Best Little Blog

Integrated Marketing Technologies: Fact or Fiction?

Fiction! In a world of absolutes you either have the monolithic borg-like entity that attempts to solve all issues, or the specialized entity that handles a particular task and attempts to do it perfectly.

In my experience, the massive solution that attempts to solve all your issues simply doesn’t work. How many times have you heard about the attempted integration of a human resources management tool that looks to “seamlessly” speak to accounting? There are plenty of projects like this in the works and three years from now they might have a version of the solution working, only to be scrapped for the latest technology or replaced by a “less-integrated approach". We also see this happen, time and time again, where a company acquires a complimentary (or competing) technology with the intent of integrating the solution into theirs. Many times this fails…both at the technology level and the human level.

Why We Fall for The Jack-of-all-Trades

Innovation in online marketing continues at a rapid pace. The cost to develop new solutions is decreasing, investment into the industry is increasing, and there’s plenty of room for improvement. This ecosystem is the “perfect storm” for independent companies providing strong value propositions. As a marketer, however, it’s overwhelming. Which direct marketing solution to use and why? None of them speak to each other! Where is the waste? How do I know if what I’m doing is really creating incremental value? I don’t even have the time to learn about what’s up and coming! This is where agencies and marketers become enamored with the soup-to-nuts vendor that’s integrated every direct marketing solution they could ever want into one, tidy package. They believe it mean less management on their part and greater value. That couldn’t be farther from the truth.

Date, But Don’t Get Married

The real opportunity is for limited but valuable integrations between market leaders that help ease the pain and frustration for marketers. This simply means we enable our technologies to talk to each other, be measured against each other, and viewed through analytics tools together. The intent of course is to create more value for marketers and reduce the time it takes them to manage multiple solutions. I would argue that the time-savings is one of the most important benefits we can provide as technology vendors. When we allow for this kind of integration, we give marketers the power of clarity to make better decisions in the way of marketing spend and management.

The Answer Lies in Attribution

If it’s true that the promise of fully integrated solutions provides the key benefits of time, elimination of waste and incremental conversions, then maybe we should be looking at the problem through a different lens. Instead of waiting for the pipe dream, I believe the most important step for marketers and agencies is to implement attribution management technology. Attribution management provides the value listed above.

If we’ve enabled our technologies to talk to each other, marketers can now run frequent tests on the campaigns they’re running, and determine their effects through analytics that show the entire picture. Did each campaign create incremental value? Did they increase brand engagement? Was there overlap between two or more technologies? These are now questions that can be answered quickly and something that you, as the marketer, control.

These types of analytics are imperative and available. There are few things that hit an industry that become must-haves and this is one of them. So, if it isn’t the ease you get by being able to see your entire marketing efforts working together, the ability to cut programs that don’t work, the promise of watching the offline effects, the ability to reallocate dollars currently being overspent on less effective efforts to ones that are underfunded -- then let fear be the driver. Agencies and marketers who embrace this integrated view of their marketing efforts will have a key competitive advantage.

So while the individual solutions are not “integrated,” your entire marketing efforts and, most importantly, the data about what’s working, are. Now we have powerful integration. And no one had to really “integrate” at all.

My Biggest Mistake(s)

It’s supposed to be cathartic to talk about our mistakes. Let’s see if that’s the case. I’m pretty consistently reminded of just how big one of mine was. At least I believe it’s a big one. My goal is to do a quick recap on what I believe I did wrong to hopefully impart some wisdom as well as get it off my chest.

In the mid 90s one of the companies I started was Sandbox Entertainment. We started the company with the very loose goal of producing entertainment content for the web. It fairly quickly evolved into a company focused on fantasy sports. We recognized that producing content that did not scale was not the model we wanted, and creating engines that drove the fantasy games would provide endless hours of entertainment as the users essentially created the content. I remember early on in the genesis of the company pitching Draper Fisher for investment capital. Steve Jurvetson had just joined the fund but had not been named as a partner yet. I failed to secure an investment. One of the primary reason given was the team felt it was a ‘hits’ business like the video game industry where you had to be in the top 1% of the producers to make any money. What we failed to recognize was that not only was that not the case but it was completely the opposite. I would like to take credit for the fact that we picked probably the most viral model possible, but that clearly wasn’t the case or I would have pointed it out to Tim and Steve at the time. Over the course of building the business we spent zero dollars on marketing and yet built a user base in the 10s of millions. All you needed was one person to establish a team and they did the marketing for you by pulling their buddies in.  Mistake #1 was not recognizing the underpinnings of client acquisition costs, but the list goes on.

