I really don’t understand how this is possible, but I see it all the time.  And there is a new “secret shopper” study to confirm it.

As a sales and marketing guy for mmmmmm years now, this really goes against the grain for me.  Leads are gold.  Leads are oxygen.  Leads are blood.  As a sales guy, it’s how you make your living and advance your career.  As a marketer, it’s one of the most critical touch points in determining your return on marketing and advertising investments.  As a CEO you really care, as it’s the first interaction a prospect will have with your company and your brand.

So that first contact has to be great.

And yet, that first contact is only being made 21% of the time.

The new study, conducted by lead management software provider Leads360, said that only 21 percent of mortgage lenders made an attempt to call back borrowers after an initial inquiry.

And this is in one of the most aggressive, competitive, and cut-throat industries out there. Imagine how low the contact rates are in other industries – are you kidding me?

Not surprisingly, my old Alma Mater Quicken Loans was cited as the best in class for all the key metrics including speed to contact, contact attempts, types of contact etc.  It’s part of the culture there, and how business is done. Marketing people generate leads, sales people call them – simple.

But these techniques and tools are not proprietary, and are available to anyone with the desire to really make the most out of the leads they get every day.

So why don’t more companies do a better job of contacting and converting their leads?

Probably for the same reasons people don’t do a lot of things they should do – eat right, exercise, be kind to other people, change their oil regularly, etc…  you have to have the vision, desire, belief, and discipline to do it right every day, consistently.

Here is a link to the study.  I’ll be at LeadsCon in NYC next week – if you’re there let me know and we can shake our heads in disbelief together.

Related posts:

1. Which Landing Page Will Win?

Here we pit two landing pages with nearly identical content, identical format, and a few variations against each other.

In this corner: Leading with Price

In this corner: Leading with Emotion

Which one do you think will perform best, generating the most calls and leads?  Why?

You can click on the images to see the actual pages.  I’ll post the actual results as soon as they reach statistical significance.

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Drake University is attempting to lure students and parents with their “D+” Campaign.

According to AdWeek:

Drake University officials are feverishly scrambling to explain why they thought “D+” would be a great theme for a recruitment ad campaign. The D+ is meant to be shorthand for the magic that occurs when Drake plus a student get together. To many, though, it seems to position Drake as a school whose standards barely exceed total failure. However, in a note to faculty and staff this week, Drake defends the campaign as “intentionally edgy,” and just right for the target market. “The D+ was not designed to stand alone or represent a grade. Instead, it was designed to be paired with prose and draw attention to the distinctive advantages of the Drake experience,” reads the note. “Our experience in the survey and in the field suggests that the kind of students whom we want to attract to Drake easily understand and appreciate the irony of the D+, and that it is having the intended effect of encouraging students to find out more about what makes Drake so special.”

Certainly edgy enough to create a viral spread of comments about how the wisdom of this campaign.  Time will tell.   I think someone in marketing should have stood up and asked the ad agency “Guys, do you know what we DO here?”.

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But this check had my whole family shaking their heads with laughter and dis-belief.

Here is the letter and check I received from Lord & Taylor:

Now, I appreciate the honesty in making sure my account is set at a zero balance and proactively issuing me a check for the credit amount, but for a penny?  Really?  Are you serious?

The postage alone was worth $0.35!  Printing, IT, envelope, processing, etc surely takes the total cost up to $1-2, if not more.  Not to mention the environmental impact of paper, ink, fuel, etc to deliver my one red cent back to me.

But the biggest crime of all (from a marketing standpoint) is the lost opportunity here.

Sending me a check is a good thing – I will be in a good mood and highly receptive and responsive to any message, suggestion or request they might have.  What else could they have done with this letter?  Well, here are a few thoughts:

• They could have sent me a coupon to encourage me to come back and spend more next time.
• They could have sent me a post card instead, telling me I have a credit balance on my card and that I should come in an buy something and use it up.
• They certainly could have printed their logo on the letter.
• They could remind me where the nearest Lord & Taylor stores are located.
• They could have invited me to sign up for email alerts for specials and exclusive sales.
• They could have asked me why I haven’t been back lately.  Maybe there was a customer service or merchandise problem they could address by just asking me, or giving me a toll free number to call.
• Online survey?
• Enter an online sweepstakes for a shopping spree?
• Ask if I would like to donate the credit balance to a charity of my choice?

At least they did thank me for my business.  The point is, every interaction with a customer is an opportunity to do something…..you’ve already spent the money, now spend a little brain power and take it to the next level.

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In it, he describes how he is going to save me money.

The way I will save money, is by joining his $9 Club for $45. As soon as I become a member, I will be entitled to bring a second carry-on bag on board for just $20 instead of $45 like all the other schmucks! Fantastic! Thats a round trip savings of $50, and a net savings of $5!

