On the way to the Sierras last week, a five hour ride, we stopped in Lodi in a quest for the “old downtown” and hopefully a funky, good restaurant that wasn’t a chain. Lucky for us found a 50′s style diner. Near the end of our meal a guy bussed our table, then he stood at the register while I settled the bill and asked me a few questions.
“How did you find out about us?”
We marveled at how good that technique was, afterwards in the car. He had initially bussed a few tables around us- he’s sure to find out what we really think by doing that. Then, he could have asked us a lot of questions about our experience, but instead tried to find out how we had found them. We’d seen the huge retro sign above the diner, and admittedly spent 10 minutes searching more probably than other highway customers. I wondered if he was debating on putting a billboard up on Highway 5, or highway 99- both of which go through Lodi.
In email marketing, we don’t have to ask folks the question where they saw us- we know if we set it up right. Affiliates and sourcing the origination channel, from registration, opt-in, and sign-up, can be done by simply tagging the referral site. Maintaining this origination leads to many interesting questions and answers. You can also setup flash pages for various offers and promotions, and you can even do it for different channels. Print catalogs can refer customers to a domain and page unique to the promotion: www.charmin.com/july4, for example, could be a special July 4th Charmin sale.
Just make sure that a name-value pair are stored along with that person’s record. Billboard advertising? Partnership deal? New front-page site ads? Keep all of that information avaialble, and then you have the opportunity and resources to take the guesswork out of key decisions and contract negotiations. Re-negotiate those partner agreements, expand with other advertisers, or disable a channel altogether. This is a basic marketing strategy for online advertising and direct mail, but in this diner situation, I appreciated again how valuable it is, and how well executed.
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