ROMI and Women's Literature -or- Pretty Fly for a Marketing Guy

Years ago, at college (more years than I plan to say), I was signing up for English classes and I saw, for the first time in my young existence, an elective called Women's Literature. I wasn't sure if it was a literature class for women or a literature class featuring women writers. I wasn't being incendiary, I was trying to understand.

This evolved into a heated debate, with me cast as the villain (a role I am always content to play), about the rationale for this type of class.

• Do they need to lower the bar so enough women writers can hop over?

• Is this so that male chauvinist professors actually consider female writers in their curriculum? This argument doesn't make sense, since small-minded teachers can now let the Women's Lit professors cover those books.

• Are we focusing on literature written from a woman's perspective? And, if so, then why not read books by both genders with similar themes and/or are written in similar places and times? I would very much enjoy reading and discussing, say, Frankenstein and Moby Dick in the same class … and I was sure a literature professor could find hundreds of such pairings.

But this isn't a blog post about Women's Literature classes, so suffice to say that I just didn't understand why we needed a subset of literature called Women's. I still don't, but now have learned not to start this discussion.

Fast Forward to 2011.

In the past two weeks I have heard a great deal of discussion about ROMI (Return On Marketing Investment) and ROMI modeling. And I just don't get it. Why isn't it simply ROI?

• Is ROMI some sort of 'special' ROI to help lower the bar for Marketing efforts?

• Did we need some new buzzword to further confound management now that we can track more and more of our tactics? "I can show you, predictably, how engaged prospects are 15% more likely to become customers, how they will spend 20% more in their first year, the margin on this spend during that period, and exactly what it costs to engage them … but let's instead talk about ROMI."

• Does this make us feel good about ourselves as Marketers?

• Or is this a term used by Marketers that cannot yet figure out how to show value without their trusty mirrors and smoke machines?

Every time I hear ROMI, I think of sports statisticians who (rightly) create coefficients to predict a player's success rates from the farm leagues into the majors. "Sure, they're batting 380 in AAA, but the pitching isn't as strong there, so it's like batting 280 in the majors. Still strong, but let's not get that excited just yet."

I am unsure if ROMI shows a higher percentage figure than ROI or if ROMI-using Marketers have different calculations to find their ROMI score. If the scale is different, then it's not really ROI. If the scale is the same, then why do we need a special term?

An example where a special designation makes sense: Instead of calculating a publication's CPM (Cost Per Thousand), for example, I was taught to calculate CPTM (Targeted). While publication A reaches 200,000 readers, we really only care about 60,000 of those and, perhaps 1/2 care about 40,000 of those, so the CPTM calculation ... based on: $s/sum[60M + (0.5 x 40M)] ... shows the cost of the targeted portion of the readership. Publication B reaches fewer people, but the CPTM might reveal a better buy, even though the CPM is higher. This makes sense, since it actually discounts non-targeted reach.

But ROMI seems to be a buzzword that puts Marketing into a special (read: lesser) class of ROI. "Your ROI is pretty weak compared to the initiatives of other executives here at BigCo, but it's pretty good for a Marketing person. Keep trying, son, and someday you'll make it to the bigs."

In short: If it's ROI, please call it ROI. If it's not, then keep your mouth shut until you can use the "ROI" term without the asterisk.

Why Do We Still Have Business Cards?

Every time I take out a business card, I feel like I'm pulling out a piece of the past.

With vcards, Outlook, CRMs, LinkedIn, QR codes, etc. haven't we progressed past having a small, printed piece of paper with our contact data on it? Even card scanners seem quaint, like they are automating the abacus.

So, let's assume the business-card-as-contact-details-mechanism is dead. Clearly there is a reason we all (or almost everyone) still have them. And I hope you think about these reasons before you order your next box of cards.

To get you started, here are three goals for post-rolodex business cards.

#1 – to be a tiny billboard I.e. to help promote your messaging and value proposition. You can either handle this with a unique design, a unique material, or by putting an advertisement (of sorts) on the back of your card. Or a combination thereof.

If you are decal manufacturer, your card could be a high-quality decal. With a dead-front*, perhaps. If you are an envelope company, use a business card sized envelope. A plastics company? Print your card on plastic**. And the list goes on.

There are other ways to provide a tangible 2" x 3.5" idea of how you are better, faster, smarter, etc. - which could even be by not making your card 2" x 3.5" in size. Remember: the card no longer needs to fit into a card holder, though it might need to fit into a pocket folder.

#2 – provide talking points for networking situations See #1 above, but you can also solve this by adding an interesting line to the back. What question do you want someone to ask you after you hand them your card? What might spur them to ask this?

A few classics, though they might be urban legends, are:

• Putting, "Don't believe me, call my Mom" and her phone number on the back.

• A lawyer with his litigation win/loss score on the back.

Some recent ones I have seen are:

• A QR code on the back of the card.

• A mini assessment (relevant to the company's services) on the back.

• Icons for the company's services lines, highlighted for the area in which the person works.†

To show we, at LargerPond, practice what we preach, our cards are thinner than normal, have rounded corners and we each have a number of different taglines.

#3 – taking notes. #1 and #2 above make this harder, so you might end up with an either/or proposition, but if you want people to write on the back of your cards, or want to write something on yours before you hand it to them, then strongly consider a plain white or light colored, non glossy card. (Why non glossy? So the pen doesn't smear.) I have yet to see a card with "Notes:" and line rules on the back, but it would not be a huge surprise to learn that there are cards like that.

All of the above is anecdotal and from personal experience, since I have seen no studies with real metrics. However, I believe most people just try to make cards "pretty", so any thinking here is likely going to provide value and spur discussion.

In short: Whatever you decide to do will be better than simply making your cards "pretty", especially if there is a business or positioning reason behind it.

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*When you can only see the printing if there is light behind it, such as the engine warning light in your car. And, yes, we created a business card like this for Muir Omni Graphics. (See http://muirgraphics.com)

**Maine Plastics has these cards. (See http://www.maineplastics.com/)

†LiquidPrint, a web development firm, does this. (See www.liquidprint.com/)