When Gordon Ramsay walks into your restaurant with the crew from Kitchen Nightmares, more than likely he’s a little too late.

I’m sure you’ve seen at least one episode of the reality show where failing restaurant owners call upon the bombastic Chef Ramsay for one last shot at saving their sinking ship. Unfortunately, most of the restauranteurs turned a blind eye to their problems long before they called Gordon.

It’s only natural that nobody wants to admit failure, but there are times when you just have to suck up to the fact that your food is crap, the décor is outdated and your service leaves a lot to be desired. But episode after episode, restaurant owners sit back and wonder why their business is failing when the answer is right in front of their eyes.

Substitute the word “kitchen” in the show’s title and this format can be used for just about any kind of business. You know where I’m going with this right?

Your eCommerce store is in the shit, as Ramsay would say, and you’re wondering why. Let’s turn your store into a restaurant for a moment and see why sales are so bad.

As Gordon lands on your website we suddenly hear, “Good God, what’s that smell?” He takes a few more sniffs. “Jesus, this site looks like it was designed by some poof with a degree in cosmetology rather than the fu**ing web.”

First impressions count. If your website doesn’t have a crisp, clean, up-to-date look you’re turning customers away at your front door. A website should be redesigned every 18 months. Keeping your site fresh with the latest features, a new coat of paint and the latest standards in coding results in better conversions and a fast loading site that people want to shop from. And use a professional designer please, your next door neighbor’s kid may be nice, but leave this job up to the people who know what they’re doing.

After a few minutes of clicking around, we overhear Gordon say, “F**k me. What is this?” Whoops, he hit an item page that has no product description, a small image that won’t enlarge when clicked, and has a price of $99 on it. “They want me to buy this but they can’t tell me what it is? Wow, they’ve got bollocks.”

You’re not doing anyone any favors by not having complete and accurate product descriptions written for each of your products. That description needs to be unique to your store rather than copied from somewhere else so you get the best SEO bang for your buck. Photos need to be clear and professional and always upload a large image that can be enlarged to show detail.

The chef has seen enough and is ready to confront the owners.

“Are you guys f**king blind? You’re site is old, your product pages are lacking vital information and there’s nobody buying. Is your head in the f**king sand?”

In order to get a handle on what’s going on here, the chef needs to see the operations.

Here comes our first order. It’s a small one, but it’s an order. Owner one looks at it and does nothing. Owner two prints it out and places it on his desk. Four hours go by.

“Are you going to let that sit there until it grows a pair of f**king legs and boxes itself up?” the chef asks.

In the mean time the phone is ringing, but nobody is answering it. Another one goes to voice mail. “You don’t need my help, you need a miracle. I may be too late,” Gordon says.

“Please help us, we need you chef” the owners wail.

“Then get off your asses and start working you lazy piece of shit!” the chef screams.

After witnessing a horrible first day, Ramsay and his team go to work to help save this failing eCommerce company. They work through the night and greet the store owners the next morning.

“Here we have a brand new website with all the latest features that are designed to get your customers to buy more. We’re now collecting email addresses at the checkout so you can market your customers after the sale to get them to come back to spend more money.”

Gordon then unveils changes in the operations, “We put in an order processing system that automatically batches your orders and sends them to the warehouse so they can be packed within a few hours, not days. We are also emailing your customers tracking information as soon as that box is sealed. How is that for service?”

The store owners look at him with amazement.

“Look at this. Gone is voice mail. Your calls are now being taken by a call center who’s goal is to get the f**king order. Not let the customer walk away. Look, here comes another order from the call center.”

The store owners look at the chef and say, “Wow, this is amazing. We never could have done it without you.”

As Ramsay walks away he says, “Amazing. Simply f**king amazing. Here’s a business that has so much potential but the owners just don’t get it. I gave them all the tools for them to make money, lets hope to God they use them. F**k me.”

Sometimes all it takes is another set of eyes to take a look at your business and see what’s wrong. No, you don’t need the great chef to come in and do that for you, just don’t wait until it’s too late. If you’re sales are down, start asking why NOW while it’s still early and your problems can be addressed.

If you’ve got a failing eCommerce business and need some advice, well…. you’ve got my contact info.

Like you, I got a butt-load of email promoting Cyber Monday sales. Some from stores I buy from, others from companies who just like to spam people.

