Tag: Me Me Me

December 17, 2004

  • Looking Back At 2004

    Last year I published some predictions for 2004 on my blog on on the AIMS discussion list.

    Here’s a summary:

    1. SEM rises to dominate online marketing.

    2. Blogs become the best way to find out about most stuff.

    3. Increased focus on meeting user needs instead of corporate goals.

    4. A more pragmatic approach to e-mail.

    5. RSS prepares to take centre stage in 2005.

    6. Social Networks will have a make or break year in 2004.

    I’m feeling pretty good about these predictions a year later. Most of this rings true to me, but I was assuming a “make” year for social networks when in hindsight I think it was more of a “break”.

    What do you think the trends of 2005 will be? More of the same, or are we ready for some breakthroughs?

    (I think the big trend I missed was that business was going to boom! At the end of 2003 things still seemed kind of gloomy, but 2004 turned out to be a stellar year for my business and hopefully for yours.)

    In a few days I’ll provide my predictions for trends in 2005.

September 8, 2004

  • Hard Disk Drive Emergencies And Customer Evangelism

    I had the unfortunate luck to have my hard drive fail a few weeks ago. My back-up was about 8 days old but clients and Basecamp filled in most of the gaps.

    I thought I was in good shape until I realized that the back-up of “My Pictures” had only five digital photos in it instead of the over 2,000 we’ve managed to take in the last two years. It seems that the last back-up had been too large for the drive and it gave up without copying the pictures.

    Needless to say this is a disaster. Two years of my kids’ lives, once well documented, were now (literally) a memory. Recalling how I had inadvertently destroyed most of my own childhood pictures in Grade Three, I knew that these pictures were far more valuable than anything else on the disk. I knew that data recovery could be costly, but I also knew that in 20 years when the kids were grown we’d pay any price to have those memories back.

    I therefore began the quest for a reputable data recovery service in Toronto and after some Googling found my new favourite company — ActionFront.

    From the very first visit to their website to picking-up 2 DVD-ROMs with all our photos archived for safe-keeping, this has been an absolutely great experience.

    ActionFront realizes that:

    1. Their customers are almost guaranteed to be panicked and stressed when they first contact them.

    2. The only people willing to use their service are those who know they have something valuable that is close to being lost.

    3. At the same time, customers are feeling vulnerable. It would be really easy for someone to take advantage of you when you find yourself saying “I’d pay anything to have my data back”.

    4. For most customers this will be the first time they’ve gone through this nasty experience and they’ll need hand-holding.

    ActionFront worked incredibly well to address all these issues. Here are a few of the things I noticed that made me a customer evangelist for ActionFront.

    1. ActionFront’s home page puts “Call 1–800–563–1167 for immediate assistance” front and centre. If you have a disaster you want to speak to a real person, not wade through a huge site.

    2. The site does have lots of details if you want to understand your situation better. They offer lots of background on why they are the best, testimonials, etc. And they also offer specific information on types of drives, common points of failure and the complexity of the process.

    3. They have an amazing pricing model. If they can’t get you the data you want, you don’t pay anything. They charge a higher price because of this but it makes the decision an easy one. They give you the quote and if the data is worth that much to you, you say “go for it”. If it isn’t, you get the disk back.

    4. They responded immediately via e-mail and phone. Follow-up was incredibly professional and with a reassuring “doctorly” tone. Here’s part of an e-mail: “Here is the evaluation results and quote for this recovery case. Please take as long as you need to decide how you’d like to proceed. If you have any questions or concerns, don’t hesitate to give me a call. Keep in mind that this quote is based on a successful recovery of your critical data. If the recovery is not complete, the partial recovery results must be to your satisfaction or there is no charge.” and then a few e-mail messages later: “Here’s the list of recovered files. It is important to realize that this good list is what will be returned if this recovery is approved so please look through the list carefully to ensure that all of your critical files are present. If you feel this is a successful recovery, respond to this email and we’ll get started preparing this data for return.”