• Culture: What I’ve learned to appreciate the most since my Sandbox days and what I’m most proud of is the cultures I’ve been able to be a part of and help develop. Culture was not something I paid attention to at Sandbox and was this probably one of the biggest contributors to the ultimate failure of the company. We managed to acquire an outside entity (essentially a group of employees that had all worked somewhere else). With these individuals came an existing culture, arguably one that wasn’t built for the start-up environment. In addition, the culture did not carry with it a sense of urgency. These were issues that a leader has to pay attention to.

• Capital raise. We were the “victims” of the heady early Internet days when capital was flowing like tap water. Valuations were crazy and the “new economy” justified it all. I’ve recently posted a piece on being capital efficient. Sandbox was not. We fell into the trap of having cash and a false sense of security. Don’t get me wrong. We were out forging new ground and it takes resources to do that, but we could have been far more prudent. The influx of cash removed the hunger as it was too early. We hadn’t yet figured out the model. We had the amazing user base growth but not a sustainable revenue plan. Those were the days. In hindsight, it was very early and driving revenue from ad models had just begun. I believe strongly that it would take years for the organization to drive big revenue, but we could have easily implemented user pay systems that would mirror what we now call the “freemium” model. This type of model would have curbed some of the mounting costs to maintain the systems, and probably would have made the business cash flow neutral. Without a large bank account, we might have been forced into that conclusion, possibly saving the organization.

• Mission and Vision. The organization had no clear vision that everyone agreed on. This is key. I was rightly fired from the company I had founded years earlier. Soon after, the entity was merged with another company that had far fewer users but had done a much better job at driving revenues. The stage was now set for the combined entity to grow and ideally go public. Bankers surrounded the organization and began spewing their vision of what the company should be. “It’s too narrow in fantasy…it needs to have different entertainment offerings, go broad!” The company had no vision so the void was easily filled. Had we done a better job of painting that picture ourselves to become the world leader in Fantasy Sports, those temptations would have been thwarted. There are still people that mention to me to this day how they used to play Sandbox and how it was the best product going. Those mentions are unsolicited and without knowledge that I was the founder. Had we built a formal vision and stuck to our guns I’m confident that we would have become the largest player in fantasy sports…hands down.

How did the story end? The company didn’t go public, the window slammed shut. The organization began getting desperate and drove revenues in a way that would prove to be it’s ultimate undoing. To this date I believe it’s been sold a couple of times over. I would love to hear from those who might still be involved to fill in the blanks.

Paint a clear vision, stay hungry and avoid pulling in capital based on the “feeling” you need it and attend to culture on a daily basis.

The Capital Efficient Model – FetchBack in Review

Over the course of my career I have done the bootstrap venture, the venture with significant VC dollars and the capital efficient venture (sub $5 million). FetchBack is my latest venture and was recently acquired by GSI Corp. My goal in this post is to put forth some lessons learned surrounding capital raising, more specifically the pros and cons of the capital efficient model.

 The exception - I’m a big fan of doing things as efficiently as possible. Waste annoys me. There are times when you need to throw resources at something knowing that there will be waste. A great example of this is when a company is perfectly positioned, has a proven model and by “throwing gas on the fire” it can move to dominate a position in a marketplace. These are the stories we read about when the big hit occurs. These deals are the exception, not the rule, but they’re the ones that get the majority of press and attention. I have, unfortunately, witnessed too many times where entrepreneurs are faced with the decision to do a large VC round and fall victim to the fear that they have to pull the trigger in order to be competitive. The thoughts ring through your head, “I have to fill the coffers, if I don’t they’ll pass me by!”

 The Promises - I think there’s a very unhealthy environment that surrounds the VC market right now. I’m not the first to state that there will be significant fallout in the VC community. I believe, like others, that a very large portion, 50% or more, of the VC funds out there will fail over the next 5-10 years. Many have not been able to produce a positive return and are ill-equipped to thrive in such a market. Again, this gets clouded by the press surrounding the returns of the top 10-20 VC firms. The rest struggle to produce a return and continue to take management fees. Why does this matter to the entrepreneur? The promise that comes with money about value added is usually non-existent. The reality is there’s a lot of capital out there chasing very few good deals. If an entrepreneur has a solid offering, getting cash is not an issue. Getting the right amount can be.