Being a big sales day, I would expect that merchants would take the time to make the Cyber Monday email blast the most compelling, best dressed email of the year. Eye catching graphics, motivating calls to action and above all, a good deal. Everything necessary to catch the reader’s eye and get them to click through and make a purchase.

Makes sense right?

One email I received on Cyber Monday was a prime example of email marketing gone bad. Take a look at it (you can click the image to enlarge it):

To protect the store owner from embarrassment, I’ve gone ahead and blacked-out any identifying marks, but left the entire email visible. So let’s go ahead and dissect this beauty:

• Broken Image – never, ever hit that send button until you’ve previewed, double checked, and triple checked your email for broken images and incorrect links. I looked at the source code and found the URL for the image, and when put into a browser it brings up a 404 error – page not found.
• Color Selection – the shade of greyish-green as background for teal text was a bad choice. It’s not only hard to read, it just doesn’t match.
• Use Transparent Images – the “Visit Our Site” image should have been saved as a transparent image so it blended into the background better instead of sticking out like a sore thumb with it’s white background.
• Calls to Action – sadly, there is nothing here that screams “Come to Our Store!” No imagery, no strong calls to action, no real sense of urgency.
• Design – is there really design here? Most email marketing programs give users a template gallery with some professional looking layouts. If you don’t have the graphic design and programming skills to design your own template, or can’t afford to have one made for you, these templates are better than nothing.

So how could this email be improved? Oh, let me count the ways.

• Design – a good standard template or custom designed template would improve the overall look of the email greatly.
• Feature Products – people want to know what you have for sale in your store. A few pictures of some best selling items along with sale prices would be good.
• Free Shipping – don’t want to feature specific products? Have a collage of your best selling items with “Free Shipping” as a graphical call-out to drive attention to the free shipping promo you’re running store-wide.
• Some Text – talk a little about your sale, but don’t overburden the reader with tons of text. A few lines talking about the sale and what you’re offering helps.
• Sense of Urgency – this is a limited time offer, a simple text link that says “Hurry One Day Only” isn’t creating much urgency. A graphical call-out with something like “Only 24 Hours Left!” or “Sale Ends at Midnight Tonight” may be a better choice.

These are just a few of the ways this email could be improved upon, but you should get the point – professionalism sells. Unfortunately, this email doesn’t.

Now I don’t like to call out store owners blunders, but calling attention to things like this only helps all of us. If this caused you to go back and look at your email marketing campaigns to see if you’re doing the best you can do, I did my job.

Competition is fierce and most of the time we’re all reaching for the same piece of pie. By taking the time to do things right, chances are you’re going to be the one smacking your lips enjoying a nice piece of Apple Crumb.

P.S. There’s still time to do some email marketing to capture those holiday sales.  Check out this recent blog post that talks about ways to improve your outbound email campaigns.

Is it me or does it seem like Christmas really does start in July?

When I worked in radio, we started playing the Christmas music on Thanksgiving day, and then it was only one song an hour. Now radio stations across the country are queuing up “It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year” before the Halloween candy is eaten in an attempt to be the first with the holly jollies.

It used to be that the day known as “Black Friday” was the big shopping day of the year for retailers. The day after Thanksgiving would see folks lining up at stores waiting for the doors to unlock at 9am to cash in on the best deals of the season. Now some stores are offering Black Friday deals all month long, while others are starting their sales not first thing Friday morning, but Thanksgiving night.

Not wanting to let the bricks-and-mortar stores have all the fun, the eCommerce world created “Cyber Monday” – the Monday after Thanksgiving (or the Monday after Black Friday if you’re keeping score) when the deals would flow for online shoppers. It’s also the one day of the year where at least one major etailer’s website will crash making them the top story on all the newscasts and cashing in on a butt-load of free advertising.

Just last year, yet another new shopping holiday cropped up – “Small Business Saturday” – the Saturday after Thanksgiving (or the Saturday after Black Friday if you’re not confused yet). This newly minted day of spending is aimed at supporting your hometown, locally owned, neighborhood business. The organizer of the event, American Express, encourages shoppers to visit Main Street USA instead of the big boxes on Small Business Saturday and spend (lots of) money at the mom and pops in your community.

