Talk of Many Things

The marketable offerings are created, the email flyers, telescripts and other marketing collateral are ready. It’s now time for business development executives to reach out to the target market via email blasts and  telephone calls in order to create awareness and generate leads. This is when they need a Target Mailing List comprising of companies and contacts belonging to the addressable market of each of their outbound marketing campaigns.  

Maintained in Excel spreadsheets or CRM systems (e.g. SalesForce.com, ACT, etc.), a Target Mailing List would typically contain 2-3 contacts per target company and the following minimum contact info per contact: full name, title / designation, email, direct telephone number, and country.

Additional information like city, postal address, contact’s birthday, and so on, are useful at later stages of the sales cycle that involve face-to-face meetings and rapport-building, but are not mandatory at the time of kicking-off email- and telephone-based outbound marketing campaigns.

To accelerate the development of a Target Mailing List, marketers might choose to take up subscriptions to Jigsaw, onesource, Hoovers and other broadbased contact list providers or buy them outright from Glenbrook, GTM360, and other special-purpose mailing list providers.

The two key considerations in selecting a contact list provider are (1) Coverage, and (2) Quality.

Coverage refers to the breadth of contacts available for a given campaign. For example, if you’re planning to execute a campaign for SAP Add-on Solutions, you’d want a contact list provider who can provide contact information of decision-makers at a large number of SAP customers – not just any company.

Quality refers to the reliability of the given contact information e.g. Is the contact still working in the same company? Is his/her telephone number correct?

Before selecting a contact list provider, we urge marketers to define a sample target audience of around 100 companies per campaign and evaluate each provider on the coverage and quality of the contact information available with each of them. We say this because we’ve experienced significant differences in coverage and quality from one contact list provider to another across campaign dimensions like geography (e.g. USA, UK, Middle East), industry vertical (e.g. BFSI, Retail, Telecom), title (CEO, COO, CxO, SVP, Director), and domain (e.g. SAP, Payments).

Coverage percentage (i.e. the percentage of contacts from our sample list that we could source from a given contact list provider) varies from 8% to 30% across different contact list providers. In other words, you’d be able to get only one contact for every 12 you need with the “worst” contact list provider; and, even with the “best” provider, you’d have to look elsewhere for two out of every three contacts you need. Quality percentage (i.e. the percentage of accurate contact information) ranges between 40% and 70% from one contact list provider to another.

With coverage and quality differing so significantly across contact list providers, we recommend marketers to sign up for PAYG (pay as you go) plans with providers who don’t insist on upfront membership fee, and charge you only for contacts that you wish to buy. If you can’t find any PAYG plans, you can still protect your investments by seeking a moneyback guarantee – like the one we offer on our SAP Customer & Partner Mailing Lists - if the purchased contact information turns out to be inaccurate.

I’m especially happy with the new Rupee symbol because it is designed by an alma mater, D Udaya Kumar, from IIT Bombay. Hearty congratulations to him!

By rotating the symbol clockwise by around 30 degrees, you might be able to spot a certain resemblance to the hammer-and-sickle.

I wonder whether this is a relic from our past history with Russia.

By “our past history”, I’m not just referring to India’s traditional relationship with the former USSR and steadfast adherence to socialist principles before the big reforms of 1991.

I’m also talking about the past history of IIT Bombay.

During their formative years in the late ’50s and early ’60s, each IIT had some sort of affiliation with an overseas country e.g. IIT Kanpur with the USA, IIT Madras with the UK, and IIT Bombay with Russia.

There were traces of this affiliation with Russia even as late as 1985, which is the year I graduated from IIT Bombay. For example, there were many professors who’d earned their doctorates in Russia; the institute library had several Russian books, although we never actually found anyone actually reading or borrowing them!

