Technically, November Bicycles isn't a client. It's a business I run with a partner where I get to test out all the advice I give clients (particularly the edgey advice they don't take) and dig really deeply into the analytics.
With November, we have a very deliberate content strategy of telling the truth. It's refreshing for our audience to hear us speak so frankly - about our own products, the industry we compete in, even the mistakes we make. It's also the easist writing I've ever done, requiring far less thought than trying to artificially craft a position that a company does not genuinely occupy. There's an edginess about telling the truth that frankly mystifies me. Telling the plain truth shouldn't be a differentiator, and yet it is. Today I published a couple of examples for November that are worth sharing here.
The first is this new piece on the Terms and Conditions of one of our products. Every product has a failure rate, and this particular product requires a bit of education in order to avoid failure. We're a tiny company, very late to the party for this product, and yet none of the market leaders have taken anything that resembles a lead on the education needed to use this product safely, so we did. We're already getting some positive feedback from our customers, even though what we published is tantamount to saying, "Hey, those things you bought for a grand won't do everything the other things that sell for half as much do. Sorry if you were disillusioned about that."
The other example from today is an email in support of our weekly deals feature called Frugal Fridays. The email uses the same copy from the landing page, which we also promote through Facebook and Twitter. Frugal Fridays has been really effective in part because it's one of those irresistible daily deals features, but mostly because (I think) of its authenticity. We only the feature the stuff we - as enthusiasts in the same sport as our customers - use and recommend. And we tell the plain truth about why the product is useful. In today's email, the usefulness stems because the outcome of not using the product "sucks."
In the two hours since I've sent the email, it already has a 40% open rate and a 7% click-through rate. In truth, the open rate is more valuable to us. We don't use Frugal Fridays to sell products as much as we do to tell our story - that we are editors who know our customers well enough to choose relevant products for them, and communicate with them in an interesting way. It's great if they buy, but Frugal Fridays is principally to keep the line of communication open with our customers and to reach new ones.
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Posted by: Sloan29Mai | 02/01/2012 at 06:04 AM