Comments on: Transpromo: What Coattail Are Marketing Messages Riding?

By: Clint Bolte

Clint Bolte — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 17:36:43 +0000

One of my take aways from this month’s TP Summit in NYC was the necessity of the ancillary message being very relevant to the specific recepient. And this is not always easy to do. However, one speaker made the point that an education message is rarely offensive and typically received with good intention. Perhaps a good way to begin, before broaching a cross sell or up sell advertisement.

The second key point is that there must be desciplined analytics following each campaign to ascertain the affectiveness of the message. Surveys clearly conclude that few analytics are being used following TransPromo campaigns.

I read Heidi’s point as being a caveat for messages that might make sense but result in being offensive. It takes practice and measuring feedback.

By: Michael Josefowicz

Michael Josefowicz — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 14:43:44 +0000

Fair enough. We both agree that it’s important not to over-simplify.
But on the other hand……

I sort of agree that “Marketers will never get away from serendipity entirely.” but my take is that as analytic software gets smarter and cheaper, accidental successes will get less and less.

My bet is that the analytic software that Google uses to deliver contextually accurate ads or the Amazon recommendation engine could be re focused on the trans promo problem.

A quick search of “recommendation engine” at Google delivers 12 sponsored links. All with software that someone alleges does part of the job. I won’t be surprised, but don’t know for sure, if some version of these are already being used in the database publishing ( transpromo or VDP) sector.

By: Heidi Tolliver-Nigro

Heidi Tolliver-Nigro — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 19:01:48 +0000

Good point! But here’s the counterpoint — what you describe is exactly the kind of “serendipity factor” (a phrase used by Richard Romano, but I don’t know whether or not he coined it) that is relied upon by high-volume, undifferentiated direct mail. Marketers will never get away from serendipity entirely, of course, but it just reinforces the point that it’s important not to over-simplify such things.

By: Michael Josefowicz

Michael Josefowicz — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 17:04:15 +0000

Heidi – You raise a great point.

Maybe one way out is to consider the frame of mind of the person who is getting the credit card bill.

For example, if the person runs a large balance at golf stores and pays on time, it might be a good moment to present some ads for a high end golf clubs from an exclusive outlet.

On the other hand, If the person is late in their payments and has been getting later, it might be a good moment to present a credit counseling service or a program to deal with dealing with a sub primer mortgage situation.

The neat thing about a credit card statement is that by analyzing the content of the statement you can get a pretty good idea of the mindset – at that moment – of the “eyeballs.”

Irritation can often be a great selling opportunity, if you offer a real product or service that can scratch the itch.