A lifetime ago or so, a work colleague of mine and I were in Las Vegas at CES and we were meeting with others who ran very similar businesses… competitors really. The competitor was talking about marketing, email marketing in particular. My colleague then went on to discuss how to do email marketing right. He discussed segmentation based on purchase, how to personalize emails based on customer purchase and product life expectancy, etc. etc. The reason this story has stuck in my mind is that at the time we had this conversation, we weren’t actually using any of these email best practices. It was on our roadmap but it wasn’t then part of what we were doing. After the meeting, I expressed my surprise to my colleague that he would make it seem that we were using techniques that we weren’t. He simply looked at me and responded that the competitor didn’t know we weren’t actually using these practices.
I had cause to think about this yesterday. I was at an event for new and emerging business owners. I had cause to speak a bit about blogs and I told the crowds about the importance of keeping your blog up to date lest your site appear to be a ghost town. I then returned to my office to realize that my own blog had not had a new post for almost two weeks.
If only the blog were the only example on which I could call myself out for not practicing what I preach. Alas, it is not. So, my (rather early) new years resolution is to practice what I preach and treat my business the way I would have others treat theirs.
Ok, done lecturing myself.
~e