WebEx Practices What They Preach: A Marketing Lesson For Us

I was upgrading our WebEx account and got this email confirmation.

Because I use the Rapportive gmail plug-in, I get the LinkedIn profile of whoever sends the message.

Kudos to Pohan Lin, who says he’s an e-marketing and marketing automation expert.
And guess what? He most certainly is!

Contrast that with this one from my favorite health club, LifeTime Fitness:

It’s from their COO, Jeff Zwiefel, who says his goal is to make me a raving fan. And he really wants to get my feedback, though it’s from a no-reply email address.

So to test his commitment, I had FancyHands contact him. Took 3 attempts with no response, but finally got a response from his assistant, who sidestepped the question.

Companies might not realize that their marketing efforts are no longer the advertisements they run, but the overall experience they provide their customers. Consider that your presence on social media and the voice of customers far outweighs anything you might say yourself.

Tron Jordheim is the CMO of StorageMart, who explained why it’s important to be cautionary when making promises:

“We often know what we’d like to say and how we’d like to be perceived…. But it can be tough to deliver on that.
At StorageMart we have a 100% satisfaction guarantee. That is easy for customers with small issues and small complaints. It is more challenging to deliver on that for customers with big problems and big complaints. Thankfully there are few big problems, but when they come up- we have to push ourselves to deliver on our promise. So be careful what your overt or implied promise to customers might be. You’ll need to deliver in ways you may not have expected. “

Would you rather have Pohan of WebEx or Jeff of LifeTime be the face of your company?

And is your brand bleeding in ways that you might not be aware?