I was in Indianapolis in a very nice hotel and my kids had just gone to bed when I sent the above Tweet. I was shopping for a hotel room in Des Moine, Iowa on Orbitz, Travelocity, Kayak and Priceline. I got frustrated because for as many “deals” as I found I still felt like I was relying on computer algorithms and paid for placements than real people who had slept in the places I was sorting through. I sent out the message and other than a link to a similar travel search site’s results the only other reply I got was…
Twitter isn’t for everyone and in fact a lot of research shows that Twitter (for all the hype it gets) is mostly made up of nerdy, techy, younger crowds of people. That being said, I still love Twitter and I think it’s going to be a medium of communication for a long, long time. If you’re a brand and you’re not on Twitter then you might suck. Your target market might not be on Twitter and that’s valid. Sitting on the sidelines because you don’t like the game isn’t going to make Twitter go away though. When I got the above Tweet from Country Inns and Suites in Clive, Iowa I thanked them for their response and visited their web site. Then I screwed up.
William Shatner sortof bugs me so I’ve never used Priceline to book a hotel before. My usual pattern for finding a room is to search on Orbitz.com or Kayak.com. Last year I stayed at a La Quinta Inn in Nashville and gave them my email address so I could get some coupons in my inbox every once in awhile. Sure enough I started getting some deals this summer. When I called the La Quinta in Davenport, Iowa to ask them about getting a room for a future trip I spoke with a less than enthusiastic clerk who seemed not so interested in earning my business.
Here are some facts. There are two La Quinta Inns within 10 minutes of where we planned to stop. One is near the airport in Moline and the other is more centrally located in Davenport. The price difference was about $25 (airport was cheaper). I asked the clerk at the Davenport location if he could match the airport price and he gave me an answer every customer hates to hear, “We’re a corporate store and they’re not so they can move their prices around in a way we can’t. I can’t match that price.” Translation for customer…”I’m not invested in the success of this business. I’m not on commission. I don’t care that you could become a lifetime customer. I’m not going to try to earn your business.”
Gmail is my go to tool for email and it should be yours too. If it is then you may not know the true power of its features so here’s a good one. Have you ever wanted to search for a message from a friend that you know had an attachment included but found yourself sorting through dozens of messages looking for the small attachment icon? This video explains how you can search for messages with attachments using an advanced search term in your gmail “has:attachment”
So try it out and let me know if it works for you OK? If you’ve got more Gmail questions then you can email me at Andy@AndyTraub.com and I’d be happy to help you out. I’m a few days away from releasing “Mastering Your Gmail”, which is an hour and ten minute tutorial. Stay tuned for that as well.
For those who use 37signals’ Basecamp service to manage projects this tip might save you some time. If you have repetitive processes for clients/teams you can create templates of to do lists and import them to projects with just a few steps. Here’s how. Let me know if it works for you and specifically what lists you’re automating.
I found a sweet plug-in for WordPress that allows you to have visitors plug in their information and it automatically populates in your Highrise account. I hope it helps. If it does leave me the link to your site so