Fresh back from presenting at Online Market World in San Francisco where I did non-stop tweets you should and could follow at http://twitter.com/sitebrand. One of the highlights was definitely the keynote by Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos.com. He spoke very passionately about the culture of Zappos.com especially as it relates to outstanding customer service – just look at their tagline under their logo!

Tony also shared “4 things” to build brand – one of which is all about company culture and core values. I’ll pay these forward to you now:

Thing #1: Have a Vision

Whatever you’re thinking, think bigger. Chase the vision, not the money. And make sure the vision has meaning.

Thing #2: Think Repeat Customers

Great product, great service or low prices. Choose and focus on two of these three.

Thing #3: Be Transparent

“Be real, you have nothing to fear” so go ahead and create a face for your company. At Zappos they have a blog, they have zappos TV and perhaps their most notable personality stage is on twitter…twitter.zappos.com

Thing #4: Create a Culture & Core Values

Zappos is a lifestyle for both employees and customers when you get right down to it. Here are the core values that play into the culture that Zappos prides itself on…

1. Deliver WOW through service.
2. Embrace and drive change.
3. Create fun and a little wierdness.
4. Be adventurous, creative and open-minded.
5. Pursue growth and learning.
6. Build open and honest relationships with community.
7. Build a positive team and family spirit.
8. Do more with less.
9. Be passionate and determined.
10. Be humble.

Tony and Zappos are living proof that all of this pie in the sky type thinking is possible. At the end of his presentation, he said that Zappos has tours at their Vegas headquarters and that if anyone wanted to have a tour, just send him an email. Well it just so happens that myself and 3 other Sitebranders are heading to Vegas for the DMA08 Conference & Exhibition Oct 12-15. After hearing this, I approached Tony at the end of the session saying we would like to take him up on the tour invite…so how do we go about setting that up? He said, just send him an email and he would send a shuttle to the airport to pick us up! I almost fell over…but then doesn’t this type of approach to service totally agree to everything Tony just preached in his keynote! You bet it does!

PS - are you going to the DMA08 show? If yes, be sure to drop by booth 1654 because that’s where Sitebrand will be! We’re part of the Passport to Prizes and we’ve got a Flip video up for grabs. As well, I’ll be hosting an Ask the Experts roundtable called: e-Marketing: Building a bridge from the landing page to conversion – would love to see you there!

DMA08

Sitebrand is teaming up with Marketo for what promises to be a very interesting webinar on Sept 25…
As marketers, we’re all driven by the needs to find leads and convert them. But it’s not always such a simple task….especially when you’re trying to engage with someone who hasn’t even told you their name. And that’s the way it is on websites! But with a little marketing automation and personalization, the game changes.

Get all the details and register for this free e-commerce webinar today!

As holiday selling strategies are in full swing, conversations around e-coupons surface. Coupons – whether they are online (via email or a website) or traditional (like those in the Sunday paper which are also referred to as free-standing inserts or FSIs) – are a great sales incentive, margins permitting of course. In reviewing MarketingSherpa’s 2008 Email Marketing Benchmark Guide, I came across some interesting numbers in terms of average redemption rates. I suppose it shouldn’t come as any huge surprise that traditional coupons account for 84% of all coupons used by US shoppers. But the average redemption rate is just 1.2%. I know for a fact that I’ll occasionally put these types of coupons in my purse…only to have them sit past the date of expiry because I forget to use them. You see there’s a gap of time between the time you get the coupon and the time it takes to get to the store to purchase.

On the flip side, you’ve got online coupons that have reported average redemption rates of 5-20%. And I think the rationale is simple. When we’re online – either on a website or reading email – we’re just a few clicks away from making a potential purchase. There’s no major gap in time like the previous scenario with traditional coupons. Therefore the e-coupon sets the shopper up for immediate savings and gratification.

According to Sherpa, most agree that online coupons have a higher redemption rate than traditional coupons because online coupons are directly sought out by consumers and not received passively in the Sunday paper.

But for e-commerce marketers who take targeting and personalization seriously, these online consumers don’t have to be sourcing online coupons on their own. They can also be served or presented with very specificly targeted online coupons. Why wait for them to find your incentive when you can serve it to them on a silver platter?