The Opposite usually happens - Over the course of building FetchBack, I witnessed this first hand. There was a company during the course of our first year of business that I was convinced would be a key competitor and had a chance to cut us out of the market. Not only that, I felt their approach could prove to be a major challenge should they get significant traction. I knew the company was pre-profit, had a hand-full of clients and was beginning to show promise. Then it happened. Their major round of capital came in. I smiled and breathed a sigh of relief. Contradictory to most reactions, but I was confident a story was about to unfold I had seen many times before. Again, it’s important to keep in mind the stage of the company. This wasn’t an entity that had discovered the next big thing, could show how the model would scale and all they needed was to throw gas at it. It was a company that was doing “OK”, had promise and was being approached by VC’s left and right. When you throw this much money at a company in this stage it can cause big issues. It can create a false sense of security, it can make management lazy and unfortunately set up a series of events that take the founders out of the game. In this case, that’s exactly what happened. A mistake I have made in the past as well.

 Execute! - Some of the entrepreneurs I’ve admired the most over the years are the ones who flew the other direction. When faced with the pressures of seeing a competitor raise a big round, hearing a Board say “we have to get more cash” and reading the latest brand entrant PR release, have instead ignored the calling, put their head down and executed. They proved-out the model as efficiently as possible. They recognized the problems that can come with too much cash. They understood that if the product offering was solid, provided value for clients and they could sell it, getting cash was not an issue. Too often the prize is the capital raise, not the proof of the model. I was lucky enough to be surrounded by some of these individuals during the growth of FetchBack.

 Over the course of building FetchBack, I’ve had the pleasure of working with some amazing people. We raised a limited amount to prove the model with some terrific entrepreneurs and investors who have followed me previously. We were navigating amidst a competitive marketplace for both public awareness and clients, and the pressure of a market collapse where we had no idea if our clients where going to pay their bills. We had many heated discussion about doing that big raise and ultimately we didn’t for all the reasons stated above. I wouldn’t have played it any differently.

Attribution Takes Center Stage - ClearSaleing Acquired by GSI

     It was recently announced that GSI Commerce Inc. (NASDAQ: GSIC) Global Marketing Services division has acquired ClearSaleing, a Columbus, Ohio-based provider of advanced advertising analytics and attribution management. For those who are not familiar with ClearSaleing, or the ongoing serious issue of attribution management, they are a technology company that helps marketers determine the proper ‘weight or credit’ a given ad deserves towards a conversion. For example, a consumer starts the process of looking for a new sports jersey. It begins with a Google search. Five days prior to the search the consumer saw a rich media ad for a retail site that has such a product. The consumer visits the site and leaves without purchasing. Three days later the consumer receives a retargeted ad for the retail site. In addition, they are served a pre-roll video ad. The consumer ultimately decides they’re ready to purchase. At this point they visit Google and perform a search but what they’re really doing is using Google as a navigation tool. We’ve all done it. In the last click 100% attribution world, the last Google click gets all the credit. The reality is that the credit should be properly spread across all consumer touch points. ClearSaleing solves this issue by providing analytics that ‘spread’ the credit.

     There are multiple reasons why this is critical to most marketers; wasted impressions, lost opportunity costs and the list goes on. For those in the industry, the feeling has always been that Google gets a disproportionate credit for conversions. ClearSaleing now proves that feeling. It’s really quite amazing to drill into specific case studies in which marketers have deemed display campaigns to have been ineffective, when the opposite is really true. Display can have a significant impact on conversions, which can drive additional sales and reduce overall marketing costs. The future belongs to those smart marketers who can adapt quickly and embrace tools like ClearSaleing. Yes, I’m biased now as they’re part of the GSI family and our primary product is centered around display, but I believe strongly in the tools they’ve developed and the value they provide.

     Marketing dollars are shifting and we’re witnessing this first hand. Search will always have a strong hold, but as display becomes more targeted and tools such as this take hold, the shift will continue. I would argue that attribution analysis can and will become one of the most important tools of the trade. Media providers who have long relied on antiquated methods to prove success are now on notice. Service offerings that position the “click” as everything will have to change along with the times. Networks and exchanges that provide less than acceptable traffic will have to clean up what’s under the hood.

