successful internal marketing program. A lot more detail is provided in the book but here’s a very brief outline:

1. Set a course from A to B – SWOT analysis and goal/objective setting for the plan.
2. Define your audiences – Segmentation by associate profile, level of responsibility and location.
3. Assess the climate – Take the pulse of the organization by area or department. Are employees happy, disgruntled, trusting or suspicious?
4. Define your key messages – Motivational, strategic, news, training, management directives, and recognition.
5. Match the vehicles to the message – Company meeting, video conference, newsletters, email, and intranet.
6. Choose the champions – Leaders and managers who are articulate, enthusiastic, well liked and have a vested interest in the success of the program.
7. Execute the plan – Launch strategy and scale. Timelines, milestones and frequent communication.
8. Measure and adapt – Measure performance against objectives: focus groups, surveys, interviews.

What I’ve shared are just few of the ideas and thoughts from this great book. If your company or brand is overpromising and under delivering, Light Their Fire will provide you with inspiration and direction that could reignite your organization and set it on a course for new growth.

Of course, reading the book is the easy part. Implementation will take serious dedication and commitment.

Watch for the next book review on Living the Brand. In the meantime if you have any thoughts on internal branding in your own organization I’d love to hear them.

Over the years, much good “how-to” stuff has been written about the subject of strategic marketing, branding and brand building, with the end game being to help marketers identify new ways to persuade more people to buy and become loyal to a brand, e.g. external marketing. But another very important and often ignored market is even more critical—the internal market—the very employees in a company or organization who can make or break the brand for the customers it is trying to attract.

John Wanamaker, the famous retail magnate considered by many to be the father of modern advertising, once said,

“Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; trouble is I don’t know which half.”

I’d like to take that idea one step further:  The majority of any brand’s marketing dollars is wasted if investments are not also made in internal HR and marketing initiatives to create a strong brand culture; e.g., hire, retain, educate and inspire company associates to consistently and enthusiastically deliver on the brand promise. Why invest large sums of money on promoting an idealized image and set of expectations through external marketing initiatives if the brand itself under delivers? Yet many marketing and brand managers still believe advertising and promotion is the Holy Grail to drive sales and market share.  Internal brand-building continues to take a back seat, even though now more than ever, market success is ultimately determined by the holistic brand experience one has with products or services and their intimately related touch points.

In a recent article by Sara M. Roberts, author and president of Roberts Golden, an organizational change management and internal marketing consultancy, she underscored the importance of the following statement:

“How many employees does it take to make a brand?  Every one of them.  How many employees does it take to break a brand? Just one.”

Larry Oakner, Director of Brand Culture at Interbrand, also wrote in his white paper, Managing Your Brand Through Your Employees,

“What makes the difference between a ho-hum brand and a truly great one? A company’s employees.”

So in the weeks ahead, I’d like to share a few mini reviews from what, in my opinion, are three great books on the topic of motivating and inspiring employees to deliver on the brand promise. Each book brings a fresh and different perspective:

Light Their Fire

First a little about the authors: Susan M. Drake is the founder and president of Spellbinders, Inc., an internal marketing and communications consultancy; Michelle J. Gulman is an independent consultant who specializes in change management and internal marketing; and Sara M. Roberts is the founder of Roberts Golden, a San Francisco-based consultancy that specializes in change management and internal marketing solutions. Their book, Light Their Fire: Using Internal Marketing to Ignite Employee Performance and Wow Your Customers, does a great job of providing step-by-step approaches to engage employees in the vision of a business or a brand and to empower them to make decisions that build brand and customer loyalty.  The book includes practical tools and case studies to address the role of internal marketing in a variety of situations.