    5. Their offices were clean, their staff professional. The clean-room was visible as you entered. In all, it seemed like this was the right place for my dead drive to be revived.

    6. When I picked up the drive and recovered data it was packed in a custom shipping box with lots of foam and anti-static sleeves. And to seal my affection, it came with a booklet on how to prevent future disasters — essentially saying “we don’t ever want to see you again”.

    Well done!

August 30, 2004

  • Posting Is Sparse

    My posting has been, and will probably continue to be sparse over the next few weeks as I work on a few big projects that are all coming to a head in September.

    During this busy time I was lucky enough to be introduced to fellow blogger Tim Grayson. Tim’s feed is now a regular read.

    One of the interesting side-effects of blogging is that you get to do a lot of your small-talk and connecting before having your first meeting. By reading Tim’s blog in advance of our lunch together, I was able to find a bunch of things that we were mutually interested in and (I think) we hit the ground running.

May 28, 2004

  • Offline Until Tuesday

    We’re moving offices (and home) this weekend. That means we’ll be offline until Monday morning at the earliest, probably Tuesday.

    Normal service will definitely be resumed by Wednesday June 2nd.

May 4, 2004

May 2, 2004

  • Our BULLMARKET Entry

    In case you don’t want to download the book and go to page 292 just to see what it says about us, here’s the description of Schafer Group Inc:

    “User experience is the number one issue for most web sites. But who has time to read every book, blog, and article on creating great sites? You probably don’t, but we do!

    We help companies gain the knowledge they need to significantly increase the impact their web sites have on the bottom line. Unlike usability experts and other Internet consultants, we collect current best practices from hundreds of sources. We then present them in plain English so busy business people like you can quickly adopt best practices on their sites.

    The Schafer Group constantly scours books and the web for new ideas, best practice corroboration, and examples of effective design in action. That means you can relax knowing that all the best thinking on building better sites is only a click away.”

  • Schafer Group Featured In Seth Godin’s BULLMARKET

    Seth Godin has just released his latest eBook called “BULLMARKET 2004: Companies That Can Help You Make Things Happen”.

    The book is a compendium of several hundred “Bulls” — companies that can help you make Purple Cows. I’m happy to report that Schafer Group is featured this year (yes, that’s us right there on page 292).

    Here’s a bit of an overview from Seth’s introduction:

    “But sometimes we get stuck. Sometimes we’ve been working on something for so long we fail to see the potential for greatness. It’s easy to get worn down, to get fatigued after seeing yet another great project torn down. Over time, most organizations get boring. They forget how hard it was to get to where they got, and they become obsessed with eliminating risk.

    That’s where Bull Market comes in.

    Bull Market is filled with people who will shake things up. People who will help you see possibilities where none existed. Organizations that can turn your product and your service upside down.

    It’s probably never occurred to you that you could build a giant steel facsimile of your product and put it in your parking lot, or launch a cellular phone version of it or plan a special event around it. That’s my point. If you want to grow, you need to be remarkable. You must create a Purple Cow and have people talk about you. Alas, we’ve been worn down and it’s easy to just give up and be boring.

    That’s why my new mantra is simple: Make Something Happen. The only person who can actually do that is you, not a hired gun. But what the folks in this vast volume can do is open your eyes, clean the glass and make it clear that there are things worth doing. The best part is how cheap they are!

    You’ve spent a fortune on infrastructure. You have factories and employees and lawyers and brands. Now, for just a few shekels more, you can turn that into something remarkable. Something worth talking about. Something worth doing.”

    As a bonus the eBook also includes summaries of his two most recent books, Purple Cow and Free Prize Inside.

    (Download BULLMARKET 2004)

March 22, 2004

  • Thought

    It’s interesting that as soon as I started using Furl I dropped the volume of posts here rapidly. I think this is partly because I often used my blog as a way to keep track of ideas, links, and notes for myself, and incidentally published them for the world. Furl let’s me do the first three without the worry of posting something coherent to others.

