Do You Think Auto-Responders Suck?

While reading a discussion on using auto-responders for visitors to church congregations, I felt compelled to share my thoughts.

The ideas apply not only in email relationship building, but also in all online relationship building. The core is building trust.

As was stated, the concept of auto-responder email is good. It has been proven effective repeatedly in the for-profit world, because it can build trust. However, most implementation in secular and non-secular of auto-responders is terrible.  Just as a greeter at a store can totally change the experience for the better or sink the relationship with the whole chain, so can poorly written email generic auto-responders. A poorly written email auto-responder can seem like a chain letter or worse.

There is a reason why communications professionals will write 50 drafts to get the best chance to communicate the intended tone and message. Just like a minister will often spend much time writing a sermon to get it ‘correct’ and it still evolves through multiple services.   Even the Bible has gone through a few revisions of the last few centuries to make sure its message and tone is unmistakable (perhaps it may not be done being revised to tell its story based on the number of interpretations of its messages).

I would recommend that we look at what has a longer history then email auto-responders for how to most effectively communicate with new relationships. Direct marketing studies decades ago realized that it took seven (from letters, TV spots, Radio or in-store visits) touches to get the optimum amount of interaction with a perspective person to solidify the relationship (relative to invested cost). New studies increase that to 9 or 11 touches with the increased onslaught of communications and greater sensitivity to building trust.

That is much of what is at issue here – trust. Does the new guest trust that you understand them? And do they trust they understand the ‘real’ congregation you represent? It becomes hard to trust that you understand someone who may not understand themselves (as may often be the case of shoppers/searchers). It becomes hard to trust, if they only meet a few people in a congregation. It becomes hard to trust if they don’t have a solid referral from someone they trust (especially if they are coming from a place that did have solid referrals and it did not work out). A congregation is where many people put more trust then most any other relationship they have (including family or spouses). Visitors may not know they are looking for a place to put that much trust, but often they are.

Have you earned that trust?

Look at how would you build trust with a new relationship in an off-line manner and consider how to translate it to written form. That may include some disclosure yourself and the congregation (when the annual meeting is, how the board is elected), but often not on the 1st touch. It may include offers to be inclusive, but just as you would not propose on the 1st date, you may not invite someone to lead a group in the 2nd email. The building of trust is based on a mutual exchange of signals that show commitment on both sides. If you don’t properly respond to a visitors signals you are being as rude as kissing someone who shows no interest in a physical relationship.

Of course in the age of digital tools like Constant Contact, iContact, HubSpot, InfusionSoft and many others, consider not creating a single one size fits all approach. Again the lessons and proof go back to the early days of direct marketing and have shown a segmented approach is best.  Send a different series of letters to parents then young adults (possibly both if they are indeed young adult parents). The relationship of an empty nester will be different then many 30 year old divorcee’s.

If they overlap, consider staggering your send times. Don’t send them all on Mondays, send the parent letters/auto-responders on Wednesday, Young adults on Friday, etc.

Look at the rules of etiquette in similar online venues (online dating is probably the most clearly documented) and use them to create an appropriate method to build trust with new visitors and you will create many new relationships.

Auto-responders (multiple with proper spacing) can be a great tool in developing mutual trust in a new congregant, especially if it is integrated with personal touches along the way. Especially if it is show ing of the care you would take for a new parishioner. This is your chance to show you care. Does that not deserve a little more effort then 10 minutes for a one size fits all generic letter.

 

What 1st Steps as New IT Manager Would You Take?

From a post I commented on in LinkedIn -

You are assigned the position of IT Manager in a new company. You don’t know the business or the developers you’ll be managing. What are the first steps you would take?

A few additions on my part:
1) Look at the ‘written’ /published documentation (preferably 1st) of stated goals, visions etc. They may not be accurate, but someone wanted them at some point. Ideally you have time (ha) to incorporate this perspective as you ask others how they view the issues.

2) Being ‘new to the business’ may imply new to the industry. Find the top 3-6 periodicals for the industry. Read as much of the last 6 months to learn the jargon and issues coming down the road in the next 2-3 years. If you are not at the leading company in the industry, these will tend to indicate what needs to be done to be competitive in the near future.

3) Take a look at previous reviews for your developers. These indicate what previous perspectives were. Even if they are totally off base, the reviewed may still be battling the criticisms in those reviews. This also allows a point of reference for areas to keep an eye on what other staff may view as issues.