Sunday, that would be the Sunday after Thanksgiving, or the Sunday after Black Friday, or the Sunday after Small Business Saturday, or the Sunday before Cyber Monday, seems to be the odd man out in this trinity of spending. Or could it be that Sunday is being reserved as a day of rest?

All this hype and hullabaloo leads up to the big climax on Christmas morning when kids all across America will wake mommy and daddy up at 5am to rip open presents.

And then, like Kim Kardashian’s marriage to Kris Humphries, it’s all over in 90 seconds.

Or is it?

Now it’s time for the “After Christmas Sale” where everything that was on sale on Black Friday, Small Business Saturday, Restful Sunday and Cyber Monday goes on sale again. Only this time it’s on sale for an extra 10% off.

Man, are we suckers.

I do a lot of things on my iPhone, but shopping isn’t one of them.

That all changed when the company eCommerce store owners love to hate – Amazon.com – introduced their iPhone and iPad app. Being one of the curious, I installed it, it sat on my phone for a while taking up space, then one day I decided to look for an item I couldn’t find in the nearby grocery store.

Shit, they had it in stock.

Since I’m one of these people who apparently signed up for Amazon Prime a gazillion years ago and never cancelled it, despite being billed for it every year, I could get two-day shipping for free.

I felt a little dirty as I started the checkout process. Here I am, an eCommerce entrepreneur who preaches about the evils of big online retailers like Amazon, forking over $15.99 for Kool-Aid.

It really was a box of Kool-Aid that I ordered and that one purchase turned out to be somewhat symbolic, for indeed I did drink the Kool-Aid that Amazon gave me a taste for.

Their apps make it easy for someone to find an item, add it to their cart and checkout in a matter of seconds. Plus, that little shipping bonus is a big win.

I ordered more Kool-Aid. Then dog food. A new pair of bathing trunks (do they call them that anymore?). A Skype phone. Even a Ukelele. And more Kool-Aid.

By installing that app on my phone, I became a mobile shopper. And I’m definitely not alone in that. More and more people are using their iPhone, Blackberries and iPads to shop from – whether it’s via an app like Amazon’s or a mobile version of their favorite store’s website.

Mobile commerce, or mCommerce as it’s being called, is booming. According to an article in Internet Retailer magazine, “More than 33.3 million U.S. consumers already engage in shopping-related activities on their mobile phones, says research firm Experian Simmons in its “2011 Mobile Consumer Report.” 7%, or 2.3 million, of those consumers have made a purchase on their devices, the report finds.”

What does that mean for eCommerce store owners?

Simply put, if you don’t have a mobile version of your website, it’s time you do. You may be thinking, “I don’t have any of my customers telling me I need a mobile site”, or, “my customers don’t order from their phones.” Don’t jump to conclusions until you take a look at your website’s analytics and see what percentage of your visitors are coming to your site via a mobile device. I think you may be surprised.

I did a webinar a few weeks ago where we touched on mobile. I told attendees to do just that – go look at your stats. A few came back and said, “wow, I never knew this many people were coming to my store from a mobile device.” One person told me that $33,000 worth of sales this year came from mobile – but he didn’t have a mobile website. Visitors were fumbling around on his full-website and placing orders. Imagine what that $33,000 could be if he had a site optimized for mobile.

It may not be too late to go mobile for this year’s holiday rush. A lot of mobile providers can turn around a mobile store rather quickly, so pick up the phone and make some phone calls.

The way people shop is changing.

Store owners need to adapt in order to survive.

If you need a little more persuasion, go to Amazon.com and search for Kool-Aid. It’s a pretty refreshing drink.

If you’re looking to take your Yahoo! Store mobile, Solid Cactus offers fast turn-around!  Click here for their solution.

Interested in opening a Yahoo! Store? Click here to learn more and for a special offer for new eCommerce store owners.

Looking for a shopping cart with built-in mobile commerce? Both 3dCart and Web.com offer affordable eCommerce solutions that don’t require 3rd party integrations for mobile.

If you have an informational website for your doctor’s office, restaurant, law practice, or other service based business and want to take that site mobile, Network Solutions is offering a free .mobi domain name with mobile websites. Click here for more information.

Today's marketing lesson. If you're going to use an email address on your product packaging, use one that's branded with your company's domain name.