     FetchBack is very excited about this recent announcement as we feel the value it brings to our customers is as solid as it gets. Quite frankly, what it shows us is what we’ve been preaching all along. Retargeting is one of the best forms of marketing available and proper attribution analysis proves it.

 

Stop Trying to Be the Nordstrom of Your Industry

I have a close friend who ran an in-bound telesales company -- the eager folks who answer your 2 a.m. call and take your credit card number for the infomercial widget. He was able to enlighten me about the reasoning behind one of my pet peeves: Why do I punch in all kinds of account information before I get connected to an operator, only to be asked to repeat all that information by voice? I'm sure you've used the same gritted-teeth response, "But I already gave you that."

According to my friend, the problem is patent protection. He says somebody patented the process of transferring the information from the automated system to a live agent, so to avoid paying royalties on millions of calls every year, companies have you "reconfirm" all the data you entered.

I honestly haven't taken the time to research the patents and processes, so the joke might be on me, but assuming my buddy's reason is accurate, it restores a little of my faith in corporate America -- but only marginally. If it's true, why can't someone tell us so? (And if not, I really do still want to know why.)

I tell you this story because it's the perfect example of business failing to meet expectations. It's even more frustrating to me as an entrepreneur because we are conditioned to believe our goal should be to exceed expectations at all times. If we can be the Nordstrom of our industry, customer loyalty and business success will surely follow. It seems like common sense advice.

Except it turns out we could be wrong.

I would have agreed with the 89% of surveyed corporate executives who responded that exceeding expectations promotes customer loyalty; in fact, research by Corporate Executive Board's Customer Contact Council shows that quality of service doesn't affect loyalty much at all.

What service levels can do is prevent customer defection, but with that in mind, only a median level of service -- "meets expectations" -- is required to keep a customer from leaving. As long as you aren't actively disappointing customers, service isn't a key component for making customers happier. Bad service is 400% more likely to alienate customers than excellent service is to attract and keep them.

In short, exceeding expectations is a great slogan but the extra expense to generate those results proves to be wasted.

Sometimes I wonder why a company is trying so hard to wow me -- what are they trying to mask using their service personnel? Take the off-the-cuff platitude, "Is there anything else I can do for you today?" offered at the end of a transaction. If I hear that phrase during a frustrating repeat-your-account-information call, for example, it's a good thing we both know the service rep doesn't really mean "anything else" or they'd get an earful of complaints. I don't need to be patronized after a 30-minute phone ordeal. Take all that energy spent trying to exceed my expectations and apply it to your other processes. Then maybe I'll be happier about the whole experience.

The Net Promoter Score is a popular method for rating customer satisfaction and one I've recommended in these posts and elsewhere. Since NPS is supposed to gauge a person's likelihood to refer a friend to you, it seems to encapsulate the entire business relationship from acquisition to fulfillment and support. The Customer Contact Council points out that NPS doesn't explain why you'd be recommended, nor does it measure actual behavior, only intention.

Instead, there could be merit in using Customer Effort Score (CES) to gauge satisfaction. CES is measured by asking a single question: "How much effort did you personally have to put forth to handle your request?" The score ranges from 1 (least effort, and best) to 5 (most effort, and worst). As a typical American executive strapped for time, I'd happily answer this question after each and every customer service call. I would far prefer it over "Is there anything else?" since it gives me a chance to vent my feelings with a precise number. At least with numeric scores you can believe they will be tabulated, analyzed, and maybe even improved.

Existing customers are your most valuable asset, and it is well worth the time to learn what they think of you. If the answers aren't as positive as you'd like, it's not the end of the world. Just don't make the mistake of vowing to exceed expectations in customer service while failing to fix fundamentals like transferring me to three different departments and requiring that I repeat my account information ... every ... single ... time.

Customer Lifetime Value

You are what you measure. Companies need to focus much less on product profitability and more on customer profitability. This concept isn't new -- many retailers have implemented a loss-leader strategy in an effort to secure a relationship with a customer and, it is hoped, do business in other more profitable areas. What needs to be addressed along with this is the measurement of customer lifetime value (CLV).

In my last post, "Are You Focused On the What or the Who?," I discussed the need to put the customer rather than the product offering at the center of the marketing department's focus. When an organization takes the bold moves to do this, it can mean significant changes to the org chart, the elimination of sacred cows, and a new focus on what is measured and why.