Living the Brand

Nicholas Ind is a writer and brand consultant based in Scandinavia. He’s written several business books including The Corporate Image, Great Advertising Campaigns, Branding Governance and The Corporate Brand. In his book, Living the Brand, Nicholas explores ways in which organizations should endeavor to engage and empower their employees to create “brand champions.” He advocates that organizations need to build meaning into ideas so that employees can genuinely live the brand in their day-to-day lives.  The book explores the nature of branding and explores why people have become such important definers of the brand. Perhaps his biggest point is this: both organizations and people need values—they are essential to well-being and a sense of worth.

Brand from the Inside

Authors Libby Sartain and Mark Schumann bring yet another fresh and relevant perspective for proven ways to link strong  emotional connections between employees and brands. Libby is a senior vice president of human resources for Yahoo and is responsible for leading Yahoo’s global HR efforts. Mark is the former global communications practice leader for the consulting firm Towers Perrin, where he counseled leaders of major corporations around the world on how to engage employees during challenging situations of defining change. Brand from the Inside is also a great “how-to” book that provides step-by-step instruction on how to motivate employees to consistently deliver on the experience the customer brand promises. The book is complete with examples and case studies from companies that prove how the “employee brand” can contribute to business results.

Be watching for more in-depth reviews of, and highlights from, each of these books. In the meantime, if you have any insights regarding your own personal experience (success or frustration) with getting employees to buy in and support your brand’s promise to the external marketplace, share them here. More to come.

The New Rules of Marketing & PR

Here’s a “must read” book that in my opinion, does a great job of presenting how the web has changed things in a big way for us marketers. The full title is The New Rules of Marketing and PR, How to Use News Releases, Blogs, Podcasting, Viral Marketing and Online Media to Reach Buyers Directly.

The author, David Meerman Scott, is a well qualified authority and internet veteran having launched a marketing strategy with online content to reach buyers directly on the web way back in the early ’90s. He’s spent the last 18 years or so speaking and consulting with corporations on how to use web content to sell products and services. This book evolved out of David’s vast blog experience and an ebook he published called The New Rules of PR. After more than 200,000 downloads, David decided he had a hot topic on his hands so he went full bore into writing a hard cover. He broadened the subject matter to address marketing as well.

So here’s the essence of David’s insight…

The Internet has not only changed the way people communicate and interact with each other, it has also changed the way businesses can and should communicate with their customers and prospects. We all remember the old days when companies could only communicate indirectly through pricey mass advertising and press releases. The internet has changed all that because now a business can speak directly to and build closer relationships with customers and buyers.

Niche buyers can also be reached more selectively with targeted messages that cost a fraction of the traditional big-budget ad campaign. So rather than bombard them with advertising they’ll likely ignore, David advocates the internet allows a business to focus on getting the right message to the right people at the right time. And when people visit a company’s Web site, he says they aren’t there to get more ad fluff. They want value, information, interaction, and choice. As the book cover overleaf states:

“This one-of-a-kind guide to the future of marketing includes a step-by-step action plan for harnessing the power of the Internet, showing you how to identify audiences, create compelling messages, get those messages to the right people, and lead those consumers into the buying process.”

To top it all off he also includes some great case studies to prove his points.

In a separate presentation David made he summed up the old rules and the new rules of marketing like this:

The New Rules of Marketing™

In this rapidly changing age of Web 2.0 we all have experienced in some way, the amazing power of social media and its influence on consumer attitudes and behavior regarding the purchase and usage of products and services.

The most recent “case study” that has gotten a lot of attention is Johnson & Johnson’s advertising for its pain relief product, Motrin. Now, one would have thought that a big sophisticated marketer like J&J, and its subsidiary company McNeil Healthcare, would not be challenged by relating to their customer base. After all they’ve got to have tons of research about and experience with their customer base, right?

Yet, the animated ad for Motrin presents a mom who complains that wearing her baby (in a sling or carrier) is hurting her back, so she pops some Motrin. This ad was an attempt to connect with moms through the common experience (and pain) of carrying a new born child. But according to many Twittering moms the message takeaway was that moms wear their babies as fashion accessories, or because it “totally makes me look like an official mom.”

