The Marketing Book 5th Edition

576 The Marketing Book

Lands’ End – the cyber model

A home shopping company for nearly 30 years

and the world’s most experienced Internet

clothing retailer, Lands’ End has found another

way to make its US website more like a shop.

You can have your own personal cyber model

try on the garments that interest you to ensure

they will fit.

Lands’ End will mail you its catalogue even

if you buy from their website. Some people

prefer to browse in a printed catalogue and

shop on-line, others enjoy the interactive

website but order by phone. See point 10

under ‘Ten ways in which interactive marketing

is different’.

A last word about jargon

Viral marketing is the turbocharged Internet
version of the direct marketers’ referral pro-
gramme or MGM (member-get-member)
scheme. As customers congregate in news-
groups or chat by e-mail, recommendations can
spread like a forest fire.
Personalization has a similar meaning in
both direct and interactive marketing, but the
possibilities are more exciting in a dynamic
environment than in print.
Cookies are the small text files stored on
your computer to enable the website to recog-
nize it when you call again and record your
clickstream. This enables personalization.
However, unless you register separately, the
website will think that all users of your com-
puter are the same person.
Permission marketing is what direct mar-
keters refer to as an ‘opt-in’ or positive option
programme as opposed to an ‘opt-out’ or
negative option programme.

The interactive success formula

At the Institute of Direct Marketing Symposium

2000, two case history presentations – both

success stories – appeared to point to opposite

ways to make money from the web.

Dell showed success following from supe-

rior customer service and complete personal-

ization, allowing customers to ‘design’ their

own computers. The Internet and supporting

extranets enabled superior customer service,

making it unnecessary to compete on a pure

price basis.

easyJet used the Internet’s low transaction

costs to offer a completely standardized prod-

uct (low cost flights) at a lower than ever cost.

Surely Dell and easyJet could not both be right?

Yet each was highly successful.

The two companies, both successful direct

marketers before trading on the Internet, are

past masters of stripping out costs that do not

add value. Dell has cut stockholdings to nearly

zero by releasing sales data through the

extranet to suppliers in real time, so that they

can produce parts to order. Meanwhile, cus-

tomers do all the work of specifying the

computer and tracking its progress from

assembly to delivery.

easyJet, using its own yield management

system to maximize income from each flight,

has eliminated wastage by promoting and

releasing its schedule on-line only. easyJet has

spun-off synergistic businesses, such as easy-

Rentacar, at low marketing expense. Even the

aircraft, bearing the website address, are travel-

ling direct response ads. Compare and contrast

with British Airways’ disastrous £60 million

adventure in ‘masterbrand repositioning’.

Both Dell and easyJet are lean and mean

marketers, a direct marketing characteristic.

The direct and interactive marketer’s information system

It is essential that the direct and interactive

marketing information system includes cus-

tomer history data. The minimum history