Ryan Wofford

Sometimes you just want to pull your hair out

Well, here it is… Almost a full two months exactly since my last post and I guess that is just an indication of how busy things have been in my life since my last post!

There are certainly a lot of things to update you on, both personal and professional. I’m writing this from the WordPress iPhone app, 25k feet up on my way back from the Material Handling and Logistics North American 2010 Trade Show in Cleveland. This was Deposco’s first foray into the trade show world and I was charged with putting together everything from the marketing strategy for the show to the marketing materials, to assembling the actual booth itself. It was quite an undertaking. I’ve attended smaller trade shows in the past, but this was the first I’ve managed from every angle.

The show was a four day show in Cleveland, featuring all kinds of exhibitors with products spanning the space within the four walls of the warehouse and beyond. Our strategic partners, UPS, indicated it would be a good fit, as it is the largest of it’s kind this year in North America.

The show from a technical perspective went off without a hitch. Sure, I had to overcome some challenges, such as building our entire marketing strategy around doing live product demos of our on-demand, SaaS warehouse management systems in our booth, then losing all of our demo guys to various other obligations… But we overcame and had a great show (and still were able to provide overview demos of our product). Knowing what our small booth and efforts cost, it was amazing to me the expenditure some of the exhibitors put forth. Let’s just hope some of the connections and prospects turn into real qualified leads for us!

What else has been going on? In a month’s time, with the help of my good friends at Schecter Technologies, LLC, we were able to completely redesign, develop, and launch the brand new website at Deposco.com. Stop by & have a look. This should give us a huge strategic advantage with SEO over the previously flash-heavy site, which was poorly indexed to say the least.

In other personal news, the Fiance and I have made great strides with finding and closing on our first home (just in time for the tax credit), as well as further wedding plans, so head on over to our wedding site for more news on that soon.

All-in-all, a really busy few months… I promise to try to keep this better updated, but as my friend Brandon Sutton recently posted over on his blog… “I’m No Superman” either!

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• Supply Chain Management Vendor Deposco Wins Best of SaaS Showplace Award, TAG Top 40 Award (eon.businesswire.com)

Here’s a quick gripe / calling out of a few certain companies that apparently don’t properly sync their databases prior to sending an email campaign.

Having been the Director of a firm that manages email marketing for clients for many years, I understand the importance of these things and probably pay closer attention than most, but here’s how things went down…

I was forced to spend several hours yesterday updating all of my online accounts to change from my work email address to my personal address. Seems easy enough, but we’re talking almost 10 years worth of subscriptions to places, so it was a bit daunting.

Today, as I sit at my desk, I notice some emails coming in from various companies and I start to panic a little thinking “I swear I updated that email address yesterday”. So, I actually double-checked. What I found confirmed that I did in fact update my account. So, what gives?

Image via Wikipedia

It seems to me there are some companies out there not following best practices when it comes to email database marketing. We’re not talking about small mom and pop shops, either… we’re talking BIG companies (I’m pointing the finger at you Delta, Marriott)! One would think two of the biggest rewards programs in the world would be on top of this with nightly syncs and back-ups at minimum, but apparently not.

Get with it folks!

iconic Maker's Mark bottle

For any of you who follow me on Twitter (@djinc), for better or worse you probably know by now that I drink a good bit of booze. Along with wine and scotch, another thing I drink a good bit of these days is Maker’s Mark whisky. (Yes, I noticed my spellchecker just prompt me for the missing “e” in whisky, but that’s how the American government actually declared it spelled in 1968).

Now, I don’t profess to be all-knowing about the stuff, I’ve just loved the taste of it since my grandfather used to ask him to run into the kitchen as a 7 year old child and pour “this much” Canadian Club in a glass with “this much” Sprite.

For those who don’t know a lot about whisky (or whiskey) or “bourbon”, it’s kind of like the Champagne of the South. I don’t just mean that in a point-at-the-rednecks-and-laugh kinda way.

I mean that supposedly, if it doesn’t come from Bourbon County, Kentucky, it ain’t really “bourbon“. Though, unlike the AOC laws in France, it doesn’t technically have to come from that county to be labeled “bourbon”, just fit the government-mandated criteria, and be from anywhere in the US.

And, that really brings me to Maker’s Mark. Although it’s seeped in Kentucky tradition, it’s just kind of a brand that goes against the grain (or rye *cringes coyly at bad pun*). It’s not made in Bourbon County. Unlike a lot of other popular American whiskies of the era, there’s no rye in it. They are one of the few American bourbons to take the US government declared, albeit Scottish-influenced spelling of “whisky”. And, they don’t just seek consumers, they turn them into brand Ambassadors.

So, through the work I do I had the fortune to meet Barry Younkie, Global Marketing Director at Maker’s Mark, some years back. Barry, one of the brains behind Maker’s Ambassador program, was helping us on a project that was geared around creating a brand community of our own for a client. Barry helped me understand the often immeasurable ROI value of converting your customers into your biggest fans, and your biggest fans into your biggest brand ambassadors. These consumers will go beyond the average use case and actually carry the torch for your brand. They become evangelists. They spread the word.

What Maker’s Mark does with their Ambassador community shows a commitment by continually investing to provide the members of that community tools to help spread the brand message. Along with monthly email updates containing info like recipes (both drink and culinary), updates on the status of your personalized barrel of Maker’s Mark–you get your name on a barrel when joining and the opportunity to visit it or purchase a bottle from that batch, and more; the brand also follows up with direct mail pieces like pictured below.

Each year around the holidays, they send out some special promotion to help you spread the word and share with your friends and family.

2008 Direct Mail Package: Your own personal Maker’s Mark stamp like they make the iconic bottle top with.

personal Maker's Mark seal

2009 Direct Mail Package: Gift wrapping materials

Maker's Mark gift bags

This sounds to me like a brand with a sense of Community to me.

Old School Media Image via Wikipedia

This article brings to light the necessity, even in the role of a web 2.0 demand generation strategist, for an offline strategy.

As I was meeting with a client the other day, who was in charge of his company’s online marketing destiny, I posed the question, “Where do your clients live?” He quickly began to reply “well, we’re an SaaS company… we hope they live on the web” and I had to interrupt, “what if they don’t?”

As he backpedaled, he then began to tell me to think of their customers, in fact, as the “Rust Belt“. “This is no good,” I thought. We need an offline strategy. I need to show these folks that we can win this battle old school style… We can rock this lo-fi, no-tech scene too.

Then, I had an idea… we can get our promo message out on CD or DVD, like I used to trying to get gigs.

I decided we would try something that looked like this:

Vertical Market Demo

By following this course, we could not only spread our brand message, but then convert offline users into online users by driving them to a conversion point on the web. Sure, the chart and the message needs a little refinement, but the idea is there, and it is a great idea to have a supplemental offline strategy to go with your web presence.

How do you supplement your online strategies when you have to take them offline?