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UK - Come on in, the Water's Fine
~ by Renée Frappier, director of marketing
for PacNet Services
It's no secret that
expanding into international markets can
enhance distribution, boost sales and
increase brand awareness. Despite this, many
companies are intimidated by the perceived
complexity of expansion into the UK. For
marketers based in the US, the UK is a smart
choice for an overseas campaign: it has a population
of 61 million, there are
no language barriers, and the culture and
demographic do not differ too greatly from
the American market.
So what's causing the trepidation? The UK,
and the EU in general, have created consumer
protection rules that are both more clearly
defined and more easily enforced than current
North American guidelines. While easy to
follow, the new laws have teeth. Deceptive
advertising is a criminal offence and
penalties will be assessed to marketers who
flout the rules.
Consumer protection legislation may seem to
pose a challenge to the uninitiated; however,
the guidelines are amongst the most clearly
presented in the world, making it easy to
make necessary tweaks to copy that is already
compliant to US guidelines. The regulations
outline 31
practices that are considered
deceptive and bans them outright.
With these clear rules to follow, savvy
marketers are still going strong in the UK,
leveraging their understanding of their home
demographic to stretch their marketing dollar
across a global landscape.
Besides the need to honor consumer protection
legislation, other elements to consider when
entering the UK market are whether or not to
localize your promotion for UK spelling and
turns of phrase, and the need to understand
the preferred methods of payment in order to
offer a complete suite of pertinent, local
currency payment options.
Some tips for a successful UK campaign:
- Tweak an existing campaign.
Right now, major cataloguers, mailers and
ecommerce merchants are expanding successful
campaigns into Canada; These same campaigns
could be reaching a much wider audience in
the UK. If you have already ventured into
Canada, your jump across the pond will be
that much simpler.
- Use your strongest promotion.
Experience shows that your strongest
promotion in the US market will be your
strongest promotion in the UK market. Using
existing creative also allows you to
capitalize on the product development costs
already invested.
- Target your audience and use
language appropriate to it. Many marketers
make the mistake of thinking that the UK
audience is genteel, reserved and easily
offended, but this is not the case. In fact,
in the realm of wit and humour the opposite
seems to be true. If you're uncertain of how
the tone and language of your piece will be
received, create two versions and test; your
response rates will be your guide.
In order to avoid anything to "jar" the
reader, UK spelling is recommended.
Excellent online resources are available to
double check usage. (See American
and British English spelling differences
and User:SpNeo/Spelling
Guide [source: Wikipedia]) Some common
mistakes are Check for Cheque, Color for
Colour, Specialize for Specialise and Program
for Programme.
More tips for successful UK campaigns...
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Greetings!
Happy 2010! Is it "two thousand ten",
"twenty ten", or "Oh ten"? Which will win out
as "the" way to say the current year? VHS v.
Beta, Blu-ray v. HD DVD. There will be a
winner in the way to say 2010 properly, or
just be a lone wolf and say "MMX".
We are pleased to have two wonderful guest
contributors to your winter issue of GZ
News!
Back by popular demand we welcome the return
of Mark Bridges, from MBDIRECT International,
offering his direct marketing expertise in
international list selection.
Our featured
article in this issue is by
Renée Frappier from PacNet Services, bringing
her insights and experience as a global
payment service provider, focusing here on
your opportunities in the UK.
GZ News is designed with your needs
and interests in mind. Thanks to our guest
contributors we continue to bring you a wide
variety of topics from which you may benefit.
Your continued interest and encouraging
feedback helps us strive to make GZ
News better with each issue. Please keep
your feedback coming.
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| Factoring Localization Characteristics into International List Evaluations |
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~ by Mark Bridges, MBDIRECT International
The criteria brought to bear when selecting
third-party lists for an international
campaign will, and should, be based on those
that are tried and tested in your domestic
experience. In some cases you may find it a
little more difficult to establish the
comparative values for international lists
due to local differences in how information
is customarily presented, or indeed certain
disclosure limitations you may encounter with
some international data sources (usage
information for example). Nonetheless, your
domestic benchmarks are the right starting
point to gauge international list affinity
and begin to predict likely list
responsiveness.
What additional criteria should also be
factored into international list evaluations,
and how might they inform the presentation of
your offer and how you organize your sales
support infrastructure? The most important,
I believe, relate to the likely expectations
of the recipient based on the characteristics
of the list source as they relate to
localization. They pertain to both postal and
email list sources. Often these criteria will
not be readily identified in the published
data description for international list sources.
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Questions to ask international data sources... |
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| International Geocoding Append Service Launched |
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With ever-growing stores of international
client and prospect data there are creative
business needs to augment and analyze that
data that we hear about continually from you,
our forward-thinking clients. One such demand
has been increasingly to determine a
geographic coordinate from another geographic
identifier such as a physical address.
Global-Z's R&D team has heard and responded
to your request for:
- Customer and prospect location
identification;
- Customer database geographical analysis;
- Targeted geographical marketing, e.g.
seasonality targeting or radius targeting
relative to one or more retail locations;
- Asset location tracking and
identification;
- Reduction of transportation and logistics
costs through distribution analysis;
- Sales force optimization;
- Risk analysis;
With these and a host of other application
requiring geographical identification of a
physical address we've released Global-Z's
International Geocoding Service.
Currently deployed for Canada and the United
Kingdom our International Geocoding Service
continues to grow in direct response to our
clients' individual needs and business
objectives. Contact
Us today to schedule a
free test of our new International Geocoding
Service to help you hit the mark in 2010.
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How you can benefit from International Geocoding Append Services... |
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| Your Marketing Mix: The Perfect Blend is at TFM&A'10 |
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The continual opportunities and challenges to
mix the four Ps of marketing are brought to a
higher level when blending your product,
price, place & promotion on an international
scale. This year's Technology for Marketing &
Advertising show in London-billed as "the
perfect blend for truly integrated marketing
& advertising campaigns"-promises to deliver
the perfect mix for your 2010 campaigns. We
look forward to seeing you there!
What's Technology for Marketing & Advertising
all about?
- All under one roof you will be able to
source new technology solutions and tactical
information to benefit your business, such as
one-to-one demonstrations of our award
winning RealTime Enhanced Global Address
Cleansing service.
- With 60 information-packed educational
sessions and over 200 suppliers you can gain
unique strategic insight from industry
leaders to achieve bigger and better
results.
- It's all about relationships. You can
network with your industry peers and share
ideas for the future of your business.
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Learn more about mixing it up in London... |
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| Meet Carl: Many Bytes, Fewer Bites |
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My name is Carl Garder, and I run Global-Z.
Well, often I'm just lying around, but
occasionally I run. When I adopted Global-Z
as my place to work (I call it my place of
work because my business is done
outside) I was promised untold masses of
food; "bits and bites" they told me, in the
millions per day. Lesson learned! I should
have researched further when I was
considering which company to adopt. I would
have found out that there are only bits and
bytes around here, though I'm yet to
actually see any. I am well fed, so no
complaints there. The people that work here
are the best humans I know!
My primary duties are to greet every visitor
warmly, providing additional auditory
enhancement of our guests' arrival, as well
as make certain the rest of the GZ team stays
on their toes (During the wintry Vermont
weather I have to assume they still are on
their toes, because I rarely see toes in the
winter.)
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Get to know Carl... |
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