Of course, I could stick with Delta…the airline that does not charge me anything to bring two bags on board, and who also today announced a new speedy boarding perk for Medallion members.

But what a great email!  Personalized and everything to me… a “Valued Customer”!

To our valued customers,

We have all seen how carry-on baggage has gotten out of control.  Longer security lines and boarding process, injuries due to overcrowded overhead bins, delayed flights and passenger frustration has become commonplace.

At Spirit, we are always looking for new ways to save you money and improve the customer experience.  We recently announced our latest innovation, which is designed to relieve the carry-on crisis, saving you time and money.

Our solution to the carry-on crisis:

1. Lowered fares
2. Lower checked bag fees
3. Give everyone a free personal item allowance
4. Allow customers to carry on an additional bag for a fee and give them
   priority boarding so they have time and space to stow their extra bag

Everyone Wins!

1. We expect total prices to be lower
2. Security lines will move faster
3. The boarding process will be smoother
4. Deplaning will be faster
5. Passenger and employee safety is improved with less over-stuffed bins

What to expect for travel after August 1st:

1. We have introduced PENNY PLUS™ fares available to our $9 Fare Club members** that are 1¢ each way plus fuel, taxes and fees*.  If you are not already a member, click here to join.
2. We have lowered checked bag fees for $9 Fare Club members.  A family of four checking four bags round-trip will save $80.  Double the cost of being a $9 Fare Club member.  Another reason to join now.  Click here to join.
3. You can bring a FREE personal item onboard, such as a purse, briefcase, backpack or laptop computer.  Other exceptions are:  assistive devices, medicine, umbrella, outer garments (coats, hats, wraps), camera, car seat/stroller, infant diaper bag, reading material for the flight, or food for immediate consumption.
4. If you choose to bring an extra carry-on bag, you may do so for $20 if purchased online as a $9 Fare Club member or $30 online, at the airport ticket counter or kiosk for non-members.  If you choose to wait until the gate to pay, the fee will be $45 which is not preferred since it will slow the boarding process.
5. Shorter, faster security and boarding lines.  Less frustration while boarding and deplaning.  Fewer delays.
6. Happier customers that pay less!

See you onboard soon!  We’ll keep working to improve your experience and lower your fare.

Ben Baldanza
President and Chief Executive Officer
Spirit Airlines

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Dave Newmark, CEO Bid4Spots

In a recent article in Atlantic Magazine, author Richard Florida, talks about opportunities that can come about in the current recession. He says that these times are not so much recessions or depressions – words that carry unnecessary emotional baggage – but “resets” of our economy. What he explains is that in conference rooms and boardrooms of today’s companies, we are looking for ways to reset our companies and industries. These are eras where new technologies come about and entire industries are restructured during what the economist Joseph Schumpeter called “Creative Destruction”.

In the traditional media world, just such a reset is now taking place and forward-thinking marketers will reap amazing rewards by understanding and testing them. I’m not referring to online advertising generally and search marketing particularly which has certainly seen the fastest growth in recent years. What I am referring to is the beginning of creative destruction in the traditional buyer-seller relationships that have driven traditional media sales for about a hundred years.

When traditional media, namely newspapers, radio and television were confined to relatively few properties, the negotiation of the advertising space or time purchase played a less central role than the idea. Watch an episode of AMC Television’s show “Mad Men” and you know that during these times the central discussions were about the campaign theme or concept. Today, marketers face a different challenge: what we now call “media” has proliferated beyond imagination. Think about it. In addition to Search advertising, there are myriad choices within online marketing (text links, banner ads, streaming video and much more across millions of properties and online ad networks), plus cable television, once comprised of a few networks is now a 400+ channel universe. Radio used to be AM and FM. Today, there is Satellite (for now, anyway), HD Radio and Internet Radio. Even Out-of-Home has exploded with digital signage in elevators, restaurants and every imaginable place where people congregate. At the same time, with a need to become ever-more efficient, advertisers are squeezing their ad agencies to make all those ad buys on a smaller commission or fee, so the amount of people available to negotiate with this plethora of media companies has gone down, not up. So, the economics of running a traditional, full-service ad agency has made them largely extinct. But companies need to market their products or services, so they must, in many cases, do it themselves, also with fewer people.

Today, therefore, there are more media choices than ever and fewer people available to make those ad buys and fewer people at the media properties to facilitate the sale – headlines abound about layoffs of sales staffs at all traditional media properties.

