This morning I received an email promotion from a well-known vendor of email and CRM services, offering a free white paper on high impact email marketing. I was intrigued – I’m always interested in what industry leaders are thinking when it comes to current email marketing best practises. So I clicked the link and, voila, I was immediately taken to a ‘register to download this whitepaper’ form. So far, pretty basic stuff right – get their interest, capture their information. Except that I originally joined this mailing list when registering to download some research using this very same form.

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At least according to a report published today by Marketing Sherpa. And those cultural differences extend to the online world - we’re more wired and we spend more time online than our neighbours to the south. We are, according to Marketing Sherpa, “an online market ripe for picking”.

The challenges - two languages, tougher privacy laws, and lagging adoption of ecommerce. The opportunities - if you can get around the obstacles - a strong Canadian dollar that allows US retailers to be more competitive and a GDP worth over a trillion dollars. The report also contains some general suggestions for US companies marketing to Canadian consumers, including specific advice for email campaigns, search campaigns and postal direct mail.

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In the aftermath of September 11, my email inbox was flooded with expressions of sympathy for the victims and their families. After the thirtieth, or maybe the fortieth, message in under a week, I began to wonder what purpose those emails served.

Don’t get me wrong - I cried buckets as I sat glued to my television set more horrified than I thought possible. Those acts of terrorism, so close to home, shocked me to the core. It was personal. It was terrifying. It changed my world forever.

But I can’t help wondering why so many email marketers felt required them to publish a special bulletin of condolence, regardless of the nature of their regular mailings.

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Suddenly, everyone I know has a blog. Mostly, they talk about their day, their dog, their job and their friends. A few have blogs devoted to a specific topic - a hobby or their area of professional expertise. And all are enjoying the freedom of self-publication.

It reminds me of the early days of the web - anyone could be a publisher. There weren’t standards or benchmarks, we just sorta made it up as we went along. Back then, being an expert meant using synergy at least twice in every three sentences and making up cool new multi-syllabic words. Talking to a web expert in those days involved more confusion than communication.

At least we’re over that false arrogance now. And that’s what makes me so excited at the prospect of blogging. It isn’t (yet) a commercialized medium. Graphics, audio, video and html markup code are relatively absent. People just write what they think. Or hear. Or see.

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YOUR WEBSITE AS A CUSTOMER SERVICE AND SUPPORT TOOL

I’m an Irish lass, through and through. Born on the Blarney Stone. Really - I’m almost never speechless. Except lately.

These days, it seems that every time I venture forth to beg for customer service, I end up caught in a web of automated answering systems that force me to listen endlessly to menus and pre-recorded messages, telephone service representatives that don’t actually work for the company I’m calling and no authority to solve my problem. This experience has usually been preceded by a frustrating visit to a website that didn’t have the information I needed.

AND THIS HAS “WHAT” TO DO WITH MARKETING?

Everything!

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