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Now everyone has heard about the BIG Five of the Serengeti: The Lion, Elephant, Buffalo, Leopard and the Rhino. Their abilities are in clear display through the strength, agility or endurance they demonstrate in the wild environment. But all of these are at the top of the pecking order in the food chain. Studying them to understand self preservation strategy is akin to following the strongest organisations in their tactics for survival. Surely not applicable to smaller firms that are unique in their strengths and capabilities.
To get interesting insights on hunting and survival strategies for smaller businesses, we need to look a little further down the foodchain. Lets consider the “Little Five” of the Serengeti: The Ant Lion, the Elephant Shrew, the Buffalo Weaver, the Leopard Tortoise and the Rhino Beetle. Each of these living forms have used their unique strengths to their advantage in creating survival strategies that have lessons for us all in the world of business.
THE ANT LION: Creating the one way funnel
 Lion Ant Traps The Ant Lion is a small larva like creature that is an expert trap builder specifically for unassuming small creatures such as ants. It builds a conical trap in the loose sand at a perfect angle called the “angle of repose”. At this angle, the loose sand is at that critical slope which will just prevent it from caving in. What this means is that any unwary insect walking into the cone will slip down the slope with the sand giving way under its feet. The Ant Lion lies buried at the narrow end of the cone with its jaws open ready for the ant to fall straight in. Read more about the Ant Lion here.
The skill here is building that perfect cone which will push the target to move towards the intended goal. A consultative selling process is very similar, with customer objections being addressed in a systematic way that leads them towards the narrow part of the sales funnel. As objections are removed, the buy decision will be brought closer to reality, typically leaving price or terms as the deciding criteria. You can then enter the zone of price negotiation and finally acquisition.
THE ELEPHANT SHREW: The inherited gene
 Elephant Shrew It looks like a Shrew - a rodent, and walks, lives and feeds like one. They were named Elephant Shrews because of their elongated snout resembling that of an elephant. Scientists always considered them a rodent because of their appearance. So there was considerable surprise in the early 70s when their genetic make up showed them to belong to a super order of mammals that include Aardvarks and Elephants, rather than the common shrew! Subsequently several interesting behaviours have been observed in Elephant Shrews. Unlike commons shrews, they are intolerant of close neighbors, and should one trespass into the territory, it will be violently evicted, chased out by the male if the intruder is another male or by the female if it is female. Aggressive encounters involve screaming, sparring, snapping and kicking, all of which can happen so rapidly that it appears to be a blur of animals tumbling on the forest floor.
Not everyone has such a disposition, a critical nature for survival. In the business world too aggression can potentially replace other shortcomings. Though, this characteristic needs to be from within - sales personnel need to possess the DNA to defend and harvest their territory aggressively against competition.
LEOPARD TORTOISE: Only crossing the last mile matters
 Leopard Turtle Strength and logevity, two reasons for the leopard tortoise to be very popular not only in the sub-Saharan Africa, but the world over as pets and companions. They are very colourful, resembling their much faster namesake only in the patterns on their shell. Leopard tortoises can live for upto a hundred years, and if there is one message the tortoise gives us, it is of running a marathon.
Business development is all about keeping steadily at it over an extended period of time. Whether is developing a new account or building customer relationships, nothing can replace time. Time breeds familiarity and that in turn builds trust. A complete conviction in the strength of your product and single minded focus applied continuously and re-inforced in every interaction will definitely yield results.
BUFFALO WEAVER: Collaborate to succeed, compete to survive
 Buffalo Weaver Weavers are interesting birds that show how to collaborate for the benefit of the team, but then within the team compete for self preservation. Buffalo weavers not only live in colonies, they are also polygamous. They come together to build a complex network of communal nests. They forage and feed in flocks of thousands and aggressively defend their nests as a group against predators. Yet when it comes to their own quarters within their communal nest, they fight for the right of mating as well as protecting their space with all their might.
