All For You by Brian Keith

Recently, a firm I use made a big mistake. I was inconvenienced and unhappy.

They fixed the problem (eventually), and sent a Starbucks gift card.

I went to starbucks this morning and used the card.

Total value?

5 bucks.

IE, less than the price of coffee and a donut at Starbucks.

Fortunately, I bought less than $5. But you can imagine if you usually didn’t go to starbucks, going just this once to use the gift card, and finding that you had to pay a dollar or two more to get your coffee and donut.

I understand that they want to keep costs down, but I have used this company for 10 years. A $5 card? Come on, guys, you can do better than that.

If you are going to go to the trouble of saying “sorry, we screwed up, here is a gift,” make it at least $10-$20. Give me a pound of See’s chocolate- that way I’ll know you care!

Enjoy my email marketing column.

A reader of my newspaper column asks:

“Hello, I read one of your article and had a question. How important do you think domain names are to internet marketing and what should the domain name have in it for effective marketing?”

Domain names are fairly important, but not the end-all of internet marketing.

If you want people telling your name to their friends, it needs to be easy to say and easy to spell. Take my other blog- Advice from the Top. That blog lives at Advicefromthetop.com, as you would expect. Easy to say, hard to misspell.

I would mention that your domain matters less if no one is supposed to be sharing it with friends and colleagues, but why not choose a melodious name?