2.7 Anxious Little Seconds, Part 2: Telephoning

2.7 seconds is about the time it takes to have a really good sneeze. It’s also about all the time you’ve got to connect with a telemarketing contact.

Marketing is tough. Cold calling is tougher still.

If you’re making cold calls, you’ve got a grand total of 2.7 seconds before you lose the recipient. He may be polite and wait until you pause for a breath before he cuts you off. Or he may click you into oblivion in mid-sentence. Either way you’re outta there, and you’re not getting back in.

That’s a measly 2 seconds to make a first—and maybe last—impression. The success of your marketing effort depends on it.

What’s a marketer to do? Here are a few ideas to help you survive that brutal 2 seconds:

1. Be sharp in your presentation. Make your opening line provocative, arresting. Don’t waste words. Be crisp. No verbal fumbling. Remember, everybody is in a hurry these days. Respect your recipient’s time.
2. Prepare your presentation in advance but don’t sound canned. Sound sincere, spontaneous, genuine. Have a script in your head—not in front of your eyes.
3. Use the recipient’s name. People are egotists. They love to hear their name spoken—it’s music to their ears. And maybe they’ll give you a few extra milliseconds of airtime to have your say.
4. Conversely, if you can’t pronounce the person’s name, don’t try it. You’ll embarrass yourself and irritate your listener.
5. Be flexible. Remember the old joke abut the telemarketer who got stopped in mid-stream and had to start over again? It’s true—and it isn’t funny. Be prepared to venture off the beaten path if the caller wants to go there.
6. Open with humor. If your recipient is smiling or chuckling, the 2.7 seconds can easily extend. You don’t have to be Rodney Dangerfield. Be your better self.
7. Don’t drone on and on endlessly. Ever! Go back and reread point #1.
8. Thank the recipient for his time when you close. Remember the manners your Momma taught you.

2.7 Anxious Little Seconds, Part 1: Emailing

Speed dating is hard enough. Marketing is worse.

If you’re into speed dating, you’ll know that you’ve got 5 seconds to “connect.” But that 5 seconds is absolutely luxurious compared to the newest marketing statistics!

If you’re sending an email, you’ve got a grand total of 2.7 seconds before the recipient hits the delete button. That’s a measly 2 seconds to make a first—and maybe last—impression. The success of your marketing effort depends on it.

What’s a marketer to do? Here are a few ideas to help you survive that brutal 2 seconds:

1. Be laser sharp in your presentation. Make the subject line provocative, arresting. People will slow down to read it. People are innately curious, and if you can tap into that curiosity, you’ll get more than your share of time.
2. Use the recipient’s name in the email subject line. It’s true. People are egotists. They love to see their name, and will slow down to read it. That slow-down time, infinitesimal as it is, will buy you some extra eyeball seconds.
3. Open with gentle, natural humor. If your recipient is smiling or chuckling, the 2.7 seconds can easily extend.
4. Spell everything correctly. Nothing screams “SPAM!” louder than a misspelled word.
5. Design your email—especially if it has an attachment—so that recipients can see who it is from and some of the content, even before they open it. If your design only shows little boxes with hidden pix, you’re asking for trouble.
6. Don’t drone on and on endlessly. Ever! In any media! Boredom killed many a date and can lead to sudden terminations and brutal deletes. Keep it short and they will want to come back for more.
7. Make it personal. Write to one person. Use what you know what him. If you know the recipient’s specific issues, needs and wants (gained perhaps from a PURL? A survey? A reader questionnaire?) use it! Sending an email to “Y’all” may get you Bubba points, but it will depress your marketing response rates.

Like you didn’t have enough pressure on you already.

Dancing with the Girl What Brung You! A Valentine's Day Reminder

For most marketers—and that includes B2B, B2C, B2G and fundraising professionals, and probably you—their First Love was Direct Mail. After all, DM was easy to understand. Write a great package, wrap it in a great design, choose a great list, put it in the mail, then watch the responses pour in.

Like most First Loves, DM is a wonderfully magical mix of mysterious qualities that could turn anyone’s head. DM, after all, combines the best of both art (concise but compelling copy with great graphics) and science (choosing the right list, the right theme and the right time, with statistically provable results).

But unlike many First Loves, DM is understandable…logical…statistically predictable…reliable. And maybe those stolid qualities are DM’s greatest failing, too.

