Personalization is powerful

-
The general manager of our company, Justin Kauffman stopped by my desk yesterday and showed me a new book he purchased. It was Seth Godin's new book "This is Marketing." He then proceeded to open up the book cover and show me the inside of the cover. It was covered with a couple hundred portraits of individuals and smack dab in the dead center of all of the images was our general manager's portrait!

"Can you believe it?" he exclaimed. I was floored. We talked about how that could have happened. Was it a marketing tactic where anyone that pre-ordered the book was smack dab in the center of the inside of the book cover? He then went on to tell me that after seeing it he made a trip to Barnes & Noble to check the inside of another book cover to see if it was more than his book copy that had his picture in it. Sure enough, his portrait was in the same place in the book covers at Barnes & Noble as well. Then he remembered sharing a photo of himself after taking a Seth Godin online class and giving permission to use his portrait if they wanted to use it.

Personalization is powerful. It created a story that was shareable. It opened up questions as to how did my face get there? It actually got Justin to make a special trip to Barnes & Noble to check the inside of another book cover. It got me to say, "That is awesome."

Nice job Seth.

Popular posts from this blog

Are you thankful?

-
Are you thankful? How do you show it? Do you write a note? Do you tell someone? Do you make a list? How do you express thankfulness? It always is good for me to think about and express thankfulness to others and God. Never have I gone through the practice of giving thanks and been disappointed. Thankfulness gets the focus off of me and onto others and God. Having meals brought to us in the past week after our new baby has brought the idea of expressing thankfulness to others into focus for me again. I wrote a few thank you notes to those that brought meals and it just feels good to do that. Plus, the act of receiving thanks is good for others as well. I ask our kids quite often when they're whining, "Are you having a thankful heart?" And sometimes I ask them to tell me one thing they're thankful for. It's good to get in the habit of being thankful.
Read more

Sending notes

-
I haven't been big on new year's resolutions lately, but I do like the idea of challenging myself in areas where I'd like to get better and setting goals for myself. Something that I've been thinking about doing is sending a note to someone different every week of the year just to say thanks or I'm thinking of you or praying for you. It wouldn't be hard to do and I know it's good for me as well as I think most people appreciate a little note. The other thing I've been thinking about along those lines is sending video notes. I heard this on a podcast recently. Since we don't see people as much these days it's easy to just record a video on your phone and email it or use a service like Loom to record your video and send a link or use an app like Marco Polo. It seems like this would feel even more personal than a note... though I haven't done it yet. So maybe send a note today to someone that's helped you out recently or maybe to someone who
Read more

Choose your own adventure

-
Do you remember the "Choose your own adventure" books? You would start the book and then as the story progresses the characters face forks in the road and you get to choose which way they go... which results in going to a specific page and continuing to read. I've been spending a considerable amount of time on marketing automation in the last month and these books from my childhood remind me of how marketing automation works. The big difference though is the customer doesn't realize he's choosing his own adventure as he navigates the communications we set out before him. He's simply making choices based on the marketing that we're putting out there and then based off of what he chooses we choose for him the next communication he receives. As I'm building this out I'm starting out with a pretty blank slate. There's a lot we don't know, but as we get more information from prospects and customers it will become clear who they are and what
Read more