And, above all, we had the notorious EC1030 mainframe computer that was made by a company called Robotron from East Germany, which, as readers would be aware, was a part of the former USSR until the Berlin Wall came down in 1989. Touted as an IBM360 clone, this mainframe used to make us students go back-and-forth several times a week between hostel and computer center with its unerring frequency of breaking down. One week, the central processing unit would fail. By the time it was fixed, it would be turn of the memory unit to conk out. Then, the Hollerith Card Reader would refuse to read, well, the Hollerith cards in which our programs were punched on a heavy-duty typewriter-like equipment.  Since the user and operations manuals were all in Russian, the aforesaid professors who’d studied in Russia and had a working knowledge of the language had to be called in to translate them so that repairs could be undertaken.

While it’s possible to look back at all this with nostalgia now, let me assure you that EC1030 used to be one of our biggest pain areas during those days.

Let me take this opportunity to wish Dr. D Udaya Kumar a successful career at IIT Guwahati.

Long unable to understand why banks are not anywhere as successful in the remittance business as money transfer operators (MTOs) like Western Union and MoneyGram, I found some clues in this recent article written by Charlie Corbett of Western Union.

According to Corbett, many banks still view remitters in developed countries as impoverished, nearly illiterate, and hence not worthy of selling checking accounts, credit cards, mortgages and other banking products. According to one former banker and remittance specialist quoted in this article, “not all banks will want the footflow into their branches on the sending side. They don’t want these guys coming into their branches and cluttering up their nice clean offices”.  Apparently, banks fear that putting remittance service stickers on their windows would dilute their brands.

Banks had better start worrying about dilution of their brands caused by their own staff before looking down on the stereotype remitter.

Banks offer remittance services based on the account-to-account model, which demands more information like account number, SWIFT BIC code, and so on. Agreed that such information is beyond the grasp of a typical remitter who finds the cash-to-cash remittance model offered by traditional money transfer operators like Western Union and MoneyGram much simpler. However, in my personal experience, banks’ own staff are clueless about the greater information needs of the account-to-account model.  

A couple of years ago, I was trying to remit some money from London to a leading bank in India. When I called the beneficiary bank’s call center to get their BIC code, I was told that it was ABCDINBBNNN. Since I knew a thing or two about BIC codes, I was able to instantly point out to them that the last three places had to be numerals and couldn’t be “NNN”. Only then did they check and got back with 005 as the right value. I shudder to think about the fate of my payment had I naively used the BIC code the bank had given to me in the first instance.

In another instance, another leading bank in India told me to use a BIC code that I noticed was only 8-digit long. I was looking for the 11-digit version because (a) the sending bank in the UK asked for a 11-digit beneficiary BIC code, and (b) because I knew that the 8-digit BIC code only pertained to the bank whereas my money had to go to a particular account in a particular branch of the bank, which could only be identified by a 11-digit BIC code.  When I insisted upon the 11-digit version, the bank staff had no clue. In the absence of this critical piece of information, I decided to abandon the transaction instead of risking my money floating around somewhere in the bank’s systems without a destination account available to be credited.

Banks surely know that their account-to-account remittance model calls for greater knowledge and sophistication not just from remitters but also from themselves. What they need to do is to train their staff so that they’re able to better respond to its greater information needs. Only then can they hope to make any dent on the towering market shares of money transfer operators using the far simpler cash-to-cash model.

To host the recently-held first GTM360 Foundation Day, we’d visited three 5* and two 4* hotels in Pune to have a look at their banqueting facilities and get their quotes. When we got a quote with 28% taxes, we were somewhat taken aback. When we expressed our surprise at such a high tax rate, the hotel’s banquet manager told us that it was the rate applied by the government and that they could do nothing about it. We would’ve taken this in our stride except that the very second quote we got had a tax of 22%. The balance three quotes had tax rates of 17%, 24% and 19%.

If each hotel claimed that the tax was determined by the government, we quizzed them, how come their rates varied so drastically from one another? None of the five banqueting managers were able to give us a satisfactory answer.

