Eye opening, enlightening book
Ostenton demonstrates how we can use a website plus e-mail to develop one-on-one relationships with customers, thus turning prospects into customers, customers into repeat customers, and repeat customers into customers for life. Employing a sharp, insightful writing style, Ostenton describes how radio and television facilitated mass marketing and the almighty fight for market share during the 20th Century, and currently how the World Wide Web and e-mail make it possible for companies to develop one-on-one relationships with customers to gain more business from the customers they already have: customer share marketing. Well-written, insightful, brilliant.
Selling to your existing customers using the web
One way I judge books is to see how many notes I added to the margins. This book warrented only two notes, a sign that while not worthless, it is not value packed. Here is why:
1) All the case studies were from multi-billion dollar businesses: Hallmark, Fito-Lay, Sony Studios, etc. Businesses with 0-$10 million in sales would have been much more instructive. Lets face it, the most likely readers are small business owners and aspirees. The marketing director of Unilever doesn't need this book.
2) The books focus is misrepresented in the sub-title "...Unlock Profits from Customer Loyalty". There is very little about customer loyalty here. There is an awful lot about how to use the web to increase your profits and sales to your existing customer base. If I had know this, I would not have bought the book.
3) The book repeats itself with a lot of general description about the internet as compared to traditional mass marketing channels. I skimmed over large portions of the book because it was not telling me anything new, or even anything I hadn't already read elsewhere in this book.
4) There are unexplained inconsistencies. The evils of buying "op-in" lists (lists of people who agreed to solicitation from another company) is explained in depth, yet many of the highly praised marketing case studies use "op-in" lists.
5) The book lacked substance. The central ideas are 1) gain consumer permission before commencing direct marketing 2) begin your campaigns with one-on-one communication (meaning in this case email), and then move to more traditional mass marketing. These are good solid ideas that I plan on using, but I expect more from a 270 page book.
I found the book useful, but I can't recommend it.
A highly tactical eCRM book in disguise
Though the author has done much elaboration on causes behind the shift of mass market share marketing to one-to-one customer share marketing with plenty of real life examples by big corps (using email, e-newsletter, rich media download etc), it failed to impress or edify me at all. One reason being that the author does not show any framework or analytical tool that differentiates his concept of customer share marketing from other maintstream marketing/CRM/e-commerce concepts that we are so familiar with. What's worse is that the book is a little jumpy and disorganised. It tries to tell much, but I assure you that you will simply forget what you have just read the very moment you close it. In short, not recommended, unless you just want a case book for tactics to copy and/or modify.
No matter what, as usual, below please find some passages I like the most for your reference:-
How the web is used. (Seven business models) pg 15
1. Brochureware model e.g. century21.com, mckinsey.com
2. Advertising-based model e.g. espn.com, cnn.com
3. E-commerce model e.g. microsoft.com, dell.com
4. Sales facilitation model e.g. sprite.com, frito-lay.com
5. Fee-based model e.g. ebay.com, etrade.com
6. Subscription-based model e.g. wsj.com, variety.com
7. Mall or portal model e.g. yahoo.com, aol.com
What are the objectives of your website? pg 18
1. Inform?
2. Build brand?
3. Generate offline leads?
4. Transact business online through e-commerce?
5. Facilitate offline sales through promotions?
6. Reduce costs by eliminating steps in the value chain?
7. All of the above?
Customer Touches, Inhouse(High) vs Outsource(Low): pg 102
- Product knowledge
- Customer Intelligence Gathering Capability
- Expeditious Resolution Capability
- Cross-Sell/Up-sell Capability
- Customer Satisfaction
Check for more reviews on Amazon.com
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