    I’ve also noticed that my blogging goes in cycles, partly influenced by how much work I have on my plate, partly by how inspired I am, and probably partly inspired by what is going on in the world. Generally when there is TOO MUCH new stuff and I’m REALLY excited, I tend to blog LESS, undoubtedly because I’m “saving it up” for a great post (that never comes).

November 11, 2003

  • CMA “Web Site Best Practices” Seminar Next Week

    My “Web Site Best Practices” Seminar for the CMA is happening on Wednesday, November 19th, 2003. Here’s what the CMA says about it:

    “Whether your web site is state of the art or in a state of decay, this fast-paced seminar is guaranteed to send you back to the office with dozens of ideas to immediately improve your web site.

    Using real-world examples of the do’s and don’ts of building useful web sites, Internet veteran Ken Schäfer will guide you through over 100 ways to make any web site a more effective marketing, sales, customer service, and communications tool.

    Developed through ten years of online experience, Ken’s best practices library offers you a decade of bright ideas condensed into one action-packed day.”

    If you will be attending the seminar, don’t forget to send me a link to your home page if you’d like to have it reviewed by the class.

October 16, 2003

  • My Strategic E-mail Marketing Seminar Is Fast Approaching

    On October 23rd I’ll be starting my third year teaching the Strategic E-mail Marketing Seminar for the CMA.

    All but one of the past seminars have sold-out and I expect this one to do so as well, but as I write this there are still a few spots left.

    Here’s the overview from the CMA:

    “E-mail is hot! Why? Because it works.

    We all use e-mail every day, but don’t think an overflowing inbox means you’re an e-mail marketing expert. Ineffective e-mail marketing can do more harm than good, so it is imperative that you learn from the successes (and mistakes) of others.

    Using over 70 real-world examples and an interactive learning format, this seminar provides both novice and veteran marketers with the resources they need to plan, build, execute and evaluate e-mail marketing campaigns within their companies.

    With a high-energy, fast paced, hands-on approach, Ken Schäfer condenses ten years of “live on the Net” marketing experience into one day of practical advice.”

  • Two New Services Launched Today

    My postings have been sparse this last week or so as I’ve been putting the final touches on site updates in advance of the launch of two new services today:

    One is a Report called “The Schafer Group Guide To Corporate Web Sites”. This 145 page Report covers 123 best practices using more than 100 screen shots. I’ve been looking for something like this for years and in the end I needed to create it myself. I’m excited to be sharing this with the world and hope others will find it as useful as I do!

    The second is a Web Audit. This service provides clients with an expert assessment of how they are doing (good and bad) with respect to all 123 best practices identified in the Report. The Audit features a Priority List of suggested improvements, ranked by their potential to improve the site’s usefulness to customers.

September 25, 2003

  • Globe And Mail Article On RSS

    Globe And Mail: Will RSS kill the e-mail newsletter?:

    “What does RSS mean to the content-rich e-newsletter industry? About three months ago, Ken Schafer, president of the Toronto-based Internet consultancy Schafer Group and a founder of The Association for Internet Marketing and Sales (AIMS), simultaneously launched an e-newsletter and added an RSS feed to his company’s blog. Though it’s difficult to determine exactly how many RSS users subscribe to a feed — marketers cite this as one of the few limitations of the system — he estimates that there are about 10 times as many people viewing his feed as the e-newsletter.

    Mr. Schafer credits the concept behind RSS with the popularity of the program among his subscribers. ‘[RSS] feeds give the control back to the reader.’

    As Internet content publishers, both Mr. Pirillo and Mr. Schafer believe that RSS could replace the need for e-newsletters.

    ‘It gives us everything we wanted from e-mail newsletters, and everything spam has taken away,’ Mr. Schafer says. ‘I would be surprised if in three years there are any e-newsletters left.’”

