Skip to main content

It's 2008, not 1988

Great article by Ken Magill on the surprising laggards in the direct marketing game to adapt to e-commerce, even in this Internet infused world. Including the hilarity of being privacy policy compliant...even with no ability to be so, as no data is being collected. Having been on the forefront of this with one of the world's most direct marketers over 10 years ago, I watched the industry slowly adapt, cautiously embrace, and then often thrive on the change. Reminders like these make me shake my head in astonishment.

Read and enjoy.

Stupid Catalog Watch: You Don't Have a What?
By Ken Magill, Magilla Marketing

A favorite catalog in the Magilla household is Make Life Easier. It's simply full of some of the coolest stuff to, well, make life easier.

For example, there's the four-tools-in-one set of pliers, monkey wrench, pry bar and slot head screwdriver. Then there's the thumb saver, a device that allows the user to hold nails, tacks and screws at a safe distance so they can swing a hammer without worry. Or how about Fatal Funnels: little yellow devices that turn ordinary one- and two-liter soda bottles into wasp traps? Neat-o.

So guess what Make Life Easier doesn't have: An e-commerce enabled Web site. Yes, the cataloger has a Web site, but customers -- or should I say, would-be customers -- can neither browse products nor place orders on it. No kidding.

Customers can order from Make Life Easier by phone, mail or fax ... but not online. Get it? Make Life Easier? Doesn't allow orders to be placed online? Can you say Irony? There must be someone out there in Magilla Marketing land who can help these guys. Please?

Interestingly, Make-Life-Easier.com has a privacy policy. It seems the privacy wackos have become so deeply entrenched in online marketing culture that they've even convinced a merchant who isn't selling on the Internet to toe the line on their paranoid, anti-free-exchange-of-information philosophies.

"The security of your personal information is important to us, and we take precautions to prevent unauthorized access to that information," says Make Life Easier's privacy policy. "All of the personal information that we collect online resides on a secure server behind a firewall, which is intended to prevent external access to our database."

Um, guys? You're not collecting any personal information online. You won't even let us place an order. The worst you could do is disclose that some random computer user read your privacy policy and clicked through a couple of other pages.

Thanks for the thought, though.

In the meantime, could we have a little chat about your order options, please?

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Loyalty Review: Kohl's Yes2You

 As some of you know, I've spent over 15 years in the customer loyalty space. So, when I come across a new retail loyalty program, I can't help but see the pluses and minuses. After this many years, it's kind of ingrained. Periodically, I'll share my thoughts with you. Today, it's Kohl's turn under the scope. Let's have a look, shall we? I've divided the review up into three sections: what's good about the program, what's bad about the program, and what I'd change about it. That last one has some actual value: I charged hundreds of dollars per hour for loyalty program consulting, and had over a dozen clients, before I moved to JustAnswer FT. But, being a pandemic and all, I'm giving it away for free here. Kohl's, you're welcome. Here we go! The Good Sign up is opt in Seems odd to praise Kohl's for this, but in department store loyalty, this is a rarity, and a smart one. It means the customers who are opted in are already prime

2020 CV19 Lockdown: Winners and Losers

It is said that in any time in history, the winners and losers are determined when a unique set of circumstances arises the requires an unprecedented response. How a company responds to those conditions can often propel them to new heights, or sentence them to an ignominious end. This post is meant to be an ongoing and often updated list of those that may come out of the Great 2020 Covid19 Lockdown as champs...or chumps. Winners Zoom How is it that, with all of the video conferencing choices in the market, a relatively obscure one (and a freemium one, to boot!) ran away with the title? Think of it: you had entrenched competitors like Skype and Facebook, as well as work-focused like Microsoft Teams , Google Hangouts , and Amazon Chime , any one of which had far greater reach than Zoom . Yet Zoom won, to the point that they achieved the exalted state of having their product/platform become a verb ("I'll Zoom you later"). More amazingly, they even continued their gro

The Icarus Effect

This morning's news started with the latest grim proof of overdevelopment in a tough sector: SkyBus Airlines shut down , less than year from when it started. Never heard of Skybus? Not surprising; they chose to focus on trips from Ohio to the West Coast for ridiculously low fares. Yes, you read that right: the airlines' unique niche was that they focused on trips from Ohio . Was air travel such an amazingly profitable business that we needed that much segmentation and focus? Of course not. A year ago, when Skybus was just getting off the ground (har har), fuel costs were at an all time high. United was still in bankruptcy; Delta, a fellow airline with a major hub in Ohio, was just exiting Chapter 11. And yet, "irrational exuberance" led investors like Nationwide Mutual Capital, Huntington Capital Investment Co., and Battelle Services Co. to ignore the obvious signs of risk, and dive into what was a dubious investment. Today, they, and the passengers who were lured by