It was snack time on my US Airways flight from Philadelphia to Fort Lauderdale today and I got a little excited as the basket made its round in the first class cabin, for I spied something new. To hell with the sea salt and cracked pepper potato chips (they’re ghastly), be banished Biscoff and help me in welcoming the latest confectionary – whole wheat fig bars.

I know figs may conjure up some bad memories, but I always liked Fig Newtons. Figs are pretty much the ugly fruit in the orchard, but they still deserve some respect.

As I bit into the fig bar, I started reading the package. The bakery that makes them has a website – naturesbakery.com – but apparently they haven’t embraced the concept of branded email yet, as the package displays an email address with an sbcglobal.net email address.

Bad marketing. Good fig bars.

The next package I laid my eyes on was for a package of “Cranberry Nut Mix.” As one would expect, this savory snack contains what else – cranberries and nuts. A quick look at the ingredients confirms that along with an unexpected warning – “Produced in a facility that processes peanuts and other nuts.”

I guess that’s good news for nut lovers and I’m sure it’s better than having nuts processed in a facility that processes sewage and other waste water. The nut warning is meant to alert those with peanut allergies not to eat the product, but I don’t think anyone with the allergy would be willingly reaching for a bag of nuts.

Next time you have way too much time on your hands, go grab some products that you have laying around the house and take a look at the packaging. You may find something on that box of cereal that may make you chuckle or say, “are these people nuts?”

Those nuts are processed where?

Looking for a domain name for your business?
Sure you are!  After all, you want your business to look professional with branded email and a great looking website found at yourcompanyname.com.  Check out Web.com, Network Solutions and Register.com for your domain name, email and webhosting needs.

Weekends were made for Michelob.

You deserve a break today.

I’d like to buy the world a Coke.

If I were an Oscar Mayer wiener.

Chances are, after reading those few lines, you’re already singing the jingles in your head. They’re all classics from days gone by and I’m sure they bring back a smile or invoke some memory of the product they sold.

But what happened to jingles?

Much like opening themes to television shows, jingles seem to have gone the way of the Smith-Corona.

Commercials that were based around a jingle or a signature music score are the ones we remember and associate a product or brand with the most. Take a moment to think of a product you remember as a kid and see if you can remember the ad campaign that surrounded it. Now take a product from from today and do the same thing.

Interesting results, huh?

Unless it’s a Super Bowl commercial that got a lot of media attention for its craziness, or a highly annoying ad that grinds your nerves, today’s commercials aren’t that memorable.

I have a lot of favorite jingles from the past, including the ones from Doublemint Gum (double your pleasure, double your fun), Alka Seltzer (plop, plop, fizz, fizz) and who can forget the Toys ‘R Us, I don’t want to grow up, jingle.

Jingles are like a Band Aid. You get stuck on them because they stick with you. And isn’t that what every marketing person wants?

A few weeks ago I hosted a webinar with email marketing guru, Michelle Johnson, for our Solid Cactus customers. The topic? Getting your email marketing in-check for the holidays. After all, this is the biggest selling season of the year for most eCommerce merchants.

This time of year everyone’s inbox get full of coupons, special sales, limited time offers, and whatever kind of “once in a lifetime” sale marketers dream up. As an eCommerce store owner, you need to make your email stand out from the rest so the recipient doesn’t just click the delete button when the “You’ve got mail” sounder goes off.

Top help your message rise to the top, here are 12 tips courtesy of Michelle that can help your open and conversion rates:

