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I read a Mark Graban (Lean Blog) Tweet about Dan Pink’s Blog and followed the link. The post was outstanding and most of all gave me all the reasons for the success of Small Business. It must of have been that Law of Attraction thing.

This is Mark’s comment from the post:

Great story. It goes to show, for one thing, that “standardization” (of which Marriott is a big proponent of) doesn’t mean shut your brain off. I’m sure they just have a very general policy of doing what it takes to make guest happy – and being a JW, is it a different policy than a Courtyard?

After reading your post, I was walking home and realized that my neighborhood cleaners in Boston exhibits a similar behavior – with just smiles (they are still free, right?). It sounds so cheesy, but every time I’m in the cleaners (2x a week?), the owner or his wife, they smile and make you feel so welcome to be there, like you’re the only customer of the day, which clearly isn’t true.

After 11 months in Boston, I noticed just about two weeks ago that if I’m walking home at the end of the day and the guy isn’t busy, he sees you walk by… I noticed him and he just grinned and waved, as if seeing an old friend for the first time in a decade.

So now I noticed he does this every time. I actually. I now make a point of looking for him and we exchange waves and smiles. Again, cheesy, but it feels good.

Yes, he’s the closest cleaners, but would I think about looking for someone cheaper? Not at all (Well, unless they ruined a bunch of clothes). He’s a perfect example of attitude mattering – whatever your job, you can choose to be a grump or choose to be happy.

Way cheaper than 44 cents.

So if you are looking for a life preserver, think about making someone feel special. Is that tough?

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I have to admit that I must be a great judge of talent or maybe this podcast pushed Mark over the edge of the other competitors. Ha! Mark won the prestigious iSixSigma  2009 MVP Awards for Best Continuous Process Improvement Tweeter at the iSixSigma Live Conference this year. This podcast was taped in July, 2009 but the information is still solid and even more relevant today.  Listen to Mark’s thoughts on Blogging and Tweeting as he surpasses 2,000 “Engaged” followers, this month. 

An Interactive Video Event from Healthcare Value Leaders
February 24, 2010 11:00 AM EST
View the 3-minute preview

Mark is also the author of Lean Hospitals: Improving Quality, Patient Safety, and Employee Satisfaction

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Jason Cohen describes how a free book transformed marketing at Smart Bear Software: objectively measuring the effect of marketing efforts, getting accurate lead information, and giving people something genuinely useful. This Pecha Kucha talk was delivered at Joel Spolsky’s Business of Software 2008 conference in Boston.

Jason’s thought process on how to get quality leads from you e-mail subscriptions and whitepapers seems to be such a natural for industries transforming to online marketing. Remember, the old bingo cards and how your salespeople use to love chasing those three month old leads. How do they feel about internet leads? If you want quality, you may have to give up quality! What do you think?

By the way, doesn’t Pecha Kucha sound like a Pokeman Card? Actually it is a simple presentation format where you show 20 images, each for 20 seconds. The images forward automatically and you talk along to the images.

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A typical e-mail campaign will be released and I will get the standard statistics of deliverability that include bounces, opens, opt-outs, complaints, etc. I will see what links are clicked but to my knowledge only Constant Contact lets me see who clicked what link. I am allowed to segment the list with a few of the vendors but it is a tedious process.

If you review the material they publish, you will see creative ways of obtaining opt-ins, improve deliverability and how to effectively keep a list alive. But why can’t I see the data? Why can’t I see who clicks on what? Why can’t I see aging accounts? Why can’t I just drag and drop contacts into groups?

Would it not make sense for me to manage my e-zine based on what part of the funnel the customer is in? Would it not be important to see if open rates were decreasing by the amount of time the customer is in the hourglass? Or the amount of time they are stuck in one stage? If they attend a webinar or go to a seminar, you would move them down the hourglass. If they are repeat customers or referral customers, they receive different frequency and maybe different e-mails.

If I wanted to improve my e-mail marketing should these statistics be available? The ability to move individual and groups into different parts of the hourglass should be a no brainer? Is there any system that will allow me to do this?

I believe that if we want to reduce spam in our life, we need to create better e-mail management systems. I know all this may not be able to be automated but would this not be better use of the Email vendors time rather more templates, videos, surveys and just more products! I might be sticking my foot in my mouth, but can anyone do this?

