What should a marketer do to entice people to visit its Web site and spend money?
G.M. O'Connell can tell you what not to do.
"You can't annoy people into liking you," he said at a session on online customer service at the net.marketing conference in Miami. "You can't trick them into it either."
O'Connell, founder and chairman of interactive advertising firm Modem Media, Norwalk, CT, said that's one of the basic truths that marketers have learned about customer service since the dot-com bubble burst.
"Shelfware" doesn't cut it. Many companies launching a Web site armed themselves with "a ton" of software for customer service and measurement, hardware and then spent "about $100,000 on a portal deal," O'Connell said.
Much of these bells and whistles didn't live up to their promise. People prefer a straightforward, workable Web site over technology, O'Connell said.
A second truth: Customers want to manage their own online experience.
Delta Air Lines, for example, offers a number of services at its site to save the customer time. Among other transactions, online customers can book a ticket, change their seat and re-book a delayed flight. Delta was the first company that offered these services online, said O'Connell about his client.
The goal was to set Delta apart from other airlines on which the customer feels that "you don't know when it's going to happen, but you know at some point you're going to be 'blanked,'" O'Connell said.
It's paid off. This year, Delta will do 20% of its business online—upward of $2 billion in sales.
"We look at a Web site not as a place where you bring people, but as a place where you distribute [services] outward," O'Connell said.
The airline uses e-mail to do that, but also often combines e-mail promotions with frequent flyer direct mail, which tells these best customers "what's in it for them online," he said.
"We found the two-tier approach works best," O'Connell said of mailing first through one channel, then another.
Delta tested sending a coupon through the mail and through e-mail to find out what was the beset way to stimulate action. "We found that the coupon wasn't necessarily used to save money on the cheapest fare out there," he said.
The company charts cost per acquisition, cost per action, cost per sale and more. These ROI metrics help persuade high-level decision-makers that the online program is working, O'Connell said.
Delta also knows how long it takes for each customer action. When the time to do an action is reduced, customer satisfaction increases and so do sales, he said.