1. Set Goals. What is the goal of your email marketing campaign? Is it to get new customers, increase revenue, increase order size? Don’t just throw an email out there because you think you should. Define your goal, create a path as to how you’re going to achieve it, then act on it.
2. Look Back to 2010. You may have had a great idea for an email campaign last year and the open and click through rates were horrible. However, one email that you sent out saved your fourth quarter. Take a look at all your holiday email marketing efforts from last year and don’t be afraid to resurrect one that worked really well. To quote Michelle, “Don’t be afraid to recycle an offer as ‘Back by Popular Demand.’”
3. Create a Timeline. Set goals as to how often and when you want to send out your emails and don’t forget special dates like Black Friday, Cyber Monday, holiday shipping cut-offs, etc. Michelle and I both agree that the best frequency for sending out an email is one every two weeks.
4. Black November -vs- Black Friday. With the economy the way it is, many stores are not going to wait till Black Friday to push out the best deals of the season. Look at your competition and see what they’re doing. Don’t lose sales because you don’t want to start deals until Black Friday. If your competition is doing it, consider going along for the ride.
5. Cyber Monday. What Black Friday is for bricks-and-mortars, Cyber Monday is for eCommerce merchants. In 2010, $1 billion was spent on this stay-at-home and shop from the computer holiday. One interesting stat Michelle brought up was that 77% of all online merchants plan to send at least one promotional email to their subscribers on Cyber Monday. So, start thinking about what you’re going to be doing for the big day and get that email ready.
6. Free Shipping Day. If you’re an eCommerce store that offers free shipping every day, you already know the benefits that provides. But for those that don’t, here’s an opportunity for you to give it a shot and see how well it does for you. Free Shipping Day is December 16th and right now more than 2,000 merchants have signed up for this promotion. A quick scan of the participating stores shows that size doesn’t matter. You’ll find big-box stores as well as small online retailers participating. If your profit margins allow for such a promotion and you want to take advantage of the PR opportunities surrounding Free Shipping Day, sign up at http://www.freeshippingday.com.
7. Choose What You Want to Offer. Lets face it, you may not be able to offer the kind of deals the big boys are doing, but that shouldn’t preclude you from putting a killer offer together for your customers. Look at your numbers and see what you can afford to do. Can you do a site-wide discount? How about a free product with any order? What about a discount on ground shipping? Your customers are pretty much going to expect “some” type of offer, come up with one that fits your budget and is enticing enough to get the sale.
8. Create A Sense of Urgency. Christmas is still two months away, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t start promoting holiday sales and offers. Most bricks-and-mortar stores offer pre-holiday sales, early bird discounts and other incentives to get people to shop before the big holiday rush. Create limited time discounts and sales before the final countdown begins to get shoppers to start buying early. If you’re a little light on staff, these early deals may also help by giving your warehouse staff a little breathing room too.
9. Keep Mobile in Mind. When preparing email messages to go out to your customers, make sure you provide an alternate version that can be viewed on mobile phones. These emails should be no more than 640 pixels wide, be less graphic intensive and less text heavy. Most email providers allow you to create alternate versions or a text-only version for mobile users. And if you haven’t gotten a mobile version of your website yet, what are you waiting for!
10. Use Social Media to Your Advantage. Facebook and Twitter were the first places shoppers turned to last holiday to see what kind of deals were being offered by their favorite stores. If you don’t have a social media strategy in place now, where have you been? Create special deals and promotions for your Facebook and Twitter followers and encourage your customers to visit your Facebook page and follow you on Twitter for those offers. And most importantly, don’t just use these venues to push out coupons and deals… use them to engage your followers by holding contests, encouraging photo sharing, reviews, etc.
11. Segment Your List. List segmentation is key to a successful email marketing campaign. By segmenting your list you can tailor your message and increase conversions. If sell supplements and a new prostate supplement arrived in stock today that you want to promote to your base, if your list is segmented properly you can send that email out to men over 40 rather than your whole list. List segmentation allows you to know your customer better and provide them with a better email experience which in turn increases your open and click-thru rates.
12. Provide Value. Value can be found in other areas besides sales and coupons. By giving your customers tips and advice in emails along with the occasional sale, your chances of keeping them subscribed and coming to you to order increases. If all you do is send out sale emails, chances are your customers are just going to trash it if they’re not in the need of what you sell. Informational emails go a long way into building a strong list and strong customer relationships.

Finally, one question I’m always asked is, “What is the best day to send an email?” The only one, clear answer to that question is – the day that works best for you.

While a Tuesday send may result in great numbers for one merchant, a Friday send may send sales through the roof for another. The only way to properly determine which day of the week is best is to test. You may be surprised at what you will find.

So there it is, 12 tips for putting your best email forward this holiday season.

Happy selling!

Take 350 million Facebook users and combine them with a promotion to give away one-million-dollars worth of American Express Gift Cards then stand back and watch the latest promotional train-wreck.

The package delivery company, FedEx, teamed up with American Express to promote “Small Business Saturday” – a day set aside to encourage people to drop the big-box stores for a day and shop at their local small businesses.

