Archive for May, 2008
Defining permission down
This week I got an email with this subject:
Please confirm your registration for _______
My reaction: Huh? Did I register for that?
I did recognize the name that’s blanked out above, so I opened the message, and here’s what I found:
Dear John,
I am writing to let you know that I have signed you up to receive [...]
Quick Shout-Out to ProFreelancing.com
They’ve just published a list of the top 60 Blogs for freelance writers and included us in their ten top marketing blogs. Thanks!
The list is quite interesting; it includes some blogs I know (and in whose company we’re honored to be listed) and lots of things that I haven’t seen, so now I have more [...]
For the beach bum who has everything…
The other day, my sister Kathleen forwarded an e-mail she’d gotten from Zappo’s and suggested I take a look.
I combed through it, and what to my wondering eye did appear but a blurb for some high-end flip-flops with a built in church key.
First off, I want to say how gratifying it is to know that [...]
Pricing is an incentive. Make sure it’s the right one.
By now everybody’s heard about American Airlines and their new $15 fee for any checked bag, and the reaction has been almost universally negative. This is in part because nobody ever likes to be told that something that was free no longer is. But American’s move, which might be matched by other airlines, raises some [...]
Everything but the kitchen sink
Occupational hazard, but I look at an awful lot of websites - primarily B2B, primarily technology-related.
An awful lot.
And they can, in fact, be an awful lot.
Part of what makes so many of them so awful is that they’ve got way too much going on.
We’ve all gotten pretty much inured to the clutter of consumer-oriented, [...]
When asked a question, answering it is helpful
Mario Sanchez of Shoestring Branding relates a classic car-buying tale: car dealers that won’t answer questions. Even when the question is, “I want to buy a car now. Do you have this, and how much is it?” How many businesses would kill to have someone just email them and say, “I want one, let’s make [...]
Memorial Day 2008
This Opinionated Marketer’s taking the day off to head to the cemetery to plant some geraniums.
Happy Memorial Day to all, especially to the veterans of wars long since passed, or still being waged.
Specialists and generalists
Are you a specialist, or a generalist? Should you hire a generalist or a specialist? Seth Godin suggested that there’s no reason to be a generalist (note: since I first read it, he’s toned it down a bit):
If I need an animator, I can find the world’s best animator. If I need a bond [...]
Attention grabbers: make sure there’s a payoff
The other day, I was reading through the employment ads in The Economist, which I often do. If you’ve never seen them before, they’re up front, generally quarter or half page B&W ads. Serious stuff, and wildly interesting professional jobs - often in far a way places (Head of the Railroad Authority in Swaziland), and [...]
Niches will be filled
When people talk about what’s ailing the newspaper business, there’s one little company whose name comes up again and again: Craigslist. With Craigslist offering free classified ads in cities all over the world, how can newspapers compete? In an interview in the New York Times, however, Craigslist founder Craig Newmark questions that idea:
In the face [...]
