Flutterby™! : smart marketing

I've often said that I'd hapily give my medical records to the major credit card companies if they'd stop sending me some of those absurd card offers until after I had my lobotomy. I've said that half in jest, but there's a bit of reality in there: I want to know about products that are genuinely useful to me, and I'm not averse to giving information to vendors who want to develop a relationship with me: Tell me about things I'm genuinely interested in, and your advertising isn't wasting my time.

I used to think that products with fixed pricing were rather monopolistic, but as I've been drawn into the cult of Festool I've started to see some of the wisdom of controlling pricing: Vendors can't differentiate themselves on price, so they have to find other ways to be special.

The boxes the Festool tools come in are well laid out: They stack (and clip together), the tools actually fit in them, often with room for basic additions, they're sturdy and well designed enough that people actually buy them with out the tool inserts for general purpose use. They just have one flaw: The label showing what tool is in the case is only on one end. We've now put hand-written labels on the other sides of ours so it doesn't matter in which orientation they go in the closet, but...

An online vendor, McFeely's ("the square drive screw authority"), is giving away full color customized labels for your Festool containers. In one swoop they've acknowledged a problem in a product they sell, fixed it, offered me something of value, and in exchange gotten critical marketing information from me: my name, contact info, and what tools I own.

It hasn't gotten them a sale yet, but in one simple act they've started to build a relationship with me, given me something useful so I'm inclined to go to them when I need something they sell, but also gotten information from me so that they can tailor sales pitches to my needs, and rather than wasting my time with scatter-shot advertising give me actual value in their solicitations.

Other vendors of all sorts of products should take note.