A lot of these are welcome - offering discounts on goods I often buy, from traders I respect. However there is a problem. Some offers are starting to arrive so frequently as to appear desperate and as any person being courted will tell you, the cologne of desperation is not an attractive one.

In contrast to the retailer offering hourly discounts on everything from their granny to the kitchen sink are those absent who won’t or can’t compete in the currently rampant discount market – their brand value stubbornly intact, at least until the year’s profit figures come out.

Of course it’s proving hard for retailers to steer a straight ship in these unusual trading conditions – the route is somewhere between the rocks of discounting in the short term and the hard place of not devaluing your brand over the long term.

To do this takes resource – one of the prevailing myths is that email is cheap – it isn’t, at least not to do well and it also takes long term strategic thought. Some retailers may be in the fight for Christmas but what about January, February & March? Rather than the 12 days of Christmas, retailers should be thinking in terms of the 12 months of Christmas.

I use a couple of web services, one is for builders (a service which is both creditable and painful). Annoyingly, when a builder posts a message against my enquiry I get an email or text message asking me to login to see it. This is a bit like a receptionist phoning to say they have a message for you and would you mind going down to reception to hear it. Why not just give them the message? Of course this has nothing to do with making the customer’s life easier and everything to do with boosting the website’s visitor figures.

People rapidly get fed up with this. What they really want is to receive information by their preferred channel – usually email and have the option to start a dialogue if they need to. This is essential in some sectors – for example restaurants where customers will often have questions they need answering before and after they book.

Start-ups (indeed all sites) need to understand that customer experience drives the success of the site and that increased traffic is just a by-product of that. Trying to recycle customers through the site will just lead to them cycling off.

Consumers don’t want to order something from a supplier that might be bought out, sold off or floated off on a bankrupt debt raft. To gain trust, the onus is on businesses to be open and inform customers if there are changes in ownership that might impact on supply of goods.

This is partly a question of nerve and whether businesses are looking at the long term picture. A failure to do this got the banking sector into trouble and it could cause retailers problems too.

Looking around at all the pre Christmas discounts available, it makes you wonder what everyone is going to do in January? If customers continue to be offered discounts everywhere, they’ll eventually consider that the norm and we’ll have devalued our own market.

We need to get our eyes back off our stumbling feet and on the near horizon.

Howies, which started life in 1996 selling T-Shirts in a mountain bike magazine, can be found at number 6 in the index, sandwiched between the mighty John Lewis and Waitrose. The reason Howies can compete in such esteemed company is that they have invested in developing a special relationship with their customers.

Howies are selling not just a good product but also a set of values their customers feel wedded to. Online, the shopping environment they’ve created has a community feel to it and this brand experience extends to their catalogue in which only half of the pages feature their products, the remainder being articles on subjects they think their customers will be interested in.

With consumers cutting down on non-essentials, businesses have to work hard to win ‘discretionary spend’ and it’s those online vendors, big or small, who can inspire their customers, giving them something they want rather than need, who’ll weather the storm well.

So the question becomes not so much how many emails to send but how good to make the offer. In the restaurant market, the days when the offer of free bottle of wine would significantly increase bookings are over. Email offers need to be compelling and differentiated enough to make them worthwhile. We recently ran a campaign for Slug & Lettuce to win a holiday in New York that led to a big increase in bookings, whilst for Novus Leisure a campaign that offered Champagne at half-price let to them selling the majority of their annual quota of Dom Perignon during September alone.

When the email offer is good, the promotion significantly unique then customers will take action. If you make it easy enough to take the action then it will go viral. A lot of people remember the Thresher offer from last year, so long as you have control of the parameters and are prepared for the offer to go wild, the results can be spectacular.

Relevant websites: http://www.latenightlondon.co.uk, http://www.slugandlettuce.co.uk

“It’s only when the tide goes out that you learn who’s been swimming naked.” Warren Buffet’s famous axiom is in all too frequent use in these times of financial Armageddon but it still remains a useful one for online marketers as they trade through these exceptional conditions.

A great deal is made online of differentiating functionality and experimenting with new features, which is great if your main objective is brand differentiation. However spend too much time tinkering with your costume as the tide goes out and you won’t have any water to swim in at all – if you’ll forgive the extended metaphor.

The place to focus budgets right now isn’t on developing brand differentials through experiential marketing, but on the conversion funnel.

In the midst of the financial crisis that enveloped the country during the second week of October 08, We carried out an email campaign for one bar and restaurant chain that generated over 5000 new enquiries within three days, representing a huge leap on prior performance. The reason – well the offer was great but the campaign allowed customers to easily make their enquiry and because of this, it was quite literally like turning on a tap within their eCRM system.

Of course the communication process has to be good and automating large personalised campaigns is never easy, but the investment will pay off several times over if it’s done well.

So even while the tide is going out, some savvy operators online are seeing large percentage increases in their online trade simply by focussing on customer service delivery and loyalty schemes for their existing and new online customers; in measurable campaigns that add to the bottom line. 

Historically it has been difficult for the boys in blue to get to know their community as citizens drive everywhere in the US and so do the police. There’s no ‘bobby on the beat’ type opportunity to chat informally with people which, as anyone who’s watched  Dixon of Dock Green will know, is an essential part of community policing.