Sales teams need to collaborate to succeed. Best practices are good for all to put into practice. With this sharing, the group will perform at its highest potential. But internal competition should be actively encouraged. Creating league tables and recognising top achievers will motivate all performers to yearn to be at pole position.
RHINO BEETLE: Grow Bigger than Your Problem
 - Rhino Beetle
When you think of strongest animals it is easy to refer to elephants or rhinos in terms of their ability to carry weight or build up momentum with their weight. But in terms of ability to carry weight relative to their own, the Rhino Beetle beats all of them hands down. Whereas an elephant can carry upto 25% of its own weight, the Rhino beetle takes the top position in moving 850 times its own weight!
The Rhino Beetle does something that is physically impossible to imagine in human dimensions. The only equivalence is the strength of our conviction. When faced with a large problem, the way to overcome it is to mentally grow 850 times larger making the problem relatively manageable. Easily said, though the Rhino Beetle has shown us how to!
More Serengeti Soup to follow.
Many SMEs find it difficult to digest the fact that Email could be a critical business strategy. This immediately conjures up images of spammers trying to sell Viagra by bombarding your inbox with cheap deals. Its this misuse of the power of Email that have resulted in several ESPs (Email Service Providers) including Enria to shy away from some sectors like medicinal or pharmaceutical marketing over email.
But to use targeted email to an opt-in customer base can be one of the best decisions for customer engagement and long term retention. The key is devising a strategy that will build the trust you represent with your brand. We explore this topic below in two sections: First is about achieving Compliance: actions to ensure you are on the right side of the law and the second is about building Confidence: what you could do to raise the bar and gain lasting respect of your customers.
Compliance: Staying Legal
There are two main governing acts that have set the stage for Email Marketing compliance. The CAN-SPAM Act (US) and the EC Directive on Electronic Communications. A good ’sans-legalese’ document that lays out interpretation in the UK in great detail has been published by the ICO. The basic tenets embedded in these regulations are:
Ensure you have consent:
You need to ensure that you have explicit consent for sending email promotional messages from the recipient. Permission can be obtained in several ways: during a transaction, through a web-form or through ’soft opt-in’ methods. Soft opt-in includes customers whose details you may have obtained in the course of a transaction or negotiation, who have been offered a simple method of declining to receive information from you (and they have not done so) and to whom you will market similar products and services that you had originally engaged them for. You still need to comply with other conditions below.
Identify who you are:
It is illegal to conceal your identity when sending bulk emails. You need to use a valid From Name and ensure that the From and the Reply to addresses are fully functional. You also need to include a postal address of your registered organisation.
Provide an opt out link:
Every email needs to include an option for the recipient to opt out which should be processed in 7 days. Enria has a build in single click opt-out mechanism that immediately suppresses the address that has opted out from all future mailings.
Don’t explicitly incentivise referral:
This requires that you should not explicitly reward people to forward emails, for example, never say: “forward this email to 10 of your friends and get 10% off”. This is sure to get you in trouble.
Confidence: Building Trust
Compliance in necessary, but here are some additional actions to ensure that you can build the same confidence with your subscribers that you deliver in their dealings with you in the non-electronic format.
Use double opt-in:
Double opt-in mechanism requires the subscriber to reconfirm their subscription from their own email account. This mechanism ensures that you are highly unlikely to have someone that does not expect to receive communications from you.
Identify your legitimate purpose:
State why you are sending the mail in the body. Identify your organisation credentials by including the registration number and a comment about your privacy policy.
Optimise relevance and frequency:
Always make your messages relevant to your audience. Segment your market and target messages accordingly. Do not bombard your customers with too frequent messages. A well thought out monthly message will be viewed more favourably than more frequent burst of annoyance.
Test before send:
Email clients (Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo, Outlook, etc.) all treat emails differently. As a result display on these can vary widely. Test extensively. Also, test your email on Spam filters. Some filters are quirky when dealing with symbols or certain words and phrases. Enria offers automated testing on upto 20 clients and a number of Spam filters.