To get the word out about “Small Business Saturday,” FedEx offered their Facebook fans the opportunity to score one of one-million $25 American Express Gift Cards. All someone needed to do was visit FedEx’s Facebook page at 1pm ET today (November 1) and register for the free card.

Sounds simple enough, right?

1pm came and went. No gift cards but plenty of complaints.

“FedEx please post help! Been trying since this went live and still blank page…help!!”

“Rather disappointing!! I have been on here for 51 minutes and could never get the form to load, it just keeps giving me a blank page “

“SCAM! Cause this actually makes me want to never use FedEx again.. Shame they are a big corporation and can’t get someone to run their web system and not cause such a mess up..”

“In all fairness, why don’t you just give up, let us go back to work, and try again same time tomorrow?”

“Congrats to the ones who say they got one…It will not load after 22 billion page refreshes. I could have used the gift card, but its not worth wasting more of my time trying to get thru. Way to go FedEx…:(“

“Well i have to go now.  Been at it for 50 min. I got the page but would not load. Oh well thank you anyway FedEx. It’s like iIsay it’s like playing the lottery you just might win, be thankfull they gave us a chance to even try!!!”

“FedEx just LOST a shipper – Im going to use UPS now…. False advertising is messed UP !!!”

Shortly after 1pm FedEx posted a note which said, “Hi all – we’re loading the registration for the Amex gift cards now – you will see the form very shortly – sorry for the delay!”

Then around 1:30pm signs of the promotion began to appear and several people responded with glee that they were finally able to claim their free gift card.

“I finally got it! Don’t give up!!”

“I finally got one…. alot of refreshing….”

“Mines on its way already,, woohoo….. lol”

By 2:10pm FedEx posted another update to their wall, “We are still working through technical difficulty in loading the American Express gift card form. We are working to resolve this issue and hope to have the registration form up and running soon.”

Finally at 2:19pm, one-hour and nineteen minutes late, FedEx posted that the technical issues were fixed and the promotion is live. “We’re very sorry for the delay, but the Small Business Saturday $25 Amex Shop Small Gift Card registration is live now!

Then within minutes, like a Priority Overnight package zipping down a shipping belt in Memphis, the promotion was over.

“That stinks, by the time the page was up, after trying for an hour, the cards were all gone! Unlike…”

“Ran out seconds after it went live? Not good…”

“I am more than disappointed. I struggled for 3 hours just to get a form to load and when I did, they were all gone. This was my one chance to buy gifts as I am still unemployed. I feel like the butt of a practical joke. “

“You have got to be kidding me. The system was down more that it was up. Now it seems that they are all out when I did get the tab to show.”

So what went wrong?

Much like the horror stores of websites going down on Cyber Monday, it seems FedEx and/or American Express did not anticipate the amount of web traffic this promotion would bring. I find that hard to believe, but certainly plausible. While waiting for the page to load, my browser seemed to be having problems connecting to http://amexgiftcards.stuzo.com/ a site managed by the Philadelphia advertising agency – Stuzo – who lists American Express as one of their case studies.

A high-profile promotion like this should have started on-time and the technology behind it should have been more than able to accommodate the demand that a million-dollars worth of gift cards would bring.

Unfortunately, for FedEx, the damage is done.

Pull a boner like this on a social media site and you’re bound to be doing damage control for a long time.

Of course there is a lesson to be learned here. Never underestimate the power of social media and the technological power needed to pull off a successful promotion.

I got my gift card. Maybe I should send it back with a note, “Use this to upgrade your webserver.”

FAIL!

FAIL!

30 Minutes Later

Score!

I don’t go out of my way to look for deals, because I’m a buyer of convenience. If I see something I want, I get it. Like the Keurig coffee thing I just bought. I never drink coffee. I despise the taste. But I figured it would look good in the kitchen, so I bought it.

After all, I could use it for iced tea.

If I see a deal on one of these dime-a-dozen deal-of-the-day sites for a restaurant I frequent, I’ll usually bite. If giving my email address gets me 20% off a single item at Bed, Bath & Beyond – I’m in.

One such deal I came across the other day was for the red sauce chain, Maggiano’s. The promise of a $10 coupon for joining their email list caught my eye since I occasionally visit the prepared-in-a-factory, served-on-a-plate Italian joint.

