Here’s a few photo highlights from parties held during ERA’s recent eRetailer Summit in Miami. Check back often, your mug shot may be up next!
Click here for more information about upcoming events!
Advantages:
-Native Spanish-speaking agents provide for higher quality communication with callers
-Call center labor pools in Spanish-speaking countries are generally more ample than on-shore
-Lower costs per minute and per hour
-Offshore and near-shore centers are oftentimes more flexible in accommodating U.S.- based clients’ requirements compared to traditional U.S. based call centers
-Lower rotation of employees, which allows greater continuity and consistency
-Native Spanish-speaking agents in Spanish-speaking countries are generally more inclined to sell than those that work in U.S.-based centers
Disadvantages:
-Time consuming and more expensive to travel to offshore/near-shore locations for site inspection and training
-Time zone difficulties
-Risk and cost of telecommunications-related infrastructure located outside the U.S. can be higher
-Call centers in other countries don’t always understand U.S. business culture and demands of U.S.-based companies
-Lack of understanding of U.S. addresses and fulfillment requirements
Conclusion:
Most call centers outside the U.S. utilize VoIP telecommunications to reduce the cost of call transmission, which make the cost of long distance inexpensive. Training outside the U.S. can be a little bit more expensive and take more time to travel, but if the marketer has budget, on-site training and site inspection are always worthwhile. Labor costs outside the U.S. are almost always more attractive. Marketers should consider whom the management team is and if it has experience conducting business in the U.S. and is able to communicate effectively with and reports correctly to U.S. marketers. Marketers must consider their level of comfort with each of these items and also take into account their experience or ability in first, managing a call center and second, managing a call center operation outside the U.S.
Do you agree?
Neal Topf is president of Callzilla, LLC, and a member of ERA’s U.S. Hispanic Council
ERA’s eRetailer Summit is off to a great start. We’ve already exceeded last year’s total registrations before the tradeshow floor even opened! Whenever I attend conferences, I always seem to find myself drawn to the education sessions, rather than the tradeshow floor. My instincts proved correct today when I learned more about blogs within an hour than I had learned in the past three months. I’ll begin implementing what I’ve learned moving forward. I hope you check back often as our blog continues to grow and expand in quality and quantity.
Earlier today, I also had the pleasure of eating lunch while listening to a keynote presentation from YouTube’s Brian Cusack. Among many interesting statistics, he addressed the rapidly shifting media consumption habits. It turns out people are spending as much time engaging with online content and videos now as they do watching TV. Don’t believe it? If you’re reading this blog post, you’re part of that statistic.
Since you’re clearly not watching your TV right now, enjoy the following video I came across while checking my email today. It’s definitely not something I want to think about when I board that plane on Wednesday!
How do you think marketers and advertisers will adapt if these viewing habits continue?
Pat Cauley, eMedia editor, Electronic Retailer Magazine
Since its founding 21 years ago, Hawthorne Direct has never been afraid to take chances. The company launched a new website—The Hawthorne Videoactive Report—just a little over a year ago that features a brief daily newscast about interactive, video-based advertising.
I caught up with Scot Wilcox, the Report’s writer and editor, to chat about the site—and its relationship to the parent company. Hawthorne has produced about 220 reports to date, and Wilcox thinks that the project is hitting its stride. “The Videoactive Report is pretty multi-faceted,” he says. “It’s a way to share good information, to test new ideas and to ensure that we stay atop the hot trends. That’s not to say that our agency will offer every single tactic we talk about, but you certainly can’t innovate from an information vacuum.”
The project is the brainchild of DRTV pioneer Tim Hawthorne, a founding member of what is now ERA. According to Wilcox, the Report reflects Hawthorne’s creative and community values: “Tim has been out there networking and sharing his ideas for years. The blogosphere is a particularly efficient medium to continue that process. Plus, we’re doing it in video, the most engaging format there is.”
Although the site includes advertising news, Wilcox explains that “the HVR,” as he calls it, is more of a trends and analysis site. “Don’t forget that we’re first and foremost an advertising agency, not the Associated Press,” he says. “We really don’t worry who’s first with a story. What we care about is how these events impact the agencies doing the work.”
Perhaps the site’s most interesting feature is that Hawthorne Direct views it as a hybrid of sorts: part working content site, part test lab. For the daily videocast, the agency has tested different formats, emphases, production software, studio arrangements and distribution options. The website also provides the agency a vehicle to test layout, optimization, ad creative, media buying and social networking. Wilcox says that from the agency’s perspective, The Videoactive Report will always be something of a work in progress, but viewers should still enjoy it as a time-saver. Deputizing someone else to scour hundreds of resources for the critical content should always be appealing.