Customer relationship management is a term that has been corrupted over the years to mean something different. When uttered, CRM typically conjures up images of the latest software package, some great new technology that helps automate a process and make marketing and sales more efficient. The "relationship" part of the term is missing. When an organization truly puts the customer rather than the product offering in the center, it becomes less about measuring the value of your product equity or brand equity and, instead, measuring customer equity -- customer equity being equal to the sum of the lifetime values of all your customers. Your product or brand is simply a means to an end: clients who pay you repeatedly and are willing to pass the word on to others.

I have witnessed many times in the online ad industry the quick rise of the latest and greatest retail site, another flash sale business model, and new DSP exchange offerings. It's amazing how quickly and inexpensively an organization is able to secure ground and develop rapid growth in revenues. In our culture, we reward the short-term. Public markets with quarterly reporting emphasize the need to achieve quick results.

 If a company (or an outsider of the company) is to attempt to judge the performance of an organization on these short-term results in such a fast-paced world, key metrics are overlooked. A company in decline may be showing amazing current returns (often using gimmicks and accounting tricks to create the illusion of success) while facing a bleak future due to poor client retention, low Net Promoter Scores, or an unsustainable business model.

We need to focus our attention on metrics that bring the long-term health of an organization into view. CLV is one of those metrics, where you track the future profits generated, properly discounted to reflect the time value of money. I believe we're currently witnessing movement where metrics such as CLV, client retention rate, and long-term contract value are considered assets that should be reported on financial statements.

I also believe strongly that the more we -- as individuals, companies, and a nation -- focus on the long term versus the short term, the health of our organizations will improve. I have often admired the CEOs of large public companies who are willing to turn their back on Wall Street's pressures for quick results and instead make tough decisions now about what's right for increasing CLV and the long-term prospects of the business.

As the world economy continues to struggle to build momentum, this is the time to focus on steady, sustainable growth. That growth will come only by focusing on customers.

Are You Focused on the What or the Who?

The typical company’s marketing structure centers around the product offering. Tasks and duties are aligned around product deliverables and marketing to the target audience, more often than not to the masses. This structure has worked for decades, but the role of the marketing department is shifting, and there are strong arguments that the marketing department should change who and what is at the center.

Instead of the product at the center, the customer should be there. What’s needed are managers who engage individual customers in a dialogue, creating two-way communication that helps develop future product offerings, create engagement, and build lasting relationships.

What you choose to measure and why are key to this discussion. In a recent conversation with a well-known leader of CRM solutions for large national retailer, I learned just how important these decisions can be. She relayed to me how the chain had recently abandoned a product line that proved unprofitable. The product line not only was very expensive to maintain in the stores, but also customers were purchasing far less of the line than anticipated.

But analyzing the data from the customer’s point of view tells a very different story. This product line was rare for most retail chains, so interested customers were willing to drive further in order to shop for the items. These customers typically would not go the extra distance for either the staples or the other items that were a large profit center for the company. But this specialty line was enough to persuade them to make the journey. Not only was the “unprofitable” line bringing in new customers, but those customers actually bought far more staples and consumables than the chain’s “typical” customer.

If we only look at the data in this example in terms of products, we can see that the new line was unprofitable. The decision to remove this product line seems obvious. But by shifting perspective and looking at the example in terms of customers, a new and valuable demographic had been reached, adding to overall profitability.

Unfortunately, this retail chain ultimately removed the product line before changing their perspective and putting the customer at the center of the equation. Only after the change had been made did they learn that they had actually initiated the unintended consequence of removing one of their most profitable customers as well.

Placing the customer at the center also begs for revised organizational structures. In a recent article in the Harvard Business Review the authors posit the idea of being bold and eliminating the CMO position. Instead, a Chief Customer Officer should be recruited, to whom product management, marketing, customer service and CRM will report. This change in leadership presents real challenges in the typical organizational structure where R&D will still want autonomy, yet it makes sense to align these efforts closer to the voice of the consumer. Product innovation will come from conversations and dialogue with the customer, increasing the likelihood that product will be on target the first time around.

In the day and age where customers have that much more of a voice, when a single video placed on YouTube can bring an company to its knees, when a viral marketing campaign can increase your visibility to the national stage overnight, it’s important that you look closely at the goals of your marketing department. For proof, just look to the success of organizations such as Zappos, a company where their competitive advantage is their focus on the customer.

