So the same can be said about negative momentum – where a community backlash can reach a tipping point and something starts to happen. I’m hoping that by intentionally publishing this article alongside a recent post by Elliot Jay Stocks, a new script by Chris Coyier, a dedicated upgrade campaign, and a new browser from Google (to name but a few), we’ll all be riding the crest of a large wave that sees Microsoft’s bastard child IE6 finally come crashing to a halt.

I hate IE6, as do many others like me. It famously lacks support for W3C standards, so websites rarely look ‘right’ when viewed. This matters because IE6 still has a significant share of the browser market (between 25-30%, depending who you ask) even though it was released a whopping 7 years ago. Fact: no other browser of that age exists.

But my mum doesn’t hate it, nor does my Dad, my wife, or many colleagues. They don’t care how a site is supposed to look, how it should work, or what hacks were used to make the site they see before them look at ‘pretty’. All they understandably care about is the site and its content. So the problem with IE6 lies primarily on the shoulders of the developers/designers/coders wasting precious hours making their sites pretty, only to be forced to hack and compromise them to ensure they look the same on IE6 as in all other browsers. Sure, this might sound trivial, but I assure you that there is nothing more frustrating than making a site look great in Firefox or Safari, only to see it look like the creation of a 10 year old in IE6. Essentially we create 2 versions of the same site – one for the ‘good’ browsers that fully support standards, and one for IE6, which simply doesn’t do what it should.

So what’s the Reverse Tipping Point angle?

IE6 has negatively affected so many web developers, designers and builders since ’01 that the time has come for this community to actually make a difference. With a market share as high as 30%, IE6 wouldn’t disappear overnight, but with what seems to be an increasing trend of ‘non-support’ for IE6, small-, mid- and large-sized web companies are getting bolder and phasing out all support for IE6… with or without Microsoft’s help.

Some methods are extreme. Chris Coyier’s new script tells an IE6 user that the site simply doesn’t support IE6, forcing the visitor to upgrade to view the site. Others are revolution-catalysts – see the IE Death March, and some are a bit more subtle – like savethedevelopers.org. But perhaps the most significant agent for creating this (reverse) tipping point is the fact that many of today’s top web designers (and companies that cater to web designers) are announcing that they’re ceasing all hacks, bug fixes and general support for IE6 – on both their own sites and for all new clients moving forward. It’s these guys – these mavens – that will ultimately change how many people are still using IE6 by this time next year. These guys basically lead the line on web design, so as word filters down that enough is enough, all others will start to follow suit.

To start the pendulum swinging, I’ve rounded up a few posts, sites and tools to get you started in saying goodbye to IE6. If you’re not even a web designer and have only a faint idea of what this is all about, 1) good job on reading this far, and 2) get stuck in anyways! You have nothing to lose, and rest assured you’ll be helping a great cause. Do you part to make the web a prettier place (the way it should be) and say no to IE6!

Tools & tips:

http://css-tricks.com/ie-6-blocker-script/
http://www.savethedevelopers.org/
http://24ways.org/2007/supersleight-transparent-png-in-ie6
http://nettuts.com/html-css-techniques/evening-tip-force-ie6-to-display-alpha-transparency/
http://www.my-debugbar.com/wiki/IETester/HomePage (PC only)
http://www.browsercam.com/
http://www.stopie6.org/

Stats:

http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp
http://ma.tt/2008/07/ie6-independence/ (WordPress-specific)

Other posts/articles:

http://www.sitepoint.com/blogs/2008/08/25/is-it-time-to-ditch-ie6/
http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/1072-apples-mobileme-drops-support-for-ie-6
http://www.kryogenix.org/days/wp-content/uploads/2008/08/facebook-ie6.png
http://www.viget.com/inspire/is-it-time-to-ditch-ie-6/

Taking a stand:

http://ryanfarley.com/blog/archive/2008/08/18/why-i-am-no-longer-supporting-ie6.aspx
http://www.insideria.com/2008/07/37signals-drops-ie6-support.html
http://noscope.com/journal/2008/08/ditching-ie6

