Steve Yastrow

Letting the word in vs. Getting the word out

The direction of marketing has changed 180 degrees.

While marketers are trying to “get the word out,” customers are more focused on what words they let in.

I’d like to invite you to let the words of today’s newsletter in.

Read the newsletter: Letting the word in vs. Getting the word out

Posted in Brand Harmony, Technology +/- | No Comments »

Heathrow in the Morning – Thinking New Technologies

Here’s a short video I recorded this morning at London’s Heathrow Airport, after reading an article on new marketing technologies in the July UK edition of Wired Magazine.

What I’m talking about: The article describes many new marketing technologies that can manipulate customers and invade their privacy. My bottom line (as I write in the first chapter of We): There are two types of technology – those that bring you closer to your customer and those that put a barrier (or create distance) between you and your customer. If a technology builds your relationship with a customer, great. If it hurts your relationship, then there are reasons beyond privacy and manipulation that should keep you from using that technology.

Here’s the video. Please excuse the rough video quality … that’s what happens when a Flip Video (which is normally adequate) gets combined with bright lighting behind me, and my complexion after 12 hours on an airplane.

Here’s the blog post on We Relationships I reference in the video. (Postscript: The video describes how United Airlines used their baggage tracking technology to help me today, and this blog post describes how they didn’t use the same technology to help me 10 days ago. The result: Today I got my bags on time, 10 days ago I was severely inconvenienced. It’s not about the technology, it’s about how you use it.)

What do you think? Any of you using these technologies in your marketing? Any of you notice digial signs looking back at you in retail stores? Anybody paranoid that their cellphone usage is helping Big Brother track your every move?

Posted in Technology +/- | 8 Comments »

Subscribers Rule – Exact Target

Last week I had the privilege to speak at Exact Target‘s Connections ’08 user conference. Exact Target is the provider of a leading email marketing application … but they are so much more. 1200 people attended the conference, and heard the Exact Target mantra – “Subscribers Rule.” (see subscribersrule.com for more)

Subscribers Rule is one of the tightest, clearest brand essence ideas I’ve heard in a while; Exact Target, as a group of online marketing thought leaders, encourages people not to think of email marketing and related activities only as customer acquisition tools, but as customer relationship-building tools. (This was the subject of my talk to the pre-conference “Agency Summit.” I wrote The Apple Farmer story preparing for this talk.)

Jeff Rohrs of Exact Target spoke before me, explaining the Subscribers Rule philosophy.  Jeff is a leading thinker in this area, and pointed out that customers might still think of you as a spammer even if they have subscribed to your material, if they don’t think it is interesting or think you send it too frequently.  Subscribers Rule is based on three major principles:

1. Serve the individual – Don’t focus on lists. Use technology for mass personalization.
2. Honor preferences – in terms of content, frequency, channel
3. Deliver value that meets the customer’s unique needs … they don’t care what you want, only what they want.

Read more of Jeff’s posts on subscribersrule.com. We can all learn a lot from Jeff.  He “gets it.”

Since I was speaking to a room full of people immersed in Internet marketing and social media, I have some special opportunities to share the content of my talk with you.  First, welcome to the world of instant blogging.  Soon after leaving the stage, I started getting Google Alert emails, telling me about blog posts about my speech.

• Tom Dressler of Marketer Insight wrote this wonderful post as I was speaking, giving a complete recap of the talk.
• Bill Powell of The Serif Group shared these insights on The Orange Juice blog, focusing on my jabs at “Brute Force Branding.”
• Exact Target’s marketing group posted this “live blog” giving a play-by-play of what I was saying.
• Jeff Rohrs also wrote this post called “Zen Mail Marketing” on the Subscribers Rule blog about the “Not Two” concept I use to explain the idea of a We relationship. (This is an idea inspired by friend David Gottlieb, co-author of Letters to a Buddhist Jew. David is one of the smartest, most interesting people any of us has ever met, in addition to rooting for the wrong Chicago baseball team.  Write me if you want more information on “Not Two.”)

Jeff also interviewed me, and published this short video of our conversation:

Finally, if you’d like my slides, please see them here. Yes, looking at slides by themselves is (should be) cryptic, so get in touch if you have questions.

Posted in Speeches & events, Technology +/-, We relationships | No Comments »

Ask yourself this question: Do our technology initiatives brings us closer to, or further from, our customers?

Consider your organization’s technology initiatives over the last five years, and ask yourself:

• What portion of our technology initiatives make it easier for customers to get closer to us? (Example: Apple lets you sign up for Genius Bar appointments online.)
• What portion of our technology initiatives put a barrier between our customers and us? (Example: “Please say or enter your 16-digit credit card number.”)

Posted in Technology +/- | 5 Comments »