Brown Couch Consulting

I noticed a brilliant piece of co-promotion in one of my holiday gifts. I received a calendar with daily tips for women on housekeeping. Inside, very nonchalantly, there was a business card for a woman who is a certified Feng Shui consultant. I can’t imagine that there are many avenues for Feng Shui consultants to market their services, so I can see how this combo is a great for the consultant: she has targeted her demographic, women who are interested in keeping house.

I was astonished to notice a simple customer experience mistake in one of my favorite super-brand-creating self-loving enterprises – Starbucks.   The store has posted a small sign in a clear plastic holder that stated something along the lines of “if you don’t like your drink, please let us know and we’ll make you a new one”.  Except the sign was at least 4 paragraphs long and told the unsuspecting customer in excruciating detail how much they would love to keep their business and how much they would love to hear if the drink was not done to the customer’s liking.

There are several things wrong with this setup.  First of all, the sign was not done in Starbucks colors and looked out of place.  Second, it was too verbose.  And third, it appeared cheap and broke the image of a higher end coffee shop.  In fact, for a while I thought that it was done by one of the branch managers, until I saw an identical one in a Starbucks across town.

I see this problem very often with small business marketing emails.  Owners have so much to say that they wind up creating wordy emails that span what seems like pages.  A good rule of thumb is keep any promotional email to 1 printed page.   Anything longer is left unread and annoying to the recipient.