IE Death Marchers:

http://iedeathmarch.org/category/marching
http://iedeathmarch.org/2008/08/carsonified/
http://iedeathmarch.org/2008/08/we-are-not-freelancers/
http://iedeathmarch.org/2008/08/wplover/
http://iedeathmarch.org/2008/08/facebook/
http://iedeathmarch.org/2008/08/daring-fireball/
http://iedeathmarch.org/2008/08/37-signals/

Follow/Join/Interact:

https://twitter.com/SaveDevelopers
http://www.petitionspot.com/petitions/IE6MustDie
http://www.new.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2463342409
http://www.stopie6.org/
http://www.stopie6.com/
http://friendfeed.com/e/c7b7d477-bfcf-47c2-aa6f-63d58c3eb645/The-STOP-IE6-campaign/

The Globe & Mail (one of Toronto’s biggest newspapers) have announced a new website promotion that should tickle many a reader’s fancy.

They’ve hidden $1000 CAD per day on their website for the next 50 days; all you have to do is answer a daily question that’s taken directly from a current story, feature or article on their site from that day.

Digging around looking for the answer means you get exposed to their advertisers, their other current promos, and obviously their content. It’s a simple, fun, and likely effective way to increase their web traffic as well as their average time spent on their site.

I received this notice in an email marketing campaign, proving once again that when delivered at the right time and with the right content, email marketing works like a charm. What’s more, after clicking the email, I land on a pretty simple but effective landing page that pushes what seems to be their top 4 content sections in order to drive further click-thrus to their site.

Not bad all around, except 1 thing they’ve overlooked – missing out on some free promotion by failing to add a ‘tell a friend’ link on either the email or landing page. Oops.

Check it out at http://www.theglobeandmail.com/1Kaday/

Examples below, which have been reduced from the original 728×90 size to a 468 size, to fit on my blog and website (carbongraffiti.com)

(Ed: I’ve since tried to find a live version with no luck… sorry).

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xj8ZadKgdC0]

When the internet started, just having a website meant you were likely to be found. But as more people and and more businesses created more websites, the ability to be unique and one-of-a-kind became more difficult. So now, 8 A.G. (after Google) on, the internet is no longer a luxury to those who know how to program, but the norm to anyone and everyone who owns a PC or Mac. And with the ubiquity of the net, websites and blogs, computers and so on, getting seen and heard as a marketer is really difficult; as of 2004, Google was indexing over 8 billion webpages. Imagine what it is now?

Which is exactly why the concept of ’1-to-1 marketing’ seems such a no-brainer, but at the same time is a concept that’s lost on many companies, businesses and individuals alike.

Assuming the natural growth of something as never-before-seen as the internet requires ‘growing pains’ and trial and error, we’re all past the first phase (Web 1.0), which can only be described as ‘the blind shotgun‘ or ‘spray and pray‘ marketing. With email marketing it was obtaining a list, creating one campaign with standard copy, and pressing send. With SEO it was simply creating page after page with keywords and phrases, hoping to get picked up by Google’s magical algorithms. The same model still exists in most online advertising - eyeballs matter more than clicks, seeing as banner ads are becoming so ubiquitous and commonplace that I for one no longer even notice them.

But now we’re in the next phase, and as a marketer it’s even harder to get noticed. With blogs, pre-packaged websites, affordable broadband etc., anyone can act as an authority on any subject, or sell their goods, or do just about anything. So getting noticed is of the utmost importance. But spraying and praying won’t work anymore. You can’t just go buy a list, because the recipients won’t respond – they know what’s Spam and what’s not. Google and other SE’s are smarter, you can’t stuff keywords into a page’s meta info and hope for high rankings. You’re the needle, the internet is the (massive) haystack. To get noticed you not only need to be ‘remarkable’ like Seth Godin’s purple cow, but you need to be willing and able to speak to customers as individuals and deliver content, emails, pages, etc that are relevant to them and only them.

Basically everyone needs to stop trying to shout louder than everyone else, and focus on what they’re offering and tailor it to the individual customer.

