Can I Help You?

You walk up and down the aisles of a store ... Can I help you?

You call up your trusted business advisor ... Can I help you?

Can I help you? This is the battle cry of the service trade from front line customer service to skilled professional service practitioners. Whether you work in a call center or a hospital, your exchange with those you serve usually begins with some variation on can I help you?

Given the current economic climate, this phrase takes on an even more complex and urgent meaning. Our customers' circumstances have changed, people are making decisions differently, and - most of all - our lives are more complicated. Now more than ever, people are looking for help beyond having their basic needs met. We all need to ask ourselves, is there something more we can be doing to serve our customers. Even something small ...

Earlier this week I got an email from Staples with the subject line 'Will Office Depot closings affect you?' which included a brief news re-cap about the closings and info on the stability of Staples. Initially I thought that this was a shrewd move – capitalizing on the weakened status of a competitor. But then I thought about it for a bit. Maybe there's not a lot of brand loyalty in the office supplies business. Staples vs. Office Depot vs. Office Max. Maybe people just duck into what is closest to them. And with one of the giants fallen, maybe someone's already-complicated life could be pushed even further if they didn't know where to get their paper clips. People are looking for security and reassurance. And in one little email Staples went a long way toward communicating that.

Staples took a step back and asked can I help you? When you consider this with the fact that Staples has built it's brand on ease of use (Staples - that was easy) it becomes more than obvious that this was a brand-savvy, customer-centric move in a critical time when we all need to need to be doing that. When we need to remember to ask - Can I help you?

Everything is Connected: Email to Blog to Book

I can't remember what movie recently featured the tagline 'everything is connected' but I'm co-opting it here to make my point about how you can spread your ideas incrementally across media. Take these three commonly used marketing pieces:

• Email newsletter
• Blog
• Book

Alone, each of these items is a finite vehicle for you and/or your company's ideas. However, if you undertake the simple task of connecting them you can create a lean, mean marketing manifesto and quickly ensure the spread of your ideas.

How? I'm guessing, like so many out there, you collect customer email addresses and someone has said "we need to send out an email newsletter." So every quarter/month you are scrambling around for relevant content for your e-newsletter so that you can dredge up something to say to your customers.

Fast forward a couple of years when blogs crop up and, again, someone at the marketing round table said "we need to get us one of those." So now you're blogging. You now have two content driven pieces struggling for relevant content.

But what if you take a step back and tie these two pieces together. Janine Popick, CEO of VerticalResponse, my favorite email ASP, does just that. Every month she sends a newsletter that has a teaser to one of her recent blog posts that links to the blog site. And, as we all know, once you click through and read her blog how likely are you stay on her site ...?

Brilliant, right? So then you follow this thing through to it's next logical conclusion and you take your best blog posts and assemble a book like Seth Godin is doing with his upcoming book Small Is the New Big. Really, previewing potential book content on a blog gives you great insight into what your audience wants to hear from you. If I'm not mistaken "Small Is the New Big" was Godin's most popular blog post and is thus the central idea of his latest manifesto.

The Point? Connect your messaging dots. We spend so long searching for content for emails, blogs, books. Why not use one as a spring board to another and another. If you can get your message firing on all pistons, your ideas can build like a mighty snowball! I'd better get out of here before the metaphor police arrest me.

P.S. If you were really paying attention, I'm sure you noticed the key ingredient that I glazed over: the simple fact that you must have something relevant to say to your audience. This whole rant is null and void if you don't have a message. So ... uh, get one. Easier said than done. More on that later.

P.P.S. "Everything Is Connected" was Syriana's tagline but since I can't really connect this marketing riff to oil I'll bow out gracefully.

Hot Tip: The Lowdown on Email Subject Lines

As an email marketer, I've been known to spend a substantial amount of time crafting the perfect subject line. It's a big deal. It effects open rates. It's a split second you have to capture your recipient. It's like having a good teaser on the outside of your direct mail package.

No surprise yet, right ... Well, recently I conducted an experiment on carrying this practice over to my internal emails to clients and co-workers. Rather than typing 'Question' or 'Project Update' or 'Re: The Twelve Previous Emails We've Exchanged' in the subject line, I starting taking a couple of seconds to craft a zinger. 'Cause who doesn't feel like they send their emails out into cyberspace and into a co-worker's overflowing mailbox. In theory, if you want attention from a client or colleague shouldn't you employ the same tactics as the rest of the noise?

The results? No surprise here either. My own internal email response rate went through the roof when I go with a quirky subject line from left field like 'Fuel for Your Fire' or 'Caution: Low Ceiling' or 'You Can Thank Me Later.'

The Point? Am I crazy. Well, hell yes but I'm a crazy person who people respond to.