August 11, 2003

  • Thought

    I’ll be one of the “faculty” for Schulich School’s Masters Certificate in Marketing Communications Management course this fall:

    “The Masters Certificate in Marketing Communications Management is Canada’s first university-managed marketing communications program to be endorsed by the Association of Canadian Advertisers. The Masters Certificate in Marketing Communications Management curriculum has been developed through extensive consultation with major national and international marketing organizations. Their critical input helped identify the core competencies today’s marketing professional requires for performance improvement.”

    I’ll be providing an overview of the Internet as a communications medium as part of the course’s kick-off “bootcamp” sessions.

July 10, 2003

  • AdSense Sensor

    I just launched something I call the “AdSense Sensor”.

    Google recently launched AdSense, their contextual ad serving service for small sites.

    Using AdSense you (as a site owner) get to place ads served by Google on your site and share revenue with Google. This is exciting because the ads they serve are contextually related to the content on your site. They do this by using their crawl of your pages to determine which ads are relevant.

    The first question I asked when looking at the service was ‘what kind of ads will be served on my pages?’ I couldn’t find a way to determine this directly from the Google site (which seems like an oversight to me). So to help us all figure whether AdSense makes sense for us, I created this ‘AdSense Sensor’.

    Hope you find it useful!

June 25, 2003

June 19, 2003

  • Thought

    I’ve been a very silent blogger for the last six weeks or so. I’ve been working on major changes to the company’s service offerings and the changes prompted a much-needed rethinking of this entire site.

    The new site went live today. Hope you like it. Feedback is welcome.

March 6, 2003

  • Thought

    Here is the brief article Chris Daniels wrote for Marketing Magazine wrote about my resignation from AIMS:

    “Schafer Resigns As AIMS President”

    March 5, 2003

    After just a year as the first paid president of the Association of Internet Marketing & Sales (AIMS) Ken Schafer has stepped down from the organization he helped create.

    Schafer says he wants to return to his roots of “creating great online ventures,” such as he did when he started his career spearheading the first online initiative for Sony Music Canada. He has no immediate plans, but says he will consider his options over the next several weeks.

    Schafer was made the organization’s first paid employee about a year ago. His move to a paid position from a volunteer one was part of a larger initiative to move the non-profit organization to a paid membership model, which was implemented this past September. Schafer co-founded AIMS-which now boasts over 4,500 members across the country-in 1996.

    AIMS will continue to be operated by its five-person board of directors. A new president is expected to be hired in the coming months.

    Thanks to Chris and Marketing for allowing me to reprint this.

March 4, 2003

  • Stepping Down From AIMS

    Given the AIMS Announcement that is going Tuesday morning, there will most likely be a few more visitors here than usual. If you’re new — welcome! Take a moment and subscribe to A Piece Of My Mind while you’re here.

    Right now there is a mad dash to get everything in place for the Tuesday event and to put the finishing touches on transition work, so I don’t have much time to post right now, but I promise that, starting March 10th, I’ll be posting here regularly as I have in the past.

    AIMS has been a major rush and I’m very proud of what we’ve accomplished, but it has also been an incredible drain on me personally and professionally. AIMS became a 24 hour non-stop whirlwind over the last year and it hasn’t left me much time or energy for other important things I’ve been meaning to get to — like this blog.

  • Thought

    I stopped attending Internet World in 1998. (I started attending in 94). So this ClickZ article called “Internet World — R.I.P.” wasn’t a shock to me, but it did make me a bit sad.

    While the need for a universal “everything Internet” conference is probably not realistic anymore, I pine for the days when I could know pretty much everything important about doing business online.

    Here’s a representative quote from the article:

    “The economy” is too simple an explanation of why visitors and exhibitors alike stayed away in droves. From a marketing perspective, Internet World makes no sense.
    “It’s simply not targeted,” Topica CEO Anna Zornosa shrugged after surveying the sparsely populated hall, “everyone here is only talking about how empty it is.”

September 10, 2002

  • Thought

    I rather sheepishly did something today in the AIMS ADL that I don’t normally do — point people to my own site.