ESPs (Email Marketing Service Providers) are waking up to this and starting to offer better list segmentation capabilities and content management. SEOs are starting to realize that Google is really, really smart, and that simply making a page that’s meant to be read by a human being will work better than a page full of jibberish keywords. Online advertising is getting smarter too, with better technologies to allow for segmentation and localization, and new waves like socal bookmarking are allowing for relevance to reign supreme.

But as long as everyone understands that shouting loud is not working anymore, we’ll all be better off.

During one of the seminars at the conference I remember an interesting anecdote about a customer of intuit feeling much aggrieved at something related to intuit’s customer service – so much so he decided to (negatively) blog about it. By venting his frustrations on his blog he got the issue off his chest and likely felt a bit better and went to sleep. Much to his surprise the next day he saw a comment on his blog, straight from some semi-bigwig from intuit who had actually taken the time to read about the issue he was having, and who vowed to resolve it for him. It got resolved, the angry blogger couldn’t believe his luck, and he blogged again the next day on how surprised, amazed, and most importantly how happy he was that this massive corporation had actually bothered to see him as an individual person, not a number. Everyone ended up happy, and everyone listening in the seminar gave a genuine smile, and it’s stuck with me since – especially up to now.

2 weeks ago I ordered a brand new laptop from Dell Canada. I was obviously very excited and couldn’t wait to receive it. After some initial problems were cleared up (none of which are important or interesting enough to bring up here) I waited 1.5 weeks. Dell send some pretty neat email campaigns to a customer notifying them of their order status, and I hadn’t got one in a while, so I emailed them. Turns out my order was canceled. No notice to me, no phone call, no email, no nothing. Out of nowhere my order was canceled because, as it turns out, a SKU was wrong so the order got canned. I, the customer, had to then track down (via at least 4x 1-800 numbers) the right customer service department and find out what was going on. Safe to say I was livid.

I know this kind of stuff happens to other Company X Y or Z customers all the time, but I didn’t expect to be one of them. I was so angry at the concept of having to run around to find where and what the screw up was at a multi-million dollar company (which is just barely more than I make a week, FYI), that I couldn’t think straight. I was more than livid. …That is until I spoke to Heather, who was perhaps one of the best customer service reps I’ve encountered.

To put a (getting) long(er) story short, Heather made me feel completely comfortable. She took care of me, apologized for the mishap, explained exactly what happened (very candidly might I add, which was refreshing), and basically covered every single base there was to cover. She coolly dealt with my hot head at the beginning, and through the entire conversation never lost sight of the fact that as a customer I had the right to be frustrated, but that the situation had a solution and that she was going to solve it. By the end of the conversation my order was booked, everything was good to go, and I had a smile on my face and was very impressed. I checked my order status today and the laptop is on it’s way.

Which brings me here. Just like the guy complaining about Intuit, I have a blog and I felt like venting – but a good vent, not a bad one. I’m able to voice my opinion, regardless of who might listen to me, and that’s clearly starting to count more and more these days. Dell especially haven’t always had the best of ‘customer feedback‘ record, so maybe I’m just trying to show my appreciation for their handling of an individual’s customer service mishap by voicing it here. What any of this proves is that there’s a real development of reciprocation beginning online – because anyone can get on a soapbox and talk about a company or a politician or a movie, and because other people can and will listen, customer service can only play a more important role online. Customer service is all about making the customer happy, and the Web 2.0 movement is simply amplifying that importance.

Bottom line: Keep your customer happy and you can get 2 birds with one stone – you get to keep your customer, and you might get more customers (for very little cost to you) if they want to rant about it. …Get them angry and they’ll still rant about it, and likely stop their friends from buying from you ever again in the process. I wonder – which is the better option?