Pat Cauley, eMedia editor, Electronic Retailer Magazine
We know what works in radio advertising. It comes from the thousands of tests we’ve conducted over many years that have filled in the vast universe of possible actions one can take in building a radio advertising campaign, with reliable guideposts pointing toward success and away from failure.
But there’s a subtle paradox involved in that “knowing” of what works—a paradox that we’re required to understand fully before we can actually provide people with the benefit of our knowing.
The moment you believe you fully know everything, you essentially know nothing.
Think about it this way—if you know everything, you stop questioning. You stop looking, asking questions, seeking answers. And when you stop looking, you stop growing and learning—you stop getting better. Worse, though, you become rote, acting out of habitual patterns and approaches. You get mindlessly repetitive. You become boring—and if you’ve been exposed to advertisements lately, you’ll see how common this is. How all ads start sounding the same and they all air in the same places.
So “knowing” successfully requires the combination of two mindsets. One mindset is that of the wise old sage. It’s a mindset that acts with a confidence that comes from the combination of deep experience and lots of hard data about what works and what doesn’t.
The other mindset is the “child’s mind” approach. The approach that encourages us to look at a situation, a campaign, with fresh eyes as though we’re seeing this campaign and radio advertising for the very first time. Think of the way children are curious, uninhibited, not afraid to fail or ask a direct question, unencumbered by knowledge and unconditioned by experience.
Do you agree to the mindset paradox? Can this be applied across all media channels?
Jeff Small is CEO and Brett Astor is vice president of Strategic Media Inc.
Amnesty International “Protect the Human” project has gone to some interesting lengths to promote its cause for human rights. It’s even employed shock tactics to drive traffic to its website. However, one of its recent campaigns pokes fun at the DRTV industry.
As an industry that’s had its battles with credibility, many direct response marketers try hard every day to improve our collective image. This is one of the main reasons ERA (formally NIMA) was founded in the first place!
Does this sort of joke offend you? Or, are you flattered that an international cause would use a faux live shopping segment to promote its agenda?
Pat Cauley, eMedia editor, Electronic Retailer Magazine
Were you at Electronic Retailer’s LiveEdit Lab in Santa Monica on January 30th? If not, you missed out! Enjoy a slide show from the event.
Save the date! Electronic Retailer LiveEdit Lab New York: April 30, 2008
This past week, I attended a conference for retailers. Most of them were from the traditional brick-and-mortar world—unlike the virtual retailers I’m used to working with. Maybe everyone was just having a bad week, but I sensed a great deal of fear from this group. I shared my observation with an advertising agency and a media buying company —separately. Surprisingly, they gave me the same explanation. They pointed out that many of these retailers had multiple jobs within a few short years and it wasn’t by choice. In other words, with decreased sales comes pink slips. With our economy in the toilet, it’s no wonder that fear permeated the conference. And with fear comes caution.
Armed with this knowledge, I approached a few of the retailers to ask them what new marketing techniques they were using to combat slow sales. Much to my surprise, I learned that most were adopting a “hunker down mentality.” Although they were interested in nontraditional advertising methods, they cited a lack of time, knowledge and most importantly, the lack of confidence as barriers.
Part of me had to laugh because as an industry, we have made great strides in building consumer confidence in electronic retailing, but apparently we missed a step. We overlooked the importance of helping traditional retailers understand how e-retailing can increase their sales. E-retailers have been using affiliate marketing, social networking and multiple channels to not only reach new customers, but also actively engage and retain them.
Think about the chicken and the egg—if you’re a retailer reading this—do you try new things in a sluggish economy or is this the time to hunker down? I think we would all agree with a major advertiser who said, “When times are good you should advertise. When times are bad, you must advertise.” Perhaps the better question is not if should you advertise, but how should you advertise?
I invite all retailers to join me and my direct response friends in Miami at ERA’s eRetailer Summit, where we will continue this discussion and help you learn not only which risks are worth taking, but also how to take them.
Barbara Tulipane is ERA’s president and CEO
PALM SPRINGS, Calif.—Earl Greenburg, founder of Transactional Marketing Partners and former chairman of ERA’s board of directors, died on Friday, February 1. Prior to making his indelible imprint in the DRTV industry, Greenburg made his mark in the entertainment industry as a former vice president of NBC and producer of “The Regis Philbin Show.” He received two Emmys for his work. Greenburg most recently served as the Palm Springs International Film Festival’s board president.
A memorial service was held for him on Monday, February 4 at Temple Isaiah in Palm Springs. In lieu of flowers or gifts, the family suggests that a donation be made to the Greenburg Family Foundation. The foundation, which is instrumental in
