Don't Play Tricks....

... when building your email list.

Here in Houston, there's a little local preservation issue going on; reports have surfaced that an historic shopping center in the city's tony River Oaks neighborhood may be razed to make way for a big-box store and high-rise condos. Preserving history is tough in a town where people love to bulldoze everything over 20 years old, and this is a much-loved landmark.

A local blog has started an online petition to present to the developer that owns the property. Following that example, a local preservation organization has done the same thing.

Here's the problem: to sign the preservation organization's petition, you have to join their mailing list.

Now, it's a good bet that people who want to sign the petition might be interested in Historic Houston's other activities. But nobody likes to be muscled into signing up for an email list - especially those of us who tend to be on email overload all the time anyway.

I signed the first petition; I'm not planning to sign the second. I'm not sure whether the approach they took with the second was a deliberate build-the-list ploy, or was caused by some other factor, but I don't like it.

I think they'd be more successful if they put up a petition that people could sign, and afterwards thanked them for signing it - and offered a chance to sign up for a mailing list to hear about other important historic preservation issues (and chances to save endangered landmarks) in Houston.

Straightforward, above-board, and no pressure. They'd get fewer people on the list. But I bet the ones who signed up would pay more attention to their emails.

The Company You Keep

A recent crop of news stories about accusations that voice over IP phone provider Vonage is funding spyware point out a potential pitfall of online advertising that smaller advertisers might not be aware of.

Anti-spyware researcher Ben Edelman says that Vonage ads are being delivered by a whole range of types of spyware. Because of Edelman's stature, a number of news outlets have picked up the story:

• Vonage Has Run Out of Feet to Shoot (Network World)
• Vonage Ads Delivered Via A Dozen Spyware Makers: Report (Information Week)
• Vonage and spyware (ZDNet)
• Spyware expert: Vonage injects ads into others' sites
• Spyware Watchdog Singles out Vonage Ads

It's important to note that nobody is accusing Vonage of intentionally choosing to use spyware to deliver their ads. Edelman's contention is that third parties that work with Vonage are doing this, and that Vonage isn't doing enough to control them:

Vonage isn't the only advertiser with widespread spyware ad-buys. Other buyers of untargeted or semi-targeted ads get plenty of spyware-delivered advertising too. For example, I see Verizon ads in spyware pop-ups with remarkable frequency. In a future article, I'll present screenshots of some other big spyware advertisers.

As best I can tell, Vonage does not specifically intend to have its ads shown in spyware. Instead, the advertising chains shown above reveal that these are generally indirect relationships, not direct spyware ad buys. (In comparison, see my September 2005 report of Expedia directly and intentionally buying spyware-delivered advertising from numerous notorious spyware vendors -- a practice that, to its credit, Expedia subsequently stopped.) Yet by failing to take appropriate precautions and failing to diligently supervising its ads, Vonage makes payments to spyware vendors -- funding spyware that is known to harm users' PCs.

Does this really help Vonage? I doubt it. That last thing that they need, in their quest to sign up new customers, is word that they are doing something - even indirectly - that harms consumers' PCs.

The lesson: be very wary about who you work with to deliver ads online, and make sure that you are keeping track of what they are doing, and ending relationships with those who aren't adhering to the right standards. Otherwise, it's your reputation that is on the line.

OfficeMax Steps into the Present

Office supply superstore OfficeMax recently announced that it is doing away with mail-in rebates.

Citing overwhelming customer dissatisfaction with its mail-in rebate system, OfficeMax said it will eliminate the program beginning this weekend.

After a year of working with suppliers to implement the change, the office products retailer decided to do away with mail-in rebates in favor of in-store discounts.

The decision was the culmination of almost uniformly negative feedback regarding the lengthy and often-frustrating process of mailing in a rebate form and proof of purchase, followed by weeks of waiting for a check, a company spokesman said on Friday.

This should surprise no one. Mail-in rebates might have seemed acceptable when every purchase required a physical trip to the store, but now they're an arcane and frustrating throwback. There's just something ludicrous about ordering things online or shopping around for the best price on the web, and then having to photocopy receipts and fill out forms to get money back.

I imagine OfficeMax was noticing that many consumers (including me) would actually choose a retailer where the total price was slightly higher - but was the price that actually was charged at the register.

It's no secret that rebates are designed around less-than-100% fulfillment. Sure, you can advertise a lower price, knowing that a large portion of your customers won't fill out the form, and the real discount will be less. But it leaves your customers feeling like you're playing games with them.

OfficeMax has taken a step toward transparent, simple pricing and purchasing. It's a smart move.

Forgetting the Consumer

Last month, ClickZ wrote about a new "digital billboard" medium called AdDiem from a company called Synovativ Technologies. The idea is that consumers will download an application to view customized content, and also get advertisers' desktop "billboards" - basically, a much more targeted version of the billboards that you see on a street or freeway.

If you're having a flashback to PointCast, you're not alone. ClickZ was quite enthusiastic about this, but I kept wondering, "Why would a consumer do this?"

Synovativ offers very sketchy information on their site, but it's just enough to make the idea sound pretty bad. Apparently they are going to provide the same kind of content that you can get from a customized Google or Yahoo! home page - without downloading software.

No compelling content partners, no extra functionality for users to make it worth downloading software from an unknown company... nothing but the privilege of watching ads. Which, by and large, consumers aren't terrible interested in.

Something like this could work, if the medium (the software) was going to offer something really compelling and useful to people who downloaded it. It might work if there was some kind of marketing push on that software, which doesn't seem to be present.

It's an example of a terrible tendency in marketing thinking - the idea that consumers are sitting there waiting to be marketed to, like some kind of inert objects that exist only respond to our messages. They're not. A consumer sitting at a PC is a person with their own needs and priorities, and an advertising medium will only work if it fits into the way they use that PC now, and doesn't interfere with the consumer's own activities.