In today’s online world it’s easy to forget that in the old days of marketing, back when people didn’t have virtual worlds like Second Life, or the internet, or email, or forums, chatrooms, etc. Instead they just relied on good, old-fashioned word-of-mouth. If a product worked, it would spread the traditional way – people would talk about it. So I can’t help but think it’s ironic that today there are so many ways people can connect with one another, yet word-of-mouth marketing isn’t getting quite the recognition it deserves. In my mind it’s poised to make a strong comeback, and in my mini essay below, ferociously typed while sipping a coffee, there are many reasons why.
The [company X] WOM Manifesto:

How word of mouth marketing tactics can benefit [company X], and what we have to do now and tomorrow to create and sustain a healthy and advocate-rich customer base.

Customers are fast becoming the wielders of power in today’s marketplace. YouTube, Flickr and Digg.com are just a few examples of the power of user-generated content. Blogs are putting anyone with a voice on the map, large or small, and they’re being armed with soapbox and a megaphone. To put it into perspective, 55 million bloggers are currently ‘armed’, and 100,000 more are every day (Technorati, 2006). It’s these people that have the power and capabilities to push an ‘OK’ product to its tipping point, where it becomes the product. As we’ve all noticed, things in the online world can easily accrete (read: YouTube being bought for $1.65B within a year of its inception), and just as easily dissipate into just another product that no one remembers (read: soon to be Second Life).

It’s making the thing start in the first place that’s the challenge. At the conference I received a book in the good bag entitled ‘Pyro Marketing‘, and the analogy is perfect. It’s the dream to have the product sell itself, to light the fire with just one match, and it is possible. Something referred by a friend or colleague rather than a TV commercial is approximately 1000x more powerful than a simple ad or movie poster. ‘Go see that new movie, it’s fantastic and you’ll love it’ is a phrase we’ve all heard, and likely a referral we’ve all heeded. Even though TV commercials for that very same movie bend over backwards trying to mimic that ‘go see it’ buzz and noise, (think “Rolling Stone says this movie is out of this world, spell-binding, mesmerizing, Roger and Ebert give it 4 stars…”) nothing can come close to what happens when a close friend tells you it’s the best thing you’ll see this year.

Word of Mouth is one of the strongest and most effective ways to market and promote a product. People just don’t trust TV and banner ads, subway ads, movie trailers and print ads anymore. We’re all more savvy than we were 5 years ago, and we’ll only get better at wading through the crap. Look at how product placement is increasing in movies like the new James Bond (Omega, Aston Martin, etc). Why? TiVo, YouTube, and iTunes are killing the TV commercial. It’s all on-demand now, it’s all accessible when you want it, without the fat. We’re all more savvy and we’re all starting to see that we can all have a soapbox if we want; we can all go find someone who has the same interests as us, the same tastes, and listen to them, not NBC or ABC or CTV.

With this new power, customers just like you and me are able to cut and slice through the 3000 advertising messages we get a day, and focus, and change, and have a voice about the things we care about. We’re no longer captive audiences who sit in front of a glowing box and get bombarded by push marketing and advertising… now the shoe is on the other foot. We’ll watch what we want when we want, we’ll fast-forward what we want, download what we want. And if we don’t like it, we’ll find a way to get around (just think back to pop-ups). This is the new media – the new marketing landscape that, in all honesty, we as marketers all have to get used to. We have to start to learn how to leverage it, not waste time being fearful or hesitant to try it out, otherwise we risk letting our customers, be it in the tens, the thousands, or more, just slip through our fingers.

So, what’s the main thing about word of mouth marketing that I’ve learned since attending the WOMMA conference?

It’s all about the customer.

The term ‘viral’ still applies, but it’s an increasingly dated catchphrase that represents only a tiny portion of WOM (Word Of Mouth). There’s a massive foundation to build first, like a really solid house, before anything comes even close to going ‘viral’ by itself.

Today’s internet user and customer are, as mentioned, more savvy. They’re a different breed (and this includes from Baby Boomers to Gen X, it’s overwhelming to start thinking of the ‘millenial generation’ and their kids…) and they’re becoming so powerful as a virtual community that they’re no longer faceless wallets with 2 ears but no voice. They have a voice, and they should be encouraged to use it – for positive and/or negative commenting.