So what they’ve done is introduce the equivalent of a Panini football card game for children where they can ask, say,  Sergeant O’Mally for his card if they see him or if he doesn’t have any cards on him, he can drop them round to the house later on – thereby becoming known to the parents too. Due to the popularity of the scheme, they even have open mornings at the police station where kids can go and swap cards with others.

Looked at through the eyes of someone who does customer relationship management for a living (i.e., me) this is just a great example of how some lateral thinking can massively improve the relationship an organisation has with its customers, creating a dialogue and trust around the product so that when the time comes that you have a need (or need a policeman) you know exactly where to turn.
In a time when our relationships with organisations are dominated by call centres and automated telephone menus, the sight of Sergeant O’Mally at your door just dropping off a card for your children is heartening indeed.

If there are just two words embedded in the DNA of brand Aardvark Media, they would have to be customer service. Everything we do online, however technical, has to first tick the box saying that it makes life easier for the customer.

Being focussed on this in my work life, I’m probably quicker than most to voice dissatisfaction as a consumer but recently I’ve had such a jaw droppingly bad experience at the hands of Virgin Airlines that it demands a public airing.

 I’m flying with the family to the US soon and as I have a couple of young kids, I decided to take advantage of an offer to upgrade to premium economy so you get a bit more room on the long haul flight. To do that you have to ring the Virgin customer services line which starts with an automated menu (which disqualifies it from being a customer service line in my book) and ends, eventually, with a call centre overseas.

My first call was fairly straight forward, I made the booking and was informed that an e-ticket confirming the upgrade would be emailed to me within 48 hours. It wasn’t, so I made a second call. I was on hold for 10 minutes while they checked the booking – “no problem, the e-ticket will be with you tomorrow sir.” Tomorrow passed and still no e-ticket so I made a third call and spent 40 minutes on hold this time. As I hold longer than this for no man I hung up and called back when my patience had returned.  Twenty minutes on hold again and when I got through I was informed I had to pay an extra fuel surcharge for my booking but that the e-ticket would definitely be with me in 48 hours. It wasn’t. I called back again and held for 15 minutes.

When I got through this time - my fifth call, they asked me if I knew who I had spoken to last time – as if it were my responsibility to record this rather than there’s to keep notes on the system. I had the name but this meant they tried to put me through to that person who was, of course, engaged. When I got through I was rewarded with notice of a further fuel charge but by now desperate to conclude matters, I paid up and pleaded that they just get me the ticket. “Certainly sir, it will be with you in 48 hours”.

And of course it wasn’t. I did eventually get the ticket but all told, I reckon it took about five hours to upgrade me  – that’s upgrade, i.e., pay them more money.

What’s astonishing about this experience in 2008 is that it still exists. We have the technology and we have the skills to create happy customers who keep coming back and yet this automated, chaotic nonsense remains. And from Virgin, formerly the consumers’ champion.

By the way, if, by any chance Virgin pick this up on their blog monitor and want to call me to apologise, they’d better be prepared to hold. 

I had the good fortune this weekend to find myself in France, invited by the owner of an ancient vineyard to sample the barrels he was considering blending for the UK market. His family had never sold Beaujolais outside of France before and was keen to get some UK opinion. We were pleased to oblige and left with a few cases and the intention of telling all our friends about him.

In the marketing world this falls into the category of ‘brand influence’. Some research by OMD which came out at the end of ’07 which showed that amongst our European neighbours, Brits are the most likely (63%) to offer an unprompted opinion online and we are also the most likely to pass a negative comment (26%).

What this says about the UK psyche is a large topic, but suffice to say, we’re not backwards in coming forward when we don’t like something, but also, we’re more motivated than most to share a good customer experience.

And with 38% of UK online purchasers taking other customers’ opinions into account before purchasing, UK online retailers need to think more about strategies to recruit repeat customers as brand ambassadors – ensuring that good news about the restaurant or hotel for example, is actively promoted.

I’m not suggesting they take them out to France and ply them with wine – though that would be a nice idea – but simply asking repeat customers if they would consider telling other people about their experience (via the established review sites) on the basis that if they’ve come back, they must have had a good time.

With more brand ambassadors you recruit more new customers which in turn means even more brand ambassadors and so on. A virtuous online marketing circle.

Or, if my new French friend is reading, the more promotional Beaujolais sent to me = more customers = more brand ambassadors = more customers and so on.

Researching online book stores recently it struck me how similar many of them are in selling style. Surfing them is a bit like being on the receiving end of an Andy Roddick serve ( I was watching the French Open this weekend)  – boom, the latest bond book – Devil May Care goes past you on one side, half price, boom, there goes Sepulchre by Kate Mosse on the other only £4.79.

Occasionally one comes your way that you think you might be able to get your racquet on – i.e., it might actually be something you’d normally look for in a conventional bookshop.

In Waterfoyles (a fictional but representative big book chain) you’ll see the best sellers and suggestions at the entrance but the shop is easily navigable so that you can find, say, the military history section without trouble and start looking at stuff you’re actually interested in.

So why don’t online bookshops offer the same level of navigation and personalisation? A lot of it is probably down to the e-commerce software available for the job which is largely generic, allowing a thin skin of branding to sit over it.

Cost, as always is an issue but online booksellers need to factor into their business plans the resource to offer customers something unique and personalised, otherwise they’re likely to throw their racquet in frustration and find an easier arena to play in.