Related Posts:
Should you Manage your Organization with Agile Techniques?
Marketing Kanban Cadence
Agile, Scrum, Kanban, or is it just a Marketing Funnel?
Value Stream Mapping your Marketing

PDCA Cycle introduction to Lean Marketing

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Get Found Online: To run a successful online business, people need to be able to find your website. You must improve your visibility.
Improve Your Traffic: You must use customized SEO and Social Media tasks that help you boost the number of visitors to your site.
Make More Money: Improving traffic, rankings and brand visibility will generate more sales from your website.

2nd answer the question: How am I going to do it?

I found a nifty tool that I have been using the past month called Lotus Jump. When I first started using it, I thought it was really nothing more than a spreadsheet telling me to do the things I already do to get my website found. However, after using it for a month, I found that it put me places that I have not been before. It did give me additional insight into places that I should be and links that I should be creating. All I have to do is allocate 30 minutes of your time( it could be someone else) that can post content to create a web presence. It is simply not enough to have a website anymore you need a web presence. Read this case study about a simple Flower shop or watch a demo!

This fits into a very nice into a Standard Work Practice for developing an Online Presence. Certainly will be a brick in the foundation of Lean Marketing House.

P.S. I am an affiliate and user of this product.

Technorati : SEO Social-Media Web-Traffic Internet -Marketing

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Customers are demanding shorter Supply Chains and more customization. Their trade-off is that they are willing to wait for a very short-on-time delivery and the faith not that the product or service will be perfect, but that it will be supported and corrected if there is a problem. The Internet has made people accustomed to buying things sight unseen if they have trust in the people and organizations behind the product. Does anyone mind when the product says Beta on it?

However, how can a company make money with customization and supply chains being the 2 biggest drawbacks to efficiencies? The first thing I would let go of is the word efficiencies. That seems to me an out-dated word still being used by cost accountants. The Theory of Constraints utilizes measurements using the term of Throughput which I believe has a lot more bearing on the health of a company. Most companies also fail to realize that the “asset” of inventory actually penalizes you in your supply chain and typically reduces your time to market.

Delivering in the Immediate Moment is typically not about production time, it is about policy constraints and having a supporting system in place to support that goal. Building a Value Stream Map can clarify many of these issues. However, first things first, remove the word efficiency and add the word throughput to your vocabulary.

Related Posts:

Theory of Constraints + Lean + Six Sigma = Ultimate Improvement Cycle

Lean Six Sigma applied to Supply Chain

Application of Lean Six Sigma to the Supply Chain

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Hi Joe,

Congratulations! I wanted to let you know that based upon your continued valued contributions to BX and its users you will once again be the Featured User on Business Exchange (http://bx.businessweek.com) starting Saturday, July 11 at approximately 9:15 AM ET and lasting for 48 hours.

Please take this opportunity to sign in to Business Exchange and add or save articles of interest to you in the topics of your choice so that your profile will have fresh content for those BX users to see as they check it out due to your featured status.

Also, we’ll promote your featured user status on Twitter as well (@business901).

Let me know if you have any questions and thank you for your continued participation on Business Exchange.

Ron

Technorati : Busienss Week, Business Exchange, PR, Public Relations

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When people search for your name on Google (and if they are considering hiring you they do) you now have the ability to create a profile and have it show up on page one of Google.

Google Profiles is a somewhat new service from Google, but this week they started showing results for name searches on page one of search results. John Jantsch placed details on his blog yesterday and people who took the five minutes to complete a profile found it on page one immediately. Do a Google search for Joe Dager or Joseph Dager and look at the bottom of page:

If you want to learn how, read about it here :

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1. There needs to be strong common interest among the group for all to succeed. I look at downtown stores located in close proximity, strip mall occupants, small business communities and yes, people with common ideal clients. The problem with the ideal client theory is that so many times companies product and services overlap that there is competition within the group. Now, I am not saying there would not be competition in the other groups but there is a common need to attract people and satisfy them with the products once they are there. Lead groups work well but again, do you pass on your best leads and is there actually promotion taking place?
2. There needs to be a lead marketing coordinator. The coordinator leads the effort create the community with joint material both on-line and off-line. And not all marketing material needs to be joint, either.  This is interesting in the sense that it is very difficult to create a community by yourself and difficult to have the marketing expertise and time required in house.

It all sounds great, but why not just hire a marketing firm to do this? You can, but if you do not install a marketing system and train everyone in the group on the "System," it will be a disjointed effort and it will simply fail! I cannot emphasize the training part of it more than I do. There needs to be an understanding on what needs to be accomplished and what everyone needs to do to make it successful.