In our organization, marketing leadership is not to be focused on lead generation activities, paid search and product marketing. These are all areas marketing has under its wing, but they’re not the core of what we’re trying to measure. The real goal is to better understand where and how we can add additional value to the client. What innovations must we bring to the table? What can we do to increase Net Promoter Scores?  What data are we gathering at the customer level?

However daunting these questions are, I feel the shift from product to customer is inevitable and the only way to compete.

Display Advertising As Guerrilla CRM

I think the term CRM is highly overused today -- it means a lot of different things to different people, and it's lost a lot of the spirit of what's behind it. Most of the focus right now is on customer management systems rather than relationship management techniques. Expediently managing a large database of contacts now overshadows the more important application of CRM: improving customer attitudes through creative application of technology.

I've noticed several ways companies have been using retargeting to build relationships. Retargeting, as you probably know, is a method of putting relevant display ads in front of the prospects who left your Web site without converting.

Point of disclosure here -- I work for a company that focuses on retargeting, but this is not a shameless plug for our services. Any number of companies can deliver retargeting. In fact, Google now offers retargeting (its term is "remarketing"), and we think it's a solid choice for advertisers looking to test the waters with simple self-service solutions. But I want to focus on the actual creative techniques, not the delivery method.

Retargeting is one of a direct marketer's most valuable tools, but it's not limited to posting ads. A company looking to build its brand and market awareness can use retargeting to increase its visibility across a wide variety of Web sites. I call this the "Puffer-Fish Effect" because you can be small but appear to have a massive ad budget and a hugely successful business when your retargeted ads show up repeatedly in many different places. Your budget might be a fraction of your competitors' -- even a Fortune 500 company might have a tiny budget for a specific product or service -- but with retargeting, you can seem like the big fish in a huge pond.

Another "off-label" use for retargeting is to establish more and deeper relationships with new and existing customers through creative use of the ad space you're buying. Because of the profiling data behind your retargeting campaign, you know quite a lot about your visitors and can be laser-focused with the information you present to them. Think of retargeting as the chance to put an individualized window on many other sites: what can you put there to influence your visitors?

• PR Agency in a Banner. What about using your banner space for public relations? Think about who's visited your site before: reporters, industry-related companies, board members, clients, and yes, even competitors. If you have news to release or something to crow about, what better group to see it? Retargeted ad space is a very cost-effective way to announce PR.

• Custom Blog Feed. Think about your blog: it's an excellent way to invite people into your company and culture. But if your visitors haven't subscribed to your RSS feed, they may never hear your news. Try using retargeting as an extension of your blog and reach more of the folks who've read about you before.

• Mini Floating Job Board. Where do you recruit new staff? Are you deluged with résumés when you advertise on one of the biggies like Monster? Try using your retargeted space to post your job openings. You can send notices for specific positions to applicants who have visited certain jobs on your job boards, or a more general announcement to anyone who has engaged with your site before.

• Operators Are Standing By. With dynamic ad technology you can let prospects enter their phone numbers to get an instant callback (or an email for click-to-chat) -- a great way to reconnect after a prospect has left your site without converting. This technique can also be useful as part of a loyalty program, reminding your customers that you're still out there. Any time you can start a live conversation, you're getting close to a sale.

I bet you've already thought of several other ways to use retargeting that I haven't mentioned -- please share them in the comments below.

Analytics give us so much data that we can get tunnel vision and forget the importance of building and protecting our brands. It's more important than ever to stay top-of-mind with customers, and traditional methods alone don't cut it. Only by thinking outside the box will you find the relationship-building techniques that will set you apart from the competition.

What’s a Scavenger Hunt Without a Rubber Chicken?

Love it or hate it -- whatever your position on social media, the craze has proven at least one thing: relationships online matter. Not just hits, or visitors, or connections, or even followers. It's called Customer Relationship Management for a reason.

Problem is, over time we can forget we're in a relationship and only realize too late that we lost a customer's business because we lost that personal touch. But how can we avoid this mistake?

Sometimes all we need is a trigger that helps us get out of the day to day. Something that helps remind us that it's not all about goals, revenue, etc. If you don't have a relationship with your clients going forward, you're vulnerable.