Many people think solid qualities and dependable performance are booooring. They prefer a little spice in their cupcake. That’s why so many women fall for Bad Boys…and why so many men fall for tramps, trollops and floozies.

It may also be why so many marketers are opting to use emails and social media instead of good old reliable DM. The new media are, frankly, glitzier. Solid old DM can’t compete with Flash programming.

The new media are hip; DM is establishment. The new media are funky, fun and often fabulous; DM is, well, dependable.

New media can launch faster, but don’t have the longevity of DM. An email or Tweet can simply go pfft with a single keystroke. It’s gone, vanished. Never remembered, never missed. But DM can stick around for weeks.

Recipients often don’t see the new media. When you are deluged with emails everyday, you have to make snap decisions to keep the inbox clear. “Delete” is a no-regrets decision that you probably make hundreds of times a day. You are not alone.

On the other hand, recipients of DM can’t miss it. It arrives at their preferred address and they have to hold it in their hands before the fateful “keep or toss” decision. DM gives the sender several more critical milliseconds of attention and the value of physical contact—something that new media can never provide.

New media may be faster and cheaper, but it is fraught with peril. There is one company that emails me every day. And every day something is misspelled. It speaks of sloppiness, and inattention to detail. I delete with prejudice.

When was the last time you saw a misspelling in a DM package? Never? Me, too. Because the DM launch process is slower, it is more methodical, more careful. And more people proof it.

Notwithstanding, in this time of economic belt tightening, many marketers have been cutting their budgets. Because new media is cheaper (no postage, right?), DM gets whacked. This past year DM got whacked hard.

The USPS reports that US consumers received 5.2 billion pieces of “junk” (aka unsolicited) mail in the third quarter of 2009—a steep 27% decline from one year earlier when those same consumers received 7.1 billion pieces of “junk” (aka your direct mail catalogs and appeals) mail.

But just because it’s cheaper doesn’t mean it’s a better deal.

Yes, new media is cheaper. Postage is a big nut, no doubt about it. But relying solely on new media is proving to be less effective than savvy marketers had hoped it would be. Many have discovered that their post-DM sales are down. Way down. So they are reintroducing DM into their marketing mix and reviving their numbers again.

The trend is so widespread that the venerable Wall Street Journal wrote an article on January 12th about marketers who are going back to DM—because it produces the results that the new media can’t.

Unlike days of old when postage was cheap and marketers could shotgun messages all over the place, this new, more cautious breed of marketer is using a laser beam focus. They are mailing their own client base. They are mailing a small list of pre-qualified prospects. They are using creative, personalized packages. And they are getting results.

The USPS numbers may never see the return of their glory days, but if marketers can get the results they need by marketing—and mailing—more strategically, then it’s a win.

Having spurned their First Love in favor of the flashier new media, these marketing pros are going back to their solid, reliable First Love to produce the solid, reliable, dependable results they need.

It proves the old adage once again: Dance with the Girl What Brung You.

Please save the last dance for me.

We have a simple misunderstanding here...

Your email campaign is a rousing success, right? You’ve got a great open rate, lots of clicks, and even a good number of conversions. The metrics prove you’re doing everything right. Pop the champagne.

Andrew Robinson begs to differ. Robinson, director of international services for marketing services provider Lyris, says there are obvious metrics that most emailers are not even considering. Oops!

“The real screamer is short visits to a Web site,” he explains. “Once people click through, if they spend less than two seconds on the site and then move away, then that’s a short visit.” Short visits are bad news.

Short visits mean the email campaign is doing its job of generating interest, but the website is mucking it up. Robinson says this phenomenon happens when there is a disconnect between the people creating the e-mails and the people creating the Web site. Sometimes they just don’t see eye-to-eye and they don’t even know it.

Prospects feel that disconnect—and then that’s just what they do. When the website doesn’t live up to the expectations established by the email, short visits result. The opportunity is blown.

Like everything we do in direct marketing, companies should measure their email marketing program’s performance based on business goals, Robinson insists. “Test for particular goals. [When] people…make a purchase, or download a whitepaper or download an application or whatever goals you have, you need those goals reported on your e-mail campaign.”

But when they are with you for less than 2 seconds, you need to know that statistic as well. It’s not good news, for sure, but it’s a learning opportunity.

Put the champagne away for another day. Go back to the basics. Test. Analyze. Measure.

That which doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.