Now, when we reviewed the break down, we found that the total tax included VAT and Service Tax, among a few other components. Now, as readers would be aware, VAT is charged on products and Service Tax is applicable on services. Since a given item is either a product or a service, it didn’t make sense for both VAT and Service Tax to be applicable on it. When we raised this point, only one hotel accepted our viewpoint and clarified that they were indeed charging only the applicable tax on each item e.g. VAT @ 80% for food and Service Tax @ 20% for serving the food. The other four hotels kept insisting that they would charge both VAT and Service Tax on every item!

Since we still haven’t managed to get a convincing explanation from any of the five hotels, we’re left wondering what’s up with taxes in the Indian hotel industry. We invite readers to share their knowledge and experience by leaving behind their comments at the bottom of this post. Thanks!

The Federal Reserve Board of the USA has amended the so-called “Regulation E” to prohibit financial services institutions from charging overdraft protection fees for ATM withdrawals and one-time point-of-sale debit card transactions unless the customer has opted in to overdraft coverage. For the uninitiated, overdraft protection fees are the US$ 25-35 charges levied by banks on an average for allowing transactions made by their customers to go through despite not having sufficient balance in their accounts. For more on this topic, click here and here.

An independent survey recently reflected that, unless banks reach out and proactively communicate the cost-benefit proposition of overdraft protection to their customers, over 80% of their customers will not opt in for it. With over US$ 7 billion in revenues at stake from overdraft protection fees, it’s not surprising that FSIs are aggressively seeking customer opt-in agreements.

For BPOs having expertise in retail banking and the experience of working with the US financial services industry, overdraft protection opt-in presents a huge opportunity to expand their footprint within existing accounts, penetrate new accounts and grow revenues.  They can partner with FSIs to design, develop and execute campaigns to boost overdraft opt-ins. Since most campaigns will be centered around outbound telephone calls to retail banking customers, this opportunity is ideally led by BPO companies. For the messaging, content, web advertising,  microsites and other integral parts of these campaigns, BPOs can partner with marketing agencies, website design and development firms and IT solutions providers.

GTM360 recently turned one and celebrated its first Foundation Day on 16 June.

Many of our customers, prospects and well-wishers joined us for cocktails and dinner at the Hotel Sun-N-Sand in Pune, India to celebrate this occasion.

We thank all attendees for gracing the occasion.

Having recently completed a month-long campaign using the recently-launched LinkedIN DirectAds PPC advertising platform, I thought of comparing it with Google AdWords, the #1 PPC platform in the world. I’ve used the latter several times in the past, albeit not for the same product / service.  

Both Google AdWords and LinkedIN DirectAds are intended to trigger action, so neither of them is the platform of choice when it comes to advertising for creating and promoting brands. For that, banner ads are perhaps more suited.

Having covered the similarity, let me get down to the differences between these two platforms.

When it comes to driving sheer volumes of traffic to the advertiser’s website, Google AdWords does a much better job than LinkedIN. With Google campaigns, I have averaged over 0.3% CTR (that is, clickthrough rate, which is defined as the number of clicks your ad receives divided by the number of times your ad is shown), whereas my recent LinkedIN campaign delivered a measly CTR of 0.02%.  

In other words, for a given number of times your ad is shown – also called ‘impressions’ - Google AdWords sends many more people to the advertiser’s website as compared to LinkedIN.

This huge difference is perhaps explained by the fact that Google AdWords uses purchase intent to target its ads, which LinkedIN doesn’t.

On the other hand, if you’re a B2B advertiser seeking to attract top level executives in target buyer organizations, you can specify that your LinkedIN ads should only be displayed to viewers at that level. You can’t do this with Google AdWords. Therefore, it could be argued that LinkedIN DirectAds delivers better quality of traffic. After all, you might find one visit by a C-Suite executive to your website to be far more valuable than several visits by operating-level people who might have a purchase intent (which is assured by Google AdWords) but no decision-making authority.