At Sitebrand, we have several clients using our personalization platform to recognize and respond to various shopping segments. For the segment that might be searching for bargains, an online coupon / 10% discount type campaign makes a ton of sense. But other segments that might be looking for things like “what’s new”, perhaps you don’t want or need to offer an online coupon. Instead it probably makes more sense to present a campaign that features “See our new fall line-up…” or “Check out these top-rated products”. You get my point. Just because you can offer an e-coupon with special savings doesn’t mean you should. Understanding your buyers. This is what it all comes back to. Using web personalization technology to help you create the online dialog. This is a competitive advantage.

To see some innovative uses of web personalization – discount coupons included – check out the full line-up of Sitebrand case studies…

This is the theme of our August 21 webinar and it’s a nice spin on our usual format. That’s right, you’re not just signing up for the perspectives of two presenters this month. Oh no. This time you’ll be treated to the perspectives of four presenters! And even though each presenter wears a Sitebrand hat, there will be guaranteed controversy thanks to old school versus new school perspectives. This on top of four distinct personality types…if you know what I mean.

I know we’re in the thick of summer holidays, but don’t let that stop you. Sign up anyhow and watch for a post webinar email that will include a link to view it online at your leisure. 

Joining me for this roundtable panel will be 3 more of Sitebrand’s own. We’ve got Darryl Praill, VP Marketing – he always makes discussions interesting thanks to his highly, shall I say, opinionated thoughts on all things marketing. We would be the “over 40″ side of the equation so our world hasn’t always been about the web.

And then to round things out, we’ve got the ”under 40″ pair of this panel who I daresay have almost always lived in world with the web. These would be Mr. Jim Cain, a Senior Analyst here who is very plugged in to all things analytics…especially as it relates to actioning those analytics which is a big part of why web personalization should matter to you. And then there’s Alok Ahuja, one of our senior account managers and possibly one of the most adored this side of the moon. His clients love him and I think it’s because Alok is always testing the boundaries…not just geo-boundaries, but boundaries in general!!!

So the essence of our webinar will revolve around the mixed messaging on the meaning of web personalization. We’ll talk about what it’s NOT – ie.
- A/B testing
- Recommendation engines
- User registration and personalized greetings
- Analytics
- ‘One-to-one’ emails mentioning first names

And we’ll talk about why it matters – ie. how it really does present an opportunity to dramatically increase revenue and conversion with segment and serve functionality that creates highly relevant online experiences.

So what’s holding you back? We typically hear comments like:
- I’m already using Google analytics, isn’t that enough?
- I’ve already optimized my content.
- My marketing dollars are limited and already committed.

In just 29 minutes, Sitebrand promises to break myths, educate, inform and convince you that personalization should be your #1 priority…and that it doesn’t have to cost a thing if you do it right.

So go ahead and register today…unless of course you’re happy doing the same old, same old.

Sitebrand recently published another customer case study and it’s featuring Wholesale Tool – a multichannel retailer headquartered in Michigan. Like the name implies, Wholesale Tool provides a full supply of name brands and quality import tools for consumers and industry.Before launching their website in 1999, they based their business on 7 retail stores strategically located across the US. As well, they generated sales via an impressive mail catalog with over 50,000 items.

In order to better optimize the web site potential, Wholesale Tool turned to Sitebrand. In addition to the goal of increasing conversion online, Wholesale Tool was also very interested in driving traffic to their seven physical store locations. In addition to finding success using personalization for first time visitor segments, lost shoppers and cart abandonment to name a few, Wholesale Tool takes advantage of geo-segmentation opportunities. Before I get into that, let me show you a screen shot of a Sitebrand powered first time visitor experience. The first time messaging is populating a pre-determined smart content area of the web site – just under the main top banner, under search and in bright yellow… 

Wholesale Tool First Time Visitor

Charlotte Geo

Prior to serving these campaigns, Wholesale Tool was getting lots of comments  (on the website) from people saying they didn’t know there was a store near them. After implementing these geo-campaigns, they immediately saw these types of comments drop…

For all the scoop, read the full Wholesale Tool case study which is part of Sitebrand’s ever-expanding library of case studies. DMNews picked this story up as well = check it out!