    In general I’ve preferred to keep my personal opinions out of my moderation of the ADL as much as is possible (which is not entirely of course). But I included a post about blogs in this issue and I felt that my blog was a good example because it IS NOT the perfect blog. I don’t get to it nearly as much as I should to make it a really vibrant and living thing. And I don’t feel I’ve found a definitive “voice” for it (although you may hear it when you read my /opinions).

    In any case, if you got here from the ADL, thanks for following my humble link. And if you didn’t get here from the ADL, here are the links I provided in my post:

    Articles on Weblogs

    http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/javascript/2002/06/13/megnut.html

    http://www.macromedia.com/desdev/logged_in/ekrimen_blogs.html

    Weblog Examples:

    Glenn Fleishman

    Megnut

    oddblog

    Dan Bricklin

    AIMS Newsblog

    For those of you now hooked, you can read Chapter 8 (Weblogs in Business) from the book “We Blog” here:

    My questions to the ADLerati out there:

    Do you Weblog? If so, why? Business or personal?

    Do you see business advantages to Weblogs?

    Do weblogs replace or supplement other communications?

July 14, 2002

  • Thought

    By the way, the entire redesigned site is less than 200K! I know some homepages that are larger than that. Here’s to less.

  • Thought

    I should have been outside enjoying the sunshine today, but inspiration hit and an entirely redesigned website is the result. Enjoy.

January 25, 2002

  • Thought

    November 17th? How did that happen?

    Pardon the two month gap in postings. I doubt we’ll get any insights from that time online anytime soon.

    Such is life.

    We now resume regular transmissions.

November 17, 2001

  • Thought

    Yes, in fact, I have fallen of the edge of the world.

    Or at least that’s what it feels like as I do final preparations for my “Strategic E-mail Marketing” Seminar for the CMA.

    I’m doing (at least) three of these over the next six months, but since this is the first one, it is a MAJOR undertaking to pull together everything you need to know about e-mail marketing in one day.

    This explains the lack of posts for the last month or so.

September 25, 2001

  • After September 11, 2001

    It’s time to resume regular programming.

    My last post was made on September 11th at 9:14 am. It’s been hard to find a context that makes my usual commentary relevant since then. But I’m ready now. Hopefully, you are as well.

    While I chose to respond to the September 11 terrorist attacks in the US with silence, others in the weblog community turned weblogging into a vital source of voices outside the mainstream media.

    This CNET article provides some insights into the use of Weblogs since September 11 as did Wired News.

    In the days that followed the attacks, I used the following quote to sign off on my e-mail correspondence.

    “History is merely a list of surprises.
    It can only prepare us to be surprised yet again.”

    – Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

August 3, 2001

  • Thought

    The Globe & Mail was nice enough to let people know about the results of the recent AIMS poll in this article: “AIMS Poll Finds Optimism Amidst Dot-com Gloom.”

    If I sound pleasantly surprised in the article, it’s because I was. The poll shows that the “meltdown” is not quite as bad as it seems. The Net ain’t goin’ anywhere folks, so let’s just get back to making it an amazing thing and not worry about the doom and gloom.

August 1, 2001

  • Thought

    The AIMS event yesterday was well attended and I was happy to see that we had an active and vocal crowd.

    As moderator of the panel it was pretty hard for me to get an accurate read on the overall value of the session and I’d like some input on what we can do better for the next panel. If you have thoughts, please drop me a line.

    Thanks to Farhan, Kevin and Nancy Lee for making the panel a pleasurable experience for me.

July 20, 2001

  • Thought

    I’m looking forward to moderating the “Permission Panel” at the AIMS event on July 31st (if you’re an AIMS member you should have received your e-mail invite by now).

    The panel looks great:

    Nancy Lee Jobin

    President & Founder, Graffiti Direct & Interactive

    Kevin Krossing

    Managing Partner, Net Perceptions

    Farhan Merchant

    CEO, PointSite

    I’ve got a bunch of questions I want to ask, but if you’ve got some burning questions about permission-based marketing, personalization and building loyalty online, drop me an e-mail and I’ll try to get them to respond.