A couple of weeks ago, I’d written about Offermatic, a newly launched service that promises deeply discounted offers on items of everyday purchase based on your credit or debit card transaction history.

Coming to think of it, direct marketers, banks and credit card companies have been doing this for decades. Direct marketers representing advertisers of FMCG and CPG products have been sending out mail shots through credit card issuers to cardholder lists for a long time. Do you recall the last time you received a credit card statement that wasn’t accompanied by a leaflet announcing discounts on electronics, luggage, perfumes and other items of everyday use? Now you get my drift.

On the face of it, it appears that Offermatic differentiates itself by sending out offers that are specifically targeted to each cardholder. That is, you receive an offer that is likely to be highly relevant to you based on your past purchase history.

On second thoughts, even banks and credit card companies claim to have started doing this in the last few years. With increased labor and postage costs, they have apparently begun to use spend analysis software to mine through your transaction history and send you offers that match your past purchase behavior. This way, they stand to improve conversion rates from their campaigns, instead of wasting money to send every offer to everybody, and then waste some more money to follow it up with telephone calls, and then land up with measly 1 in 200 conversion rates. However, I haven’t seen any evidence of this actually happening in practice with any of my credit cards in India, UK and Germany, so I’m not sure at what stage their rollouts of spend analysis technologies are.

If Offermatic is really able to fulfill its promise that it will “only send you offers that match your interests and purchasing history”, it might be able to make great strides where banks and credit card companies seem to be faltering. If and when that happens, it will be interesting to watch the reaction of banks and credit card companies: Will they ignore Offermatic? Or, will they claim ownership to transaction data and block Offermatic’s access to it? In the latter case, Offermatic will lose its ability to make targeted offers, which is its unique selling proposition. While cardholders can no doubt give away the usernames and passwords for their credit card online accounts to Offermatic, banks and credit card issuers can always take shelter behind specific clauses in their agreements that expressly forbid sharing of such sensitive information.

Eventually, it’d boil down to the question of ”whose transaction is it anyway?”

In the early days of the Internet, there was so much hype around what it could do that the common man was almost under the impression that it could do anything except make his coffee. Vendors of ERP, office automation and other high-tech products had to gently remind their customers that they needed computers to access the Internet. Now, in its Web 2.0 avatar, there’s so much buzz around Google, Facebook, Twitter and the like. For those interested in finding ways to improve their Windows environment, nothing seems to be coming their way.

That is, until this article from FreewareGenius came along.  

FreewareGenius lists over forty freeware applications that either bring additional functionality to Windows or tweak the way people work with files, folders, applications, or the Windows environment itself. It should be very useful for people who haven’t forgotten yet that “without a PC, there won’t be a Google”, as Microsoft’s CTO Craig Mundie points out in a recent interview.  I know that it’s possible to access Google, Facebook, Twitter and many other Web 2.0 applications from Internet-ready mobile phones, but I’m not sure if mobile phones will ever supplant the PC as the primary device for office automation or Internet access any time soon. If you’ve ever tried using a mobile phone for typing out a document, creating a spreadsheet, or reading email attachments, you’ll know what I mean. 

From this list, I found TeraCopy and WinSplit Revolution addressing some of my immediate pain areas.   

TeraCopy integrates itself with Windows to deliver accelerated file copying without breaking down if it encounters a file error. WinSplit Revolution brings docking and resizing of multiple windows.

Until I found TeraCopy, I’ve been using the standard Windows Vista copy / paste commands to backup my laptop’s hard drive. This would take one hour if I was successful in making my external hard drive work (more on that here), or three hours if I had to backup to a USB pen drive.  Inevitably, there’d be a couple of errors (e.g. “filename too long for destination folder”) that would halt the copying process and I’d have to manually instruct the program to skip these files to proceed. This meant that I’d have to hang around beside my PC for 1-3 hours. Whereas, when I tried TeraCopy recently, the copying process completed in less than an hour. Besides, there was no need for manual intervention: TeraCopy finished the process and informed me at the end that it couldn’t copy some 55 files because their names had more than 255 characters. All I had to do was uncheck an option that limited filenames to 255 characters, hit a button, and, these  55 files got copied in a few seconds. This is a major saving of headache and time, something not to be sneezed at since I backup my laptop’s hard drive one a week.