All along the TV spot seemed to be relating to their target market, until BOOM!

Motrin missed the mark…because the brand totally misread their consumer.

Now no marketer is perfect. We all make mistakes. But this experience begs the question about the quality of the brand’s consumer insight and the ability to properly interpret it to drive a relevant messaging strategy. Advertising pretesting could have/should have also been used to determine if the message/creative concept was relevant or…a lightning rod. Yes, pain is a problem…but carrying a baby in a sling is not a fashion accessory!

Since the advertising was pulled, J&J’s marketing VP has sent out apologies to bloggers and J&J has issued a formal apology on their official blog. But, will that be enough to satisfy their customer base or will they lose some profitable share points?

So my brief summary is this:

In today’s world, being in close touch and empathizing with the consumer base is more critical than ever because one misread or misstep can create an outrage that can really hurt a brand in a viral way.

Like one blogger said: Motrin: If you’re going to be hip and in the know, you need to actually be hip and in the know.

So we’ve all read about and had direct experiences with social media from an external internet standpoint, but what about inside our companies? Probably not too much going on there other than a simple intranet and emails. That is unless your company is an innovator like Accenture.

According to an article in 1to1 Magazine, Accenture is making bold moves to help their 180,000 employees get to know each other a whole lot better. Using web 2.0 technology, Accenture is moving toward what they call the Borderless Workplace Initiative.

The article quotes Frank Modruson, Accenture’s CIO as saying:

We feel with this kind of technology the advantage will go to the early adopters. The core of our initiative is bringing social networking into Accenture, to bring the power of every employee together to make it easier to do business.

So their Borderless workplace includes the following:

• A wiki call Accenture Encyclopedia which is a media exchange resembling YouTube
• Personal blogs for employees
• A social network for employees so they can collaborate, share knowledge and find subject matter to answer customer questions.

The company also developed 148 customer microsites to help its marketing and sales teams develop stronger customer relationships. Each site acts as a portal for each client’s team so members from every customer touchpoint have access to the content and receive feedback through the site. The sites can also leverage all of Accentures social media tools including discussion boards, podcasts, video streams and wikis.

Accenture measures both hard and soft metrics to see how well the concept is utilized. Cost of operation is how the company measures ROI and they say with the reduced travel costs from telepresence alone the intiative is a slam dunk. They plan to roll the program out by the end of the year.

Accenture says it has shaped its culture around networking, sharing, connecting and teaming. Any company or organization who wants to stay out front in the race for innovation and efficiency should go to school on what Accenture is doing with social media.

For companies both large and small, its time to embrace social media from the inside…out.

Welcome to The Cure for Common Marketing, a blog dedicated to sharing insightful thinking, new ideas, technologies, what-if concepts, success stories, and book/article reviews about light speed changes in the B2B marketing universe. This is a place for those with a passion for B2B marketing and branding innovation to challenge the status quo and download their rant and rave thought streams. We expect a whole lot of chatter around digital media and web 2.0…you know…virtualization, mashups, mobile browsers, tweets, MPMs, etc, but you’re also invited to discuss just about anything to do with integrated online/offline marketing breakthroughs.

Here’s a quick example. How can a B2B shipping company like UPS make a new product offering a little more exciting by using digital media? Recently UPS introduced a new international return service and paperless invoicing. Sound exciting? Well to help make it exciting and to begin building viral awareness before the official launch they introduced a cool online game called The International Paperless Adventure where the player picks a starting point and a destination, then flies a floating UPS package over continents avoiding obstacles, like stacks of paper, sharks and other menaces while eating clouds and computer mice to accelerate package speed. The game also had a viral component so they could send it to a friend. According to early reads, visitors were spending about 3.5 minutes of playing time and about 5% of visitors also sent the game to a friend. Brown did a nice job with this prelaunch creative solution. What do you think?