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My Number: (260)918-4793

1. You get your own number.
2. Long distance can be free.
3. Sends an e-mail that you have voice mail.
4. Transcribes the message? Huh! Yes, transcribes it!
   And you can forward it with or without the transcription:

Hey! I got this on my Google Voice account and thought you’d want to hear it.

(260) 438-0411

4/11/09 9:51 PM

just doing this test one two three test one two three test four to five test five six seven thank you
Play message

Don’t have a Google Voice account? Find out more on www.google.com/voice .

I think it is pretty cool!

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9.  Make a significant web presence through social media and communication channels with stakeholders. Create local presence, online and off-line.

A significant Web Presence: I think this is an important overall strategy for anyone right now from getting employed to trying to do rub a Fortune 500 company. A web presence is more than a website, just take a look at my branding efforts that I have done and use a few of these terms to find me:

For starters – Google search terms:

1. Lean Marketing
2. Lean Six Sigma Marketing
3. Duct Tape Marketing
4. Marketing Plan Pro
5. Marketing Coach, Fort Wayne or Indiana

My branding efforts:

Ok, how well did I do?

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Constant Contact has been part of my marketing services since 2/01/2006. I have enjoyed the product and consider it one of best products on the market for ease of use and appearance. I have always consider the ability to get open rates somewhat limited and their customer service department less than spectacular. They confirmed my opinion.

Now, I am pretty old fashioned. I like to try things before recommending to my customer. Several of my customers have requested e-zine assistance this year thinking that it is a cheaper answer over direct mail. I try to explain to them it is a companion to direct mail not an alternative. Anyway, my concern is that a sloppy list will be difficult to introduce and how can I recommend Constant Contact(I know they will not achieve 1 spam per thousand) as a service. I select a list for trial and send it out on in my account. I receive 25% bounces, 2.2% opt outs, 20% opens and 7% click through. More importantly, I received several positive calls and direct e-mails. In today’s world, get rid of the bounces and it is now a great e-mail list, ready to go but…I received 9 SPAM complaints.

I receive a message, a list review. I call and went through the list review. I explain the reason I received this business and will receive others: “I am not going to get business from people that have a great list and one that is managed well. I was actually quite pleased with the result except for the spam complaints. I talk to the list reviewer and volunteer to only continue on with the 20% opens and remove the rest of the list. We agree and I am told instructions will be sent on how to do this.”

I wait over the weekend as my open rate of course is increasing. I go to use the account and find out that it is frozen. I have to comply before I can use the account. Talk to a list reviewer and ask how I should introduce the list and spend over 30 minutes on the phone trying to find the Constant Contact way to introduce a new list. We turn to focusing on my account and  how to remove the exact number I need to be “reinstated.” We are quite specific.

Now, several days later, I perform the function and call to get the account unfrozen. I am told that not only must I remove this list but all lists and only keep the contacts that have opened an e-mail of mine in the last 3-years to comply. I mention that in the previous phone calls that was never explained and that we have never talked about anything except the one list. He puts me on hold and talks to compliance for the 2nd time. He assured me that I was wrong. Let me think, I volunteered the punishment and the 2nd reviewer walked me thru what I was supposed to do and was in complete agreement with me on what action was required. He repeated he had talked to compliance and this is what I needed to do. 3-years worth of opens? I ask him if he could refund the balance in my account. He said, he would do that, though my account would be active, but frozen till February 22nd, since my account had been recharged with the higher amount of contacts.

What e-mail provider can help me?

Constant Contact, Ezines, E-mail, Spam

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Invitation to HubSpot Marketing Webinar 12-1PM EST (GMT -5)

Register Now

With more and more consumers turning to search engines as their first stop on the purchasing path, companies that make the first page of organic search results are those that win business, even in a tough economy. But making it to the first page of organic search results takes work and doesn’t happen overnight. Recognizing this, businesses may turn to paid search to supplement their inbound marketing efforts. This webinar will discuss how to get the most out of your pay per click marketing campaigns and how paid search fits into your inbound marketing strategy.

Topics include:

• What is Pay Per Click marketing & when should you do it
• How to size up your market with PPC
• How to launch and optimize a PPC campaign

Space is limited so reserve your seat now.

Register for Free Webinar

Technorati Tags: Pay per Click,Hubspot,Webinar,Marketing Webinar

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