The Big Fat Marketing Blog

……’Cause it is my favorite holiday.

Whether you found this post before December 25 or after the new year via a link in our new enewsletter Chief Direct Marketer, chances are you’re feeling a little overwhelmed. If it’s the former, you’re snowed under in the crunch of last minute errands and shopping. And if it’s the latter, you’re waiting for the avalanche of bills to come in. Either way, welcome!

The holidays are an excellent time do an assessment of customer service, from sales clerks to fulfillment. How did the merchants you frequented fare during the 2010 holiday season? Here’s how a few who got some of my hard earned dollars did.

You Darn Dirty Mouse!!!!!

On Cyber Monday (or Black Friday, I don’t know, its all a blur now), I discovered a hard to find Club Penguin toy for my son on DisneyStore.com. And it was on sale! And there was a discount for orders over $100! And free shipping on orders over $75! The latter two factors certainly spurred me to add a few extra items on to my order, even though the site was extremely buggy, causing me to switch browsers and reload pages multiple times before placing my order.

And I was a happy camper when the order arrived—happy that my kids weren’t home, that is.

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Christmas came early for some merchants in the form of wintery weather throughout much of the country.

States such as Minnesota, Ohio and New York saw more than a foot of snow in the past few days, while record low temperatures were reported from Virginia to Florida yesterday and freezing rain was expected to fall on Kentucky and Tennessee and nearby states today. more

It’s hard to say whether the storms that blew across the Midwest had a significant impact on attendance at the DMA’s National Center for Database Marketing conference: A Monday morning session on analytics was standing room only, true. But the room held around 70 or so seats, and it had only three concurrent competitors.

Perhaps a better indicator was the lunch session which followed it: A rough estimate based on filled chairs yielded around 170 attendees. A half dozen tables set up in the banquet hall were left without place settings.

That said, DMA CEO Lawrence M. Kimmel told Direct Newsline that attendance is running around 18% higher than last year. And there were doubtless more than a few latecomers, due both to the aforementioned storms as well as the fact that Monday’s sessions consisted of longer, focused intensives. more

Before I jump right in to analyzing the 701 Christmas season marketing emails I received last week, I want to call out a company that would do the Grinch proud: Dr. Leonard’s. In every email I received from the catalog seller of what my mother used to call chazzerai, “Free Shipping On Every Order” appeared in a big banner across the top. Often free shipping was cited in the subject line too. The company isn’t lying: It does offer free shipping. But as it notes in mice type one screen down, “all orders will include a $3.95 handling charge.”

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Just when I thought I was finally over Steve & Barry’s, two years after that single-channel retailer’s demise, I’ve been hit with another ton of bricks. TJX announced today that it’s closing all 162 of its its A.J. Wright stores.

That means 4,400 people are going to be out of jobs, though many will find new employment when TJX converts 91 of those locations into Marshall’s, T.J. Maxx and Home Goods locations. The company is also closing A.J. Wright’s two distribution centers. more

I’m going to level with you right off the bat. I can’t recall the last time I wrote an entire sentence without almost mixing in some short code. My media consumption habits have been flipped on their head. I wish daily that I could develop a device that thwarts the space-time continuum and allows me at least enough time to feel like I’ve had enough time to accomplish something.

And during my very limited freetime I feel like I’m having my personal space invaded and interrupted as for some reason brands are using the same old, formal marketing strategies to try to connect with me. They’ve even taken these formal strategies with them onto the emerging medias. more