DigiTales & Other Stories

Just received a mail from The Wynn - I stayed there for PubCon back in November.

So I scroll down to unsubscribe and get told the usual “click here” but then it gives me an alternative……to write to them and request to be taken off their mailing list.

I did some research and found out a postcard would cost £0.56 to mail to the US. Add that to the £0.75 for a nice one of the Queen (London prices!) and you get a snail-mail cost for unsubscribing of £1.31.

Weighing up the options, I figured the effort of “clicking there” to be a far superior one to writing and sending a post card to Mr Wynn so that’s what I did!

Hot on the heels of my personal tale last week, BBC London has been carrying out its own investigation…

The report entitled Is the Internet a fraudsters paradise? follows the real life case of hackers getting hold of data from a “lavender lotion” merchant based in Carshalton in Surrey.

The way this feature was presented on TV this morning was a bit dark and heavy handed, but I suppose gets the point across to people who may not be so careful when purchasing online.

While there is an issue, we must remember that internet fraud accounts for just a fraction of the billions of pounds spent online every year.

Went for a check up at Specsavers Richmond at the weekend. I do find it amazing how service can differ between franchises, but this lot have always been great at looking after their customers, more so than other branches!

Paying for my eye test, I spotted this contraption. A very simple to use, five question, push-button feedback machine.

It asked how satisfied you were with the waiting time, eye exam and overall experience. It was quick and, dare I say it, quite fun, but I wonder where the data goes to be analysed, and whether they actually act on it.

Having run many a search campaign for high street stores, I’d slip in at least one last question:

Did you view on our website, any of the products you have just puchased with the intention of buying them in store?

The Interactive Media in Retail Group have said that UK stores saw a massive jump in online sales shopping this January compared to last year…

Highlights:

• 75.5% rise in online shopping
• £4.5B spent online last month
• 62% average growth in online shopping over the last 10 months
• 63% over the last 3 months is double the 25% it was this time last year

Could be as a result of sales search terms being up 249% in January!!!

Check out the benefits of joining the IMRG and get you hands on these fabulous reports here: IMRG Sign Up

I do a lot of shopping online. I buy a lot of stuff and I purchase a lot of services - theatre and cricket tickets for example.

So as a marketer what really bugs me is, when the sale is done and dusted, the confirmation email that pops into my inbox tells me nothing about the company, nothing about what I have just bought, and looks more like spam than the worst spam ever did!

The above is a snip (using the Vista Snipping Tool :-)) from my Gmail account. (Yes I have a Gmail account! I had it before I joined MS - Gotta keep up with the competition!)

These are all emails from companies I have bought goods or services from in recent weeks. What do they look like to you?

The only one in there that makes any sense is from Waitrose!

The email tells you who its from - Waitrose! The subject line tells you what the email is about. I can choose whether to open it or bin it. I don’t have to wade through wondering if it’s significant, or whether it’s just another ruse to get me to help a Nigerian vicar transfer $60m to a Northern Rock account in Jarrow!

And what are Fortnum & Mason thinking?!

At least have your company name in the From column, it’ll look so much more professional and mitigate any confusion or irritation if the mail gets re-directed to my spam folder. Also have something relevant in the subject line too - just a number is simply madness!

And another thing about aftersales - there is such a thing as over-kill! The seventh email on the list was the fifth….yes fifth!….from a plumbing company after I had received my chrome tap, telling me how great their customer service was, and that they pride themselves on it, and how grateful they were for my custom.

Hey Mr MD……that’s spam! You’ve just lost a customer because your excessive customer service is bordering on obsessive and creepy

A couple of weeks ago I talked about how many of us would be shopping on Christmas Day!

Well Netimperative reports Robin Goad from Hitwise saying that keyword volumes for ”sale” and “sales” were up 200% and 249% respectively YOY for the week ending 29th December.

Kudos to those retailers savvy enough to have their campaigns set up and already bidding on those KWs, and respect to M&S, Currys, PC World and Argos, who started their sales at midnight Christmas Day and benefited from the great PR it gave them!

PS: John Lewis has just reported a fabulous start to the Sales too - 68% up on last year!

The Telegraph reports this morning that a whopping 3.5 million us will be hunting for delicious deals online on Christmas day.

And we’re going to spend £52m!!!

Apparently we’ll be so fed up with our families, fed up with turkey and pudding, and so eager to top up our credit card debt, that a spot of online frittery will be our favoured choice of indigestion remedy.

The Duke of York has said today that The Queen likes to watch her speech by herself.

Spare a thought for our illustrious monarch, as the peak time for this online shopping fenzy is between 3 and 4pm, exactly when she’s on the box.

If 3.5m are shopping and 5.7m are watching her highness, what are the other 50.8m of us doing?