Building Brand Loyalty -- One Contact at a Time

Okay I admit it. Today I was impressed by a sales guy from a company called Vovici – and believe me when I say, I am not easily impressed.

It all started this morning when I was sorting through my in-box, finger poised over the “DELETE” key, and I noticed an email from Direct Marketing News Whitepaper of the Day. It offered a free whitepaper on ‘The Role of Feedback in Brand Loyalty.’

As a marketer I was intrigued. So I clicked on the link. Not surprising, a registration form popped up... and, like a good little soldier I filled out the form (knowing all the while that my contact information would be dumped into someone’s database for future follow up). After clicking “Submit” I reached another page with a laundry list of whitepapers.

Unfortunately, none of those whitepapers were the one advertised. Hmmm... I’m thinking. Somebody screwed up.

So I clicked on a different whitepaper (yep, still interested) but another registration box appeared. So now I’m cranky.

I find a “Contact us” link at the bottom of the page, and scribble a helpful little email note as follows:

Subject: Email Problem

You send out an email offering a whitepaper “The Role of Feedback in Brand Loyalty” – I filled out the form, but it took me to a page that there were 6 whitepapers but none by this title...

Then, when I did try to download a different whitepaper, it took me back to the registration page.

So, when you discover that your email campaign was not generating qualified leads, you now know why...

We design and develop B2B lead generation programs. When you realize this campaign effort didn’t work and you created a negative impression about Vovici, let me know. Perhaps we can help.

I hit the “Send” key and then notice an email in my IN-BOX with a link to the original whitepaper I had requested. Err...umm...

Suddenly the phone rings and my call display shows Vovici, the company I had just emailed. Wow. That took like, seconds for them to respond!

At the other end was a very friendly Vovici sales guy who patiently listened to my complaint and explained that I must have clicked past the page telling me they would email me my link and probably clicked on the link to read additional whitepapers.

But — and here’s the impressive part — he was very interested in my feedback, my user experience with the email and links, and my B2B marketing advice.

Naturally I shared a few best practice tips with him, and since he felt they were helpful, I thought I’d share them with you, too:

1. Don’t design your whitepapers (or any other downloadable document for that matter) with a heavy use of bleeds. It eats up printer toner.

2. Make sure you don’t use darker backgrounds with type over it for call-out boxes or sidebars. It turns into a big unreadable blob when it’s printed.

3. Often, to save paper, people don’t print the front cover of the document, so make sure your company’s contact information (name, phone number and email address) are on the bottom of every page. Especially since folks often just print specific pages or sections of a larger document.

4. Avoid the use of a lot of photography. Again, unless it’s adding a compelling insight to the story, it just eats up ink toner.

5. If you include charts or graphs, make sure they can print properly if the recipient prints in black and white. Don’t count on the end user to have (or want to use) their color printer.

6. If you offer a free paper/document as a lead generation device, make sure you test the user experience before you make the offer. Once I fill out a form, I don’t want to keep filling out forms to get additional documents. If your back end system can’t handle it, don’t make the offer – or provide a link with your follow-up/thank you email that carries my contact information on it so at least the form can be pre-filled for me.

Oh, and one more thing... make it someone’s responsibility to follow up on emails immediately, cranky or otherwise. It creates a GREAT brand impression.