Seconds after submitting the email address I use for such in-box cluttering promotions, an email arrived with a link for my $10 coupon. As I started thinking about the heartburn the pomodoro sauce was going to induce, the excitement of the moment turned into a marketing person’s nightmare.

My ten bucks off suddenly turned into an unexpected error – and a great topic for a blog post.

If I remember correctly, rule number one of marketing is: “Test. Test again. Then keep on testing.” Testing should not only include different creative, different offerings and different hooks, it should also includes testing the technology behind the promotion.

Maggiano’s made me hungry for the deal. I gave up my email address. I fulfilled my end of the bargain. But no coupon for me.

I’m not going to lose any sleep over my loss. I would be if this were one of my company’s promotions that went awry. The last thing any marketing person wants to do is turn off prospective customers. Which is why that number one rule of marketing should always be followed.

Technology fails, so stay on top of it and make sure it’s not impeding the success of one of your promotions.

After all, the only heartburn you should have is from the pomodoro sauce, not from listening to customers complain about their missing coupon.

Keurig Platinum Single Cup Home Coffee Brewer, Black/ChromeKeurig brewing combines sophisticated technology with a selection of gourmet coffees and teas that is unmatched by other single cup systems. The Platinum Brewing System brews a perfect cup of coffee, tea, hot cocoa or iced beverage in under one minute at the touch of a button. With an award-winning design, this brewer features a blue, backlit LCD display that allows you to program water temperature, set the digital clock, Auto On/Off and your favorite cup size. With the choice of five cup sizes, the Platinum brewer offers a removable drip tray to accommodate travel mugs. Choice of 5 cup sizes – 4 oz., 6 oz., 8 oz., 10 oz. and 12 oz. Travel Mug Removeable 60 oz water reservoir Quiet-Brew Technology® Energy Savings Mode – Auto On/Off Removable drip tray

I don't eat meatloaf. Get the scrapple instead.

Lets face it. Eating dinner in an airport is not exactly an adventure down some path of gastronomical delights. Most of the time if a layover occurs around the dinner hour, you make your way over to a grab-and-go and score a wrap made a day earlier, or a slice of pizza fresh out of the industrial microwave.

Occasionally there may be a glimmer of hope by seeing a T.G.I. Friday’s or in last night’s case, a Legal Seafoods. Now chains have never been high up on my list of choices when it comes to going out for dinner, but in an airport, they often times suffice for a quick bite.

So over to Legal I go for a salad and some fried shrimp while I await my flight. I get seated at a “community” table of single travelers, where the seating was about as comfortable as a 12 hour flight in coach. A middle aged woman sits across from me and the server comes over to take her order, and the conversation went something like this:

Customer: “How is the blackened swordfish?”

Server: “I don’t know, I don’t eat seafood.”

Me: “Then why the <beep> are you working here?”

I may have been a little rough on the poor girl, but I’m sure it’s not the first time she heard the f-word. But I sat there for a moment wondering what just went on. I’m sitting in a seafood restaurant, and a server can’t tell the customer about a seafood dish because she doesn’t eat seafood.

In any business, whether you’re the owner, a supervisor, a customer service rep or a server, you are expected to be the expert in what your business offers. Whether it’s swordfish or fountain pens, when a customer asks a question about something you sell, they expect an educated answer.

In this instance, the server didn’t have to say she doesn’t eat seafood. She simply could have said, “I serve a lot of the swordfish and the customers who order it blackened really enjoy it, it’s a good choice if that’s what you’re in the mood for.”

I have never kept any of my dogs in a dog crate, that’s my personal preference. But I sell dog crates. I know that an important part of housebreaking puppies is crate training and that even after they’re crate trained, the crate should remain their “home.” When a customer asks me about a which crate to buy, I don’t say, “Well, I never crate trained my dogs because I don’t like to see them in a crate.” I simply ask the proper questions that lead me down the path to recommending the proper crate for the size of their dog.

Being an expert in your company’s products doesn’t take years of training. Most of the time it just involves familiarizing yourself with the different items, their use, hearing feedback from customers and a little touchy-feeley with the items themselves.

Little things like this go a long way in gaining the customer’s respect and getting them to fork over the credit card.

Even if they hate seafood.