4) I would look to find what may be written about your customers – whether that is blogs, press releases or trade journal for external customers, or wiki’s, newsletters, blogs, annual reports for internal customers. What is written can be a starting point for conversations of how others perceive and understand the situation.

5) I suggest the SPIN approach to conversations -
- What is the Situation?
- What is the Problem(S) created by that situation?
- What is the Implication of the situation, the ‘So What’ of the situation?
- What is the Need of the situation, This lets you help set your priorities described in previous posts.

6) Keep a sense of humor – seldom is it that life or death, and your attitude can build far more bridges than the ‘perfect’ knowledge or a perfect plan written yesterday.

Large SKU Sites-Understanding the True Need with a SPIN Through the Warehouse and Website (part 2)

The next few blogs posting are some of my thoughts on the process I would take to begin the project.

Understanding the True Need with a SPIN Through the Warehouse and the Website

Like any project I take on,  I often use the SPIN model to clarify that I am solving the correct issues.  Often, it is far easier to jump into solutions for problems that do not exist. Or they exist, but do not want to be resolved. Or they want to be resolved, but there are far bigger issues that will kill a business long before the smaller issues become core to the business. Those ‘other issues’ exist due to specific agreements internally or externally that may have been around far longer then the current players.  That does not mean the issues should not be reviewed, only that there may be valid reasons why not to focus on those issues at this time.  When the flood waters are rising, it is not the time to talk to the architect about the new addition for a sunroom. Although, it might not be a bad time to make some mental notes on how to plan and prevent or mitigate flood issues for the next time.

When taking on a large SKU website project, it is core to prioritize based on the true need of the business.

SPIN – Situation, Problem, Implication, and Need.

This model is based on the series of books by Neil Rackham. This model is what I have found the easiest to teach the concepts of truly understanding what the true needs of a project/customer/client/company/patient/department.

Situation –

is about understanding where you are, and how you got to this point. Of course the idea way to learn the situation is a nice written history of all the significant details, and all the insignificant fluff is written out.  No bias enters into the conversation, and all the skeletons in the closest are clearly laid out and labeled as such.  The reasons for past compromises are identified and resolved for a clear path to future success with the current team that has no affinity for past missteps. This history is agreed on by all stakeholders, with no animosity or grudges. Management and the line teams all agree on all the issues and relative importance of each.  Oops, I was drifting off to the land of – ‘yeah right’, and there are no budget issues either. But this is the information we are searching for.

Situations are messy.  For every project I have ever participated on, everyone did the best they could at the time, based on the resources they had.  Those resources include:

• time,
• best practices of the time,
• money (always in limited supply),
• information,
• know how,
• Sense of vision and purpose.

And of course hindsight is 20/20, so we should be able to see where we could have improved from this vantage point.  This step is not meant to be a witch hunt, but a truthful assessment of where we are today and major issues that contributed to our being here. This step will look at the SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) of where we are relative to where we are planning on heading.  Sorry about all the acronyms, but they are great tools in being able to roll up a lot of concepts in easier to manage format.

S W O T :

• S – Strengths – What is currently working well with the current situation? Where do we excel over our competition?
• W – Weaknesses – Why is our competition currently getting any customers that we would want?  What are we lacking from a CUSTOMER perspective? What are we lacking from an internal perspective that is making us work harder and not smarter?
• O – Opportunities – The world is a changing place.  And changing fast.  What can we do to improve our abilities, meet client needs, make our job easier and reduce cost?
• T – Threats – Everyone is looking to capitalize on our success.  Ideas are a dime a dozen. So what do we need to recognize that others will be doing better then us in rapid succession, or even longer term? What do ‘they’ have that seems to give an inherent advantage over us?  What can they do to ‘buy’ and advantage over us, and what can we do to counter that? Can we mitigate the threat by working in partnership with them?

If a manufacture is looking to sell direct to our customer base, can we partner with them to become their exclusive fulfillment house? That comes from a SWOT analysis of understanding our:

• Strength is in fulfillment and customer service
• Weakness is in high volume single orders – our system is not optimized for sending 10,000 single SKU of the green bag out.
• Opportunity is to partner with the knowledge of the manufacture to get product quicker, more directly and cheaper.
• Threat is if they can set up their own system they have the increased cost savings of manufacturing the product themselves to ‘fund’ a direct distribution process. Additionally, many of their orders are already small individual orders requiring a lot of fulfillment strength.

Next I will explore the Problem part of the SPIN approach to need identification.