Our business has a core value of "hug our clients and hug them often." At the heart, what we're trying to address is the constant need for establishing a true relationship with our clients that extends way beyond product offerings and the value received for them. What used to be "above and beyond" now has to be a way of life in today's competitive environment.

At each of our company meetings we highlight examples where we feel we've hugged our clients. The examples range from the obvious to the laugh-out-loud. We have hugged clients with the tried-and-true greeting card (dog-themed, of course) and free coffee coupon. Then there was the Singing Thank-You Telegram featuring a dog costume that somehow ended up with a lion's head and a singer who forgot the words -- heart-stopping for us, but the client loved it.

As a self-proclaimed "start-up junkie," I'm always amazed and delighted to watch a company grow and see its core culture take hold without my involvement -- the "Wow, I had no idea that was happening" effect. We recently went through a reorganization of responsibilities where the account management group was given several new roles. As part of this reorganization, the team members challenged themselves to identify ways they could further the customer relationship while taking on the new responsibilities. What they came up with put a smile on my face -- a creative, original, and fun idea I had never thought of: a client scavenger hunt.

The idea was to force themselves out of a regular day-to-day business cycle and make a contest out of it. Instead of just pushing to get clients signed up, get their campaigns live with our service, and optimize their accounts, they would strive to know more about each client personally. The team developed a list of 50 personal (but not too personal) questions they would "scavenge" from their clients. Some of the data points were birthday, favorite color, kids' names, and "Best Coffee: Starbucks or Dunkin Donuts?" Each time an account manager gleaned some new information from a client, they tallied a point on the department scoreboard.

How'd they do? One person jumped to an early and insurmountable lead in the competition, but the scoreboard showed impressive results all around. The scavenging not only produced closer client relationships, but also built up the team as a side-effect. As one account manager told me, "Having [the scavenger hunt list] in front of me helped to remind me that the person on the other side of the phone was human. It helped me to make an emotional connection with them without coming across too pushy."

So your challenge -- if you choose to accept it -- is to develop your own ways to keep the relationships with your customers fresh. What kind of encouragement, incentives, and competitions could you use? Please post your ideas in the comments below -- I'd love to hear what you come up with.

M&A Postmortem: Everyone Has an Opinion

Obviously, when you announce an acquisition the size of GSI Commerce's purchase of FetchBack, there's going to be plenty of reaction -- both positive and negative. I sent a reply to some opinionated posts here and here that I think is appropriate to post here on BLB too.

---

Interesting points from Jeffrey Zwelling at Convertro. First off, I want to say I'm a fan of what he and Convertro have been up to -- tackling some really difficult and key issues and using what I understand is a very slick approach. That said, it's no surprise I have some issues with Jeff's post.

I think Jeff might have confused our company history with someone else. Since day 1, FetchBack has been focused on providing value, from a variety of pricing models (we've done CPA and CPM from the start) to advanced technology delivering dynamic ads, keyword-based targeting, and deep analytics. Our recommendation engine drives CTR higher than any other solution we've seen. The article correctly focused on our A/B testing which gives our clients the confidence that they're seeing the "True CPA" value of their campaigns.

FetchBack didn't do the deal because it had to, or because of a lack of technology or service or competitive pricing. We did the deal because it makes perfect sense -- GSI is an ideal partner for us, since the technology, customer bases, and value propositions are complementary for both FetchBack and GSI.

Our vision all along has been that retargeting will become just as basic a budget line item as paid search has. The question is, what will a successful retargeting strategy look like? Will marketers strike multiple deals with multiple campaigns like they do now with Google, MSN, and Yahoo? Aside from inevitable duplication, it's impossible to calculate the right frequency, right message, right placement using multiple platforms (a point made clearly on the Convertro site). Attribution management becomes exponentially difficult, to the point where some people are confused and jaded and lose confidence in retargeting.

We think smart marketers will retarget through a single, central provider -- like the SEM companies work with platforms like Atlas and Omniture. Retargeting is far from a commodity now -- unless you're talking about tacked-on, sidecar solutions that only graze the surface of retargeting's potential. Yes, it's pretty easy to claim you do retargeting if you're displaying a non-dynamic ad, generic to every user, without smart frequency capping or A/B testing or visibility into the site and network where it's being displayed.

The retargeting space is still in its infancy with more room to grow than nearly any other form of advertising on the Net. We're proud that FetchBack still leads the industry in technology, innovation, and ROI.