Unless there's some other aspect to this that Synovativ isn't sharing, it sounds like an idea heading for a deservedly quick death. If the question for Synovativ is "why on earth would anyone want this on their PC?" there's also a good question for ClickZ: why aren't you asking these questions when you write about services like this? For a site that claims it exists to help interactive marketers "do their jobs better," this kind of puff piece is rather disappointing.

Gray Areas in Privacy

Claria (formerly Gator) was one of the most notorious distributors of adware, littering consumer's PCs with programs to track their behavior and serve up ads that were distributed with free applications. Often users had no idea what was going on, and getting rid of their stuff could be frustrating. They've now announced that they are taking a new, above-board approach to their business, and the result is something called PersonalWeb.

From their site:

PersonalWeb is a Web personalization service that automatically creates a custom Home page for every user. By searching and surfing the Web just as you already do, you teach PersonalWeb about your interests. PersonalWeb builds a customized Home page just for you, with one-click access to the Web sites, services and other content you use most.

PersonalWeb even recommends new things related to your interests that you may not yet have discovered yourself. With PersonalWeb, every time you go online, you'll have easy access to your favorite parts of the Web — and more easily discover things that may become new favorites.

Which sounds nice, but there's one bit of information missing from the home page of the site: the detail that this is all going to be used to serve up ads based on your behavior. They aren't quite hiding that either; users who read everything on the download page will know this.

I can't point at this and call them bad guys; they are telling the consumer what the price of the software is, although they're not calling much attention to it. But there are some problems with this. What affect does the software have on the performance of a PC? Is it as easy to uninstall as they say?

The privacy policy posted on the site looks reasonable, though there is the caveat that if somebody buys the company, all bets are off.

A bigger question, I think, is whether consumers are comfortable downloading a piece of software from somebody they've probably never heard of. Claria seems to realize this; they've signed up Yahoo! Japan as a partner, with the idea that Yahoo! will distribute the software, probably bundled with a free application such as an instant messaging client or a toolbar.

I think that's the only way for this to work; people are a lot more likely to trust something like this if it's coming from a company they already know, such as Yahoo! or Google or AOL. Claria's rather chequered past doesn't help.

PersonalWeb was released in April; no word yet on how many people have actually downloaded it (and how many of them are actually using it). It will be interesting to see if they get any traction with consumers - or if this becomes something that has to be sneaked onto consumer's computers.

Ending Enforced Customer Loyalty

There are a lot of ways to get your customers to stick with you. You can make sure that your service meets their needs at a good price, so they have no incentive to shop around. You can provide good customer service, so that if they have a problem, it's resolved quickly.

Or you can just shake them down. That's been the business model of US mobile phone carriers, who sign up new customers under contracts, renew the contracts every time a customer talks to them (You moved - you have a new contract! You changed your plan - you have a new contract!), and then charge exorbitant feeds to get out of the contract.

(In a really outrageous move, a few years ago AT&T Wireless (now part of Cingular) put me on a new contract without even telling me when I changed my number because I'd moved to a new state. I didn't even realize it until they sent me copy of the contract to sign. I called them and told them I wasn't going to sign it; they informed me that it didn't really matter, because I had agreed to the new contract by having a phone conversation with a service rep asking her to change my number. No contract was mentioned. I think that's called "fraud.")

There's a welcome sign that this might be changing: Verizon Wireless is planning to lower its early termination fees. (The actual reduction is unknown, so while the intent is good, we'll have to see if it really amounts to anything.)

There's a little gem of wisdom in the article about this:

Strigl said Verizon Wireless "ran numbers every which way" and decided it would be a smart financial move for the company. Existing customers are already loyal, he said, and the reduced obligations will probably appeal to new customers.

Customers are already loyal. Nobody really wants to change their wireless service; even without the fees, it's a pain in the neck. And even if they are happy, they are generally resentful of the contracts; nobody likes to be forced into anything.

I would like to see wireless carriers move away from their current model of givin g a discounted phone with handcuffs to make you stay with them. I'd rather just buy a GSM phone and sign up for service with no commitment. Of course, that requires the carriers to provide consistently good service to prevent defections - which is what worries them. (With GSM phones, leaving is as easy as popping a new SIM card in the phone. Except for that contract.)

I have no problem with my carrier (Cingular). I'm pleased with the service and have no desire to switch. But I still dislike them on principle, because of the contracts. I'd be a happier customer if they cut the nonsense out. Kudos for Verizon for taking a step in that direction; let's home competitors follow suit.

Bad Words

Like many who make their living as communicators, I came to my profession with a real appreciation of the power, flexibility, and nuance of the English language. That's why it always annoys me to see people making up silly words for ideas that can be expressed without the new terminology, like this.

When I read the article, I wondered, "what is a 'lifestyle center,' and how is it different from a 'shopping center?'"

The answer, as far I can tell, is that a lifestyle center is a shopping center, but someone is giving it a new name to make it sound like more than it is.

There's nothing about this new "lifestyle center" being build in the Houston suburbs that I haven't seen in shopping centers since I was a teenager in the 1980s. My guess is that it's just marketing silliness - trying to differentiate an old product by giving it a new name.

But that's not a new product. It's just the same old thing, with a clumsy name that is intended to make people think it's something new. It's silly, and most people are not fooled by it.

If you are selling something that's getting long in the tooth and you want to spice it up, the name is the last thing to change. First come up with a genuinely new idea, then find a name that expresses what's different. The name itself doesn't magically revitalize a tired product.

And ask yourself whether the product is really tired. The details of shopping centers change, but the concept is sound. When you're building something that people need, why do you need to try to make it sound like something new? Focus on your real value - doing something proven well.