With WinSplit Revolution, I’m able to keep multiple windows open simultaneously on my monitor. Although I admit that I used to be able to do this in earlier versions of Windows, I haven’t been able to figure out how to do this in Windows Vista, so WinSplit Revolution is a great help.

Kudos to FreewareGenius for publishing this excellent list of freeware applications. 

However, as an aside, let me say that its prediction that “SOMEDAY ALL SOFTWARE WILL BE FREE” will never come true – at least not until the said Mundie’s employer reigns supreme in the software world!

A few months ago, I’d posted a blog about why credit cards don’t necessarily lead to overspending.

Now, forget overspending: the recently launched Offermatic promises that you can actually save – and make - money by using credit cards.

When you sign up for Offermatic, you register your credit card(s) with it. Offermatic will then securely connect to your online bank to download your transactions. Based on your purchasing history, it will send you emails containing highly relevant money saving offers on everyday purchase items like car rentals, textbooks and music. 

As an icing on the cake, Offermatic will pay you $15 per year per card even if you don’t use any of its offers – as gratitude for registering and using its service. This way, you can make money on your card even as a passive user of Offermatic.

As in the case of Mint, WeSabe, Kublax and other personalized personal finance management (P2FM) services, you have to give away the keys to your online account to Offermatic to receive its offers. Like I’ve written before, that might stop a lot of people – including me – in their tracks.

However, there’s a difference: By giving away your login credentials to P2FM services, you’re letting them access your entire bank account. You’ve to take them at their word that they’ll not do anything other than download your transaction statements. Whereas, in the case of Offermatic, you’re only letting it access your credit card account. So, it can’t do much else than download your transaction statements, as long as you don’t have your credit card  and checking / savings accounts in the same bank.

However, the situation becomes complicated with debit cards, which can also be linked on Offermatic’s website.

With the exception of the decoupled variant that has gained traction only in the US so far, debit cards are issued as an add on to checking / savings account held with a particular bank. Therefore, by letting Offermatic access your debit card online account, you’re in effect opening up your checking and savings accounts to it. In this case, Offermatic poses the same security concerns as P2FM services. Notwithstanding Mint’s $170M+ exit to Intuit, the CEO of a newly-shuttered P2FM company told me recently that security concerns are playing havoc with the plans of many P2FMs to achieve scale, and are bound to stunt the growth of Offermatic.

Going past security concerns, Offermatic has a strong story in terms of the usefulness of its offers. In a blog post explaining the rationale behind the founding of Offermatic, its founder Faisal Quereshi claims that Mint and other P2FM services only make offers for financial products. Since I haven’t linked any of my bank accounts to Mint due to the aforesaid security concerns, I don’t receive any offers from it. Therefore, I’ve no way of knowing if Mint’s offers are restricted to financial products. But, assuming it’s true, I agree with Quereshi that it’s very difficult to avail oneself of financial offers because, as he says, “switching financial accounts is about as much fun as a root canal”. Since Offermatic’s offers relate to everyday purchase items, they’re bound to be far more useful to its users.

One more interesting thing about Offermatic is its claim to be able to come up with offers that are guaranteed to save you as much as 90% of the sticker price on various items. Now, readers might have come across such deep discounts only on GroupOn and other group buying sites. Unlike offers on those websites, an offer from Offermatic is valid regardless of how many other people sign up for it. This should guarantee far greater conversion for Offermatic’s offers.

Offermatic has found an interesting niche between P2FM and group buying services. If it’s able to allay security concerns and craft the right go to market strategy for signing up a large enough base of advertisers ready to make the offers for it to distribute, Offermatic should have a bright future.