People want to talk about things – we’re social by nature, and we like to talk about things that make us happy, or things that are fun, or neat, cool, interesting, funky etc. More and more we’re being equipped with tools and in some cases weapons (Digg, blogs, MySpace to name a few) to show to the world and who ever is listening exactly what we think of all those things.

The customer is the marketer.

‘The medium is the message’ but… the internet killed the Television star.

It’s becoming a reality. In some cases, the internet user/customer has more power than some traditional marketing departments – and doesn’t necessarily know it. In some cases, teens between 14 and 19 actually have more power than companies with marketing budgets in the millions of dollars. Half the time they know, the other half they don’t. But does it matter? The concept here is that the customer, this everyday guy or girl with access to the web, access to email, access to a blog (their own or someone else’s) can talk about something they want to talk about, and in effect market that product for yay or nay. If they hate it, they’ll say it, and if they love it, they’ll say that too. In fact, 1 person is likely to tell 5 people about something they’re happy about/pleased with, whereas they’ll tell 10 people if they’re dissatisfied and unhappy. Whichever direction the customer takes, it’s still marketing something – and marketing to people and future customers or advocates or ambassadors that traditional marketing departments might not be able to touch. By letting the customer freely market a product or service that they feel good and passionate about, new media-embracing companies can in effect sit back and watch a snowball grow, or a new universe be born!

So, what do we do, as marketers?

We embrace it. Not, by any means fear it and walk away. This is not the end-all be-all of marketing, far from it. Traditional marketing does and will continue to exist, and will play a major role in creating influencers indirectly, simply by (for example) getting more eyeballs to a new product or brand. Awareness is the first step to finding people who want to talk more about a product or service, know as early-adopters and influencers.

But, at least from a [company X] standpoint, there’s a lot of work to be done. Companies have to start putting their existing customers first. And by first I don’t mean ‘yeah, they’re #1… so what’. I mean start to rethink the way their entire customer service, support, marketing, and sales groups interact with customers. Companies have to begin believing in actually putting the customer on such a pedestal that they WANT to go and talk about it. The companies today that do put the customer at #1 against all odds are the companies that have self-perpetuating advocates that simply want to ‘do good’ and tell their friends and family about a good product with great service. It all starts with customer service treating the customer like a human being, not a ticket or a phone call, or a job.

Edit: Added late December, 2006

So what are just some ideas a company can do to start the process of word-of-mouth?

• Rejig all customer interaction points, with the sole intention of delivering the best possible service to your customer
• Employ a news watcher or news aggegrator (via RSS is a good way) to watch any and all mentions of your company. In today’s world of blogs, if a customer is unhappy and blogs, chances are they’ll talk about it. If you find an unhappy post, comment – show them that you’re willing to take the time to solve their individual problem, and offer solutions
• If budget permits, consider meeting your ‘star’ customers. Have you CS team identify those people that are the happiest and most vocal (are rare but effective mix) and invite them to lunch next time you’re in their town. Get to know them and their issues, likes and dislikes of your products, services, etc.
• At all times, start to embrace the power of ‘Web 2.0′ technology. Give your customers the opportunity to blog about you, to talk about you, to send your product or service to their friends. On the things that are worth forwarding, add a ‘forward this to 5 colleagues’ link. You won’t be sorry.
• Blog. Show your customers, even the most passive ones that you’re more than a company. You’re individuals within a company all sharing a goal of making your customers’ experience a better one. Also, enable posting on your blog, so your visitors can feel free to share their thoughts and experiences. Even negative comments are good – they give you the opportunity to solve a problem in front of a larger audience.
• Get people in your company believing in what WOM is and what it can do. There’s no point in being an island. Having internal advocates of WOM will result in having external advocates of your product.
• Have fun, and enjoy yourself – your customers will pick up on it and enjoy themselves too. Old companies are used to being uptight and strict. Get with the times – new web start-ups are throwing off that thick skin and becoming friendlier. It’s not a coincidence – they realize that by speaking to customers like they’re peers, not wallets, they’re getting somewhere.

Happy WOMing!