Target Marketing -- Full Sterne Ahead -October, 1999

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Full Sterne Ahead

by Jim Sterne

October, 1999

Full Sterne Ahead contains the mostly monthly musings of Jim Sterne, author, speaker, and Web marketing consultant to business and industry.

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Welcome to the October, 1999 issue of Full Sterne Ahead.

Yes, it's me and I'm late again... so please accept my
apologies for missing the past few months. I'll bet your
months were just as busy as mine, so I'll skip the excuses
and get to the this month's insights, Web sites, and
e-mail blights.

In this issue I marvel at bad personalization attempts
in When Will They Ever Learn?; point to Spam, news and
another technical site in Resource of Note; lament an
offline opt-out marketing ploy in While I Was Out;
foresee personal profile sharing in the Crystal Ball;
watch eyeballs, rather than count them, in In My In-Box;
contemplate comparative shopping in The Big Idea; ponder
the meaning of words in Silly Sighting Of The Moment,
and find the definitive Y2K statement in Classic Comment.
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WHEN WILL THEY EVER LEARN?
--------------------------
When personalization goes bad:
>
>   From: Ping Li
>   To: jsterne@targeting.com
>   Subject: Subject: Web Site Translation
>   Date: Mon, 14 Jun 1999 01:46:14 -0600
>
>   Dear Sir,
>
>   I came across your Web site at
>   www.targeting.com/book2.html
>   and see your email there. I am quite impressed by
>   the products/services Customer Service on the Internet
>   provides and decide to write to you. I thought you
>   might have interest to know that your Web site can
>   also be presented in other languages for broader
>   international and domestic markets.  If you feel that
>   the infomation has no value to you, please accept my
>   apology and feel free to let me know.

Bad personalization: "Customer Service on the Internet"
is one of my books -- not my company. Bad grammar. Bad
spelling. Just, what was it you were selling, again?
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RESOURCE OF NOTE
----------------
I was going to quote from Edupage on SpamCop:

>   TRACKING ANONYMOUS SPAM
>   If you hate getting all those "Make Money Fast At
>   Home!!!" messages from people who use hard-to-trace
>   or false return addresses, you might want to use
>   the services of www.spamcop.net, a Web site that
>   allows you to take action against unsolicited junk
>   e-mail messages sent out in bulk quantities. Spam Cop
>   is able to dissect the header information on such
>   messages, identify where they've come from, and send
>   a message of complaint to the network administer of
>   the Internet service provider the Spammer is using.
>   (New York Times Circuits Section 24 Jun 99)
   www.nytimes.com/library/tech/99/06/circuits/articles/24spam.html

But then I realized EduPage was such an excellent resource.
Edupage is a daily news service that clips the technical
headlines from all sorts of publications. "The primary purpose
of Edupage is to provide our subscribers with a glimpse of news
related to information technology, and whenever possible, to
IT news as it relates to higher education.

I've subscribed for years. You should too, at:
www.educause.edu/pub/edupage/ed_policy.html

And, as long as we're doubling up the Resource of Note,
let's go all the way and triple up it! Kent Davis
was kind enough to pass along a
helpful hint:

>   Another useful link for you to check out and pass
>   on to readers is www.dynamicdrive.com  Lots
>   of DHTML codes there to produce interesting
>   effects, some of which are even more practical
>   than annoying. [-;
>
Thanks Kent.

Joe Bob says: check 'em out.
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WHILE I WAS OUT
---------------
It didn't happen when I checked into my London hotel this
morning. Didn't happen in Park City, Utah.

But it did happen in Miami, San Diego, Newport Beach,
Dallas and Chicago: I found myself on the receiving end
of a queasy opt-out.

While I was checking in to each of these major, name-brand
hotels, I was informed that $1 would be added to my bill
for donation to the United Way. If, I was told, I did not
wish to make this donation, all I needed to do was inform
them that I wanted it taken off the bill.

There was a line of people behind me, listening intently
now because I had already been handed my room key. Was I
going to ask for a dinner recommendation? A different room
with a view of the river? When would I finally slink
away and let *them* check in?

So there I was, in front of God and everybody, having to
say, "No, thank you. I do not want to donate one measly
dollar to the poor, unfortunate, and downtrodden of the
world. Oh, no! Not a dime (or 10) for people who are
"ill-housed, ill-clothed, ill-fed."

What did I do? I said, "Please leave it on the "bill,
of course." But I'll be writing a tax-break check to
the Red Cross this Christmas instead of United Way.

Opt-out is a bad way to go.
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THE CRYSTAL BALL
----------------
Profile Sharing

Wouldn't it be interesting to share customer profiles
with other companies in order to better cater to them
on a one-to-one basis? Before Jason Catlett from
www.junkbusters.comclimbs all over me, let me hasten
to add: on an opt-in basis.

We know some things about customers and our coop partners
know some things about them. If we pool our resources...

Yes, there are e-wallets coming out of the woodwork,
but I'm talking about real, in-depth kind of information.
The kind that would allow Circuit City to recommend a new
DVD player because it would go so well with the new HDTV
I bought at Shopping.com.

Image an competitive landscape where data cartels roam
the earth. It would make sense for big players in the
computer industry, for example to form close ties with
big partners.

