RSS

I love the personalization of RSS feeds - now if I could just get some of the organizations I interact with to get onboard. My daughter's school still sends a huge newsletter each week - and I really only need about 10 percent of the information. The same is true for my healthclub and the animal shelter where we volunteer.

My favorite nugget I just picked up is:

Mouthonomics
By Jackie Huba
A new study from Satmetrix provides some new numbers on how customer evangelists can help grow your business. And how customer vigilantes can hurt it.
The study examined customers in the computer hardware industry and found, using the Net Promoter methodology, that "promoters" would spend about $1,818 of their own money and refer an additional $816 of revenue from friends and associates.
http://www.churchofthecustomer.com/photos/uncategorized/2008/03/27/picture_6.pnghttp://www.churchofthecustomer.com/photos/uncategorized/2008/03/27/picture_6.png
That means a customer evangelist helped inspire sales that was nearly equal to 50% of what she'd purchased.
Some quick math shows the potential of customer evangelists more dramatically: Let's say a business has 1,000 evangelists whose average purchase during a period of time is $1,818. That means the group will have spent $1.8 million of their own money and referred $816,000 of business for a total of $2.6 million. Very quickly the cost of goods sold begins to decline while gross margins go up.
Satmetrix found that detractors (or customer vigilantes, as we like to call 'em here) spend a little less, but their bad buzz caused lost sales amounting to $1352 per detractor, nearly negating any of their actual value as a customer.
The bottom line with evidence like this: diligent listening is key. It's imperative to know whether customers are referring you or bad-mouthing you.
The talkative ones are the leading indicators of your future.

New Favorite Hobby - Geocaching

My kids and I discovered this two weeks ago and have been on the hunt for Scottsdale Caches. So far we've found five and hidden two. What amazes us that in such a short period of time, thirteen people have found our caches and added to them - the items ranged from a cool pirate coin to a rubber chicken. We're still trying to determine what our signature "treasure" will be.

More info at http://www.geocaching.com/