How can a forward-thinking marketer make any headway in such an era of creative destruction? I believe the answer is to explore and use newly-developed online tools for accessing Traditional Media. We are now at the very beginning, I believe, of a huge growth period for such ad exchanges. Traditional Media is still crucial for marketers to generate demand for their products or services beyond Search. How can a marketer plant an idea into the head of a potential customer if they rely just on Search? They cannot. Such exchanges will help time-strapped, efficiency-seeking marketers generate maximum value out of their traditional media buys. This value will be generated by companies like Google which is seeking to help advertisers target consumers by making ads relate more to the content or by companies like the one I founded, Bid4Spots.com, which turns live media auctions upside down to drive rates lower. The cable TV industry with their Project Canoe and SpotRunner’s new Malibu system will attempt to battle Google for dominance in the field of ad relevancy.

At the moment, the biggest challenge for many of these exchanges is getting access to inventory. Google has struggled with it (today, the big TV networks have shut them out) and the eBay Media Marketplace was also shut out of this television inventory. We have not had this problem because our platform is restricted only to “last minute” purchases which do not interfere with regular ad buys. Still, ad exchanges with the right formula will emerge and the smart marketer will try test them all, measure their cost effectiveness and scale with the ones that work.

—

Dave Newmark is president and CEO of Bid4Spots, an online marketplace for unsold radio ad inventory; and is owner, president and CEO of Newmark Advertising, considered by both direct response and brand advertisers to be the leading agency for endorsement radio. He has been innovating in the radio advertising business for more than 26 years, making him uniquely qualified to design a system that makes radio advertising work well for advertisers, while helping stations capitalize on their inventory.

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If you don’t know who Vince is, he is the pitchman for the Sham-Wow absorbent towel sold on DRTV infomercials.  The towels have sold very well, and he has built a bit of a cult following for his flea-market, carnival barking sales approach and low budget infomercial.  Check it out – and take a look at the lighting which was probably done with a couple of halogen lamps left over from painting the garage.

Now Vince is selling a kitchen chopper called the “Slap Chop”.  Here is the spot for his new product.

Notice the big upgrade in production values in the Slap Chop ad compared to the Sham Wow spot.  He’s trying to go Hollywood, and I think he has jumped the shark.  Why?

• Production values are too slick. Direct response works best when it is raw and sincere.  Ugly sells.
• Trying too hard. With lines like “you’ll love my nuts” and “life is too hard already”, he has lost the conversational nature of being a guy who is aggressive but sincere about his product.
• Headset as a prop. He may not really need it in the Sham Wow spot either, but in that case it really works becuase it looks like we just plucked him off of the trade-show floor for 5 minutes to cut a commercial before he went back to demo the towel in front of another crowd of onlookers.  In the slick kitchen set, it makes no sense.

I don’t know Vince, but I read his ambition is to be a film producer and not a salesman of home products.  I like him when he is real.  For everyone’s sake, please jump back over the shark.

Update – Well,  now Vince has gotten himself in trouble with a lady of the evening.  This does not bode well for him – people don’t want their infomercial hosts to conduct themselves this way in public.  Short memories may work to his advantage – time will tell.

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A Eicoff & Co. has a short “DRTV Quiz” on their web site.  It’s not as much fun as “Don’t Forget the Lyrics”, but interesting nonetheless.  Whether you are new to the direct response TV world or and old pro who can recall the Pocket Fisherman, you’ll enjoy the quiz.

Bill McCabe is a senior VP at Eicoff who I have known for many years – he sees the future moving toward more :120 second spots, with more “traditional” brand advertisers entering the DRTV space.

By the way, in case you didn’t know, the latest innovation from Billy Mays is the “Slider Station”.  Lets you cook up 5 greasy little burgers at one time.  Just in time for the Super Bowl!

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Today I got a letter that literally opens with “We know better than to take your business for granted”, and then spells out an offer that actually could save me $40 a month if I switched my Internet service and swapped out my regular AT&T phone service for digital VoIP phone service.  It’s not a bad offer, and I appreciate the approach.

The reason I have AT&T for my phone service in the first place is because Comcast DID take my business for granted.  And when I called them to tell them I was switching my Cable/phone/Internet service that I was paying over $180 a month for – they could come up with no reasonable matching offer or incentive to stay with them. Nor did they seem to care.  So they took me for granted, and they didn’t care when I took my business away.

When a customer, who spends over $2,000 a year with you, calls you to say he is leaving you….shouldn’t that raise a red flag somewhere?  Apparently not at Comcast.

But years ago, the same call to AT&T resulted in the same level of indifference and resignation, which is why I went to Comcast in the first place.

As a long time AT&T customer, and one time employee, I have used AT&T my entire adult life.  I had the AT&T Universal Card when it first came out.  I have had them for my cellular service, cordless phones, PC’s, Laptops, and a few other things they have offered over the years.  And of course, they have been my home phone provider for many years.  But in the late 1990′s they got sloppy and their customer service became nothing more than a series of IVR prompts and dis-interested call center drones.

Now they dont want to take me for granted.  I like the improved attitude – lets see if they really mean it.

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