Reboot

I ran a poll on Twitter late last week:

When do you think business will return to normal at your company?

• 13% = May 25.
• 20% = July 4.
• 28% = Labor Day.
• 39% = 2021 or Later.

By early this week, you can see how we might begin to reboot businesses in the Memorial Day to July 4 to Labor Day time-frame.

What does "rebooting" look like at your company?

1. For some of you, you bring employees back to the office on some sort of schedule and with new rules for interaction.
2. For some of you, it means the potential for digging out of a -50% hole.
3. For some of you, it means reopening after being closed for "x" weeks/months.
4. For many of you, it means figuring out how to reboot with a lot less in terms of marketing dollars.

So many of you in the print-side of this audience will go through a major transition.

• You will be asked to cut your circulation by 40%, +/-.
• You will be asked to find new customers in spite of the cut in your budget.
• You will be asked to use free or virtually free marketing channels to perform heavy-lifting.

Print readers know what is coming.

• Split your existing housefile into four pieces ... email buyers ... recent email clickers ... email subscribers ... and everybody else.
• You will reboot the email subscriber base differently than the non-subscriber base. 
• Your email marketing program will change ... becoming the most important program in your marketing department. You will abandon campaign-centric events in favor of merchandise personalization and encouraging messaging.
• You will leverage print effectively among customers who do not subscribe via email marketing.
• You will cut way back on print expense among email subscribers.

This is going to be thrust upon you out of necessity ... it's coming, and it is time to think ahead regarding how you will manage this transition during your reboot.


P.S.: A survey about what ad executives think is coming later this year (it's only 40 people, but you already knew the answer).