Obey the same rules for B2B emails:
The EU regulation specifically speaks to marketing to individuals and leaves B2B communications more open to interpretation in areas such as consent. However, we believe it is best practice to follow the same requirements as above for B2B communications. A case in point are Sole Traders who are considered as individuals. As B2B marketers, it may not be worth your while to create a different strategy for communications to Sole Traders versus a similar Limited business.
Avoid buying lists:
This is not a bold statement for the times. Its true, traditional mass mailing is DEAD. There is no other alternative to building an effective database than working from ground up. But this does not mean you cannot harness the existing information better. Mine your current customer data, improve quality, append emails, analyse performance and follow best practice with transactional events and communications to grow your base. With this investment in time, you will be well in the way to build a high performing subscription base that will reward you many times over.
As a responsible B2B permission based email marketer, it is frustrating to find out that your custom crafted messages has been trapped by an overenthusiastic spam filter. While most server based spam filters are based on rules, pattern matching and bayesian filter engines, Microsoft Outlook has its own set of unpublished quirks which have been only partially understood.
There was a study conducted by MAPILab that looked at the inner workings of Outlook ‘03 and identified the type of checks being conducted including day of week the message was sent, time of day, delay between send and receipt, capital letters, repeat characters, select words etc. However, with Outlook ‘07, this has been further “improved” and there are instances where many previously compliant emails fail the new filter.
The only way to really be sure is to run tests by manually sending emails or to use services such as our Email Client Rendering and Spam Filter Tests. However adopting learnings from experience such as the one below can help reduce the number of iterations to get it right.
Our first test on this specific email passed on most email filters except Outlook ‘07. A review of the body revealed 6 instances of the word ‘Marketing’. Reducing this to 2 had no effect with the test again failing Outlook ‘07. A third test was done after changing the subject to a statement rather than a question ending in question mark.
 1st and 2nd Spam filter test  3rd Test
This seemed to have that miraculous impact. It passed!
Outlook ‘07 places a lot of emphasis on the “?” and by extension other symbols (!,£,$,*) on the subject line. The best is to use a testing service or test directly on the client, but avoiding the above symbols on the subject line will save a few steps in getting it right.
The result - a 14% uptick on open rates and equivalent click through rates!
How fast is digital marketing likely to grow? How are brands successfully harnessing digital media. How can buzz marketing add value to research? Listen to the rich media expert, Thomas Curwen, Planning Director at Publicis Dialog in a short chat on these and other topics.
RIATalk: Thomas Curwen Interview
As always, marketing budgets have been the first to take the hit during this downturn. Yet we all know how critical it is to keep a finger on the pulse of the market and seek out those diminishing opportunities before the competition. The environment is ripe to take a fresh look at both emerging and mature digital solutions that could help cut costs. No, I am not for a moment professing to put more into your Adwords budget or bring in an SEO consultant (Even BT is willing to help if you have £6000 to spare!). What is on offer though are 10 low cost, offbeat ideas for customer acquisition, retention and promotion. These will not break your bank, and could give you that slight edge that you need to weather this storm.
Acquisition
- GENERATE PERMISSION LISTS: Adding a subscription list to your website is very easy. Create this at every point you get information from the customer. You can incorporate this into your existing forms with a few lines of script.
- LIST ENHANCEMENT: Double the effectiveness of your telesales team by including an e-mail step before the call is made. There are several services available that can enhance your customer lists with email addresses. You can then use Email Marketing to target a specific offering and then call customers that opened the email within a couple of days.
- ESTABLISH SMS CHANNEL: Create a new channel for your leads. Ideal for print and flyer advertising, creating a SMS based Mobile Marketing easy and cheap. Customers text your keyword to a shortcode (5 digit number) and you can respond with a message (eg. URL), callback from a telesales or geolocate the message and send it to the nearest branch.
- AUTOMATE LEAD GENERATION: Do you have field based employees that interact with customers? This could be the best interface for new opportunity identification. Creating a simple Mobile SMS lead automation scheme can significantly increase effectiveness of conversion. Capturing the initiating employee’s credentials, automatically intimating area sales team and administering lead rewards can all be achieved using an SMS gateway.
Retention
- OBTAIN CUSTOMER REFERENCES: Renewing customer contracts could be a challenging time. Even if you have done a great job, customers are going to push for lower pricing in the light of competitive offers. If you have to discount, ask for references: try audio or video recordings - you can always create a print copy from this. Endorsements send a strong message to customers considering a switch.
- UNDERSTAND YOUR NET PROMOTER: Fred Reichheld proposed a simple test for your customers “On a scale of 0 - 10, how likely are you to recommend us to a friend or a colleague?”. A whole methodology has evolved around this concept called Net Promoter System (NPS). Only the ones that give you a 9 or a 10 are a promoter. What in your service creates promoters? What pains detractors? Aligning the organization to address this is a critical first step. Contact us to find out more.
- GET MOST OUT OF ASSETS: And get it for free. Marketing assets generated by Telesales, Sales, Web team, Corporate and many other self proclaimed pockets of marketing in a company can quickly get out of hand and disjointed. You are lucky if you can invest in a Marketing Asset Management solution, however, for the rest of us its not the end of time. If you have MS 2003 or later Server, you have almost everthing needed to deploy a first class collaboration portal for Marketing Assets using Sharepoint Services. Give some work to those twiddling thumbs in the IT department!
Promotion
- ADD LINKS TO TRANSACTIONAL COMMUNICATIONS: Does your team correspons frequently with customers by email? You need to institute a simple link at the footer of every email offering subscription for specials and information. Get the interested leads to walk in.
- EXPOSE YOUR EXPERTS: More organizations are discovering the benefits of blogging and a vibrant user community. Bring out your disparate experts to create a forum, assign rotating moderation responsibility, and create a forum for the user community.
- TARGET YOUR MESSAGING: Email, mobile and the web give you excellent opportunity to target your messaging. Using free tools such as Google analytics integrated into your email campaign can get you great insights. Use this to target customers more effectively. Remember - Track, Analyse, Target.
The solutions mentioned above broadly fall under the emerging fields of Marketing Automation and Marketing Asset Maximisation. If effectively designed at the outset, these solutions can be self-administering and will return on the effort many times over. At Enria we have implemented several of these solutions with great success. Give us a shout and we will be happy to showcase them for you.
We have just released a new product called Email Visualiser(TM) for Email marketing that makes it easy for any registered organisation to test out this interesting medium.
Just submit to us your company URL and we will create a template with your own branding within 24 hrs. This template will be fully compliant with legal requirements for Email Marketing as well as pre-tested on 20 email clients for effective rendering. You can visualise your campaign appearance and in the event you are happy with the template, you can use it for free to start your campaign.
Now how easy is that!
This summer, the drought will drag on further in the Serengeti. As Sher Kahn stares into the bare plains, mini tornadoes of dust move across at a distance. He needs to be at his best, his best ever and he has a plan.
He has revisited in his mind-map all the popular watering holes in his territory. He knows where the visitors are coming from. He knows what his approach will be. And he knows the competition. On his rounds, he had noticed the missing claw in a tree-mark that was next to his. Never recovered from that foolish battle last summer, the old hat.
Sher Kahn had dug his claws extra deep into that tree just to send the message.
Then, instinctively he senses the air and sets out for the watering hole in the east. From a distance he sees the thirsty hordes of deer eagerly making their way to the same spot. He scans for signs that will make one of them his suitable target, and moves closer. The wild quail and monkeys squeal his presence. Undistracted, he merges into the spiny tall grass and awaits his opportunity…..
What follows is where most of us perk up and finish watching the unedited version on Discovery Channel!
But that is not that end we are after! There may however be a few insights for business from Sher Kahn’s story. Some insights that may help in driving business in our drought season.
Today, high performing sales teams do most of the things Sher Kahn did. They have studied the competition, researched their market and for most part have understood where customers are coming from. What will it be then that will make the Sher Kahns of your business deliver during this season while others struggle?
Lets start with dissecting Sher Kahn’s hunting process. Knowledge of the watering holes in the territory and the weaknesses of competition is having the Insight. As a marketing group (or with your marketing hat on!), you could make a significant difference in this step. There may be a number of traditional systems you have for gaining insight. But this is a downturn, things are changing. Budgets are smallers, customers are behaving differently. You need new ideas, like Insight for Search from Google, which may come handy in some situations.
You need to mark your territory repeatedly to make your presence felt and drive Awareness. Productive hunter-Sales reps plan meticulously (7 habits and all), and ensure that they are touching maximum prospects that the telesales or marketing team keep feeding them. But with more competition targeting the same quarry, all additional channels to reach the customer have to be exhausted. A simple channel - Email - is still not being used effectively in many organizations. Creating a systematic program for Email marketing to support the sales team can substantially increase visibility to your customer base. A passing glance at your newsletter may prompt a customer to call you or mention you in a conversation (if your service has been impressive - works the other way as well!). The key point here is maximizing Awareness and increasing your chances for a Reference. And to create a lasting impression, you need to dig deeper through repeated messaging, without however intruding or ticking the customer off. Here is where Permission Marketing can help substantially.
Permission Marketing creates a situation that encourages customers to engage. In Sher Kahn’s story, though not perfect analogy, the situation is hinged around a basic need of the deer visiting a waterhole. As a marketer, your goal is to make customers come to you - not only to buy, but to quench their thirst for something of genuine value. And for this, you need to look within. What existing assets does your organisation have that you can attract customers with? Or how can you create such an asset? A survey, a report, a whitepaper. Something of value, something that will satisfy a unarticulated need. Offering this in exchange for permission to engage is the Subscription step that helps establishing this new channel. And as customer needs are changing faster, now is the time to empty the experience coffers and offer something different that may be relevant for the hour.
Instinct and Targeting are the next two ingredients. A high performance sales team will be flush with Instinct. Targeting however, has to evolve from your subscription and customer data. Deep analytics and reviewing customer behaviour through various lenses will give you the direction for your effort. Email and the web platform offer substantial opportunities to target owing to the dynamic nature of the medium.
Email marketing can help traditional Sales driven teams to become far more productive in closing opportunities. Leadership needs to establish systems to help these key steps to a faster Acquisition.
More Serengeti Soup with Web 2.0 spices to follow.
“Thats not even English”, said my 10 year old. “What do you mean by it anyway?”
Yes, it sounds complex, but I think it really captures what I believe is a critical piece missing in customer facing organizations today. After fifteen years of frontline corporate experience, a few years ago, I decided to find out what the fuss was all about with Web2.0. Since then every discovery has led me to new insights on how the changing world of digital holds so much potential for impacting the real world.
Since then, I have devoured books like The Long Tail and authority blogs like ‘Seth Godin’s’ and reflected it back on my every day experiences as the Head of Services with BOC and later as a Director of Sales and Bizdev with UTC. Some of it was common sense, but a lot had new insights, mostly as it relates to the miracle of the internet and its new generation of users.
To me, there are still discoveries to be made on how we effectively adopt this new digital interface for the ‘real’ world of customer engagement. This world where traditional media still holds fort in influencing customers, the world where humans interface with humans to transact, the world where motivated direct sales teams seal deals in board rooms. In other words, the world where 90% of the business gets done. Here is real interaction. Here is real activity. It is to attain this holy grail of making digital work for the real world that we are setting out to Enrich Interactivity.
Time will pass. Results will tell. Stay tuned and Hang on!
This is Raj Krishnamurthy with my first ever blog. This site will serve as the record of observations, musings, learnings and experiences of everyone associated with Enria who choose to write! Hoping to make this a vibrant little world enriching our lives as we go along.
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