It's not hard to picture the databases of non-competitive
corporations getting chummy. The result might be:

The Big Three Data Conglomerates:

                Data Conglom 1   Data Conglom 2   Data Conglom 3
Software:           Oracle              Siebel                 Microsoft
Hardware:           Sun                IBM                   Intel
Network Gear:    Cisco             Nortel                3Com
Telco:                  AT&T             Sprint                 MCI

Start looking around to see whom you might like as your
data partner. Is it Big Brother? Or is it one who can
help you serve your customer better? Your customer will
decide.
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MY IN-BOX
---------
In a recent UIEtips newsletter (www.uie.com), usability
testing professional Jared Spool described the results
of a year spent watching users with the assistance of
an ASL Eye-Tracker -- a device that lets us determine,
to the pixel, exactly where the user is gazing when
looking at the screen."

Summarizing his results, Jared discovered:

People quickly learn where there's information and where
there are only ads. They look for the information.

Jim's comment: Don't try to demonstrate the distinction
of your brand by putting your menus in an "interesting
place." Keep it easy for site visitors to find the information
they want.

The UIE team cut a Web page up into six viewing areas
labeled:

>   Center Area
>   Left Panel,
>   Right Column
>   Browser Button Bar
>   Search Engine Block
>   Study Area.

Here are some quotes:

>   When deciding which link to click, users typically
>   looked first in the center area, then in the left
>   panel, then in the right column... Users were more
>   likely to investigate areas outside the Center Area
>   when they spent more time searching for the correct
>   link, or when they visited the page for the second
>   or third time in a task.

>   All the users spent the same proportion of time looking
>   at each area.
>
>   At first, the new user scanned pages from left to
>   right, as if reading a book. But he quickly changed
>   to the center-left-right sequence.
>
>   Users Don't Go to the Bottom. Users rarely looked
>   at what we called the Study Area just above the
>   browser's status line.
>
>   Bright colors and animation attract users' eyes.
>   This is not a new finding, but it is interesting to
>   actually see it happen. The gaze flicks to the animation,
>   dwells for an instant, and then returns to content.
>
>   Eye gaze often stopped at the borders around ads
>   (the bottom of ads at the top of the page and the
>   top of those near the bottom). To users, these lines
>   apparently indicate content that is unimportant to
>   their task.
>
>   Ads apparently attracted users only when they related
>   to the current task (even if the content interested
>   users but was irrelevant to the task).
>
User Interface Engineering makes a living out of consulting
and giving seminars. If Web design is high on your list,
check them out at www.uie.com.

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THE BIG IDEA
------------
Mark Gibbs forwarded the following pitch to me from
ClickTheButton because he has an eye for the interesting:

>   Hi,
>
>   Check this out! Go to www.clickthebutton.com,
>   and download the software they give away (average
>   time, < 1 minute). It will put a 'button' next to
>   the clock on your computer (or in your Apple Menu
>   if you use Macintosh).
>
>   Once you have the button, go to your favorite book,
>   movie, music or toystore on the web and find a
>   product you like. Then, ClickTheButton!
>
>   I don't want to tell you what will happen, but
>   you're gonna love it!
>
>   Let me know what you think (and pass it on)!

We'll *I'll* tell you because that's the kind of guy I am.
When you find a page that shows a product that interests
you, ClickTheButton and it runs around looking for the
same product on 30 different merchant sites. It then
reports back with price and availability from all those
other sites.

Apply that kind of thinking-outside-the-browser to your
industry and make a leap of usefulness. Then tell me
about it.

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DON'T TRY THIS AT HOME
----------------------
I tried to warn Ann Marie about The Meat-Cleaver Diet:

>   Date: Thu, 23 Sep 99 01:49:25 EST
>   From: feelgreat@boom.com
>   To: Friend@public.com
>   Subject: Lose up to15 INCHES in one HOUR
>
>   100% Herbal Fat Shrinking Breakthrough
>   ************************************************
>   http://209.135.24.52
>   Lose 5-15 inches in just hour, permanently!
>   Herbal breakthrough actually shrinks fat cells.
>   Sound too good to be true?
>   10 years & 1000's of satisfied customers already.
>
>   "I lost 11 1/2 inches in just one hour. I couldn't
>   believe my eyes."
>   Ann Marie  NY
>
>   With our 100% Risk-FREE offer,
>   you truly have nothing
>   to lose, except inches !
>
>   Click here for exciting details.
>   http://209.135.24.64
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SILLY SIGHTING OF THE MOMENT
----------------------------
www.plumbdesign.com/thesaurus
www.voycabulary.com

Take your pick, improve your vocabulary, stretch your mind.
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CLASSIC COMMENT
---------------
The absolute final word on Y2K - a classic.
www.hartscientific.com/y2k.htm

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How about you?
I'm interested in what is on *your* mind. What issues are
you facing these days? Drop me a line.
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This newsletter is going to be better if it reaches more
people. You can help. The Net is a powerful word-of-mouth
mechanism, so if you know somebody who might like to be on
the receiving end, please point them to www.targeting.com
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Full Sterne Ahead contains the mostly monthly musings of
Jim Sterne, author, speaker, and Web marketing consultant
to business and industry.

Target Marketing
211 E. Victoria St., Suite E
Santa Barbara, CA 93101
+1 (805) 965-3184 phone
+1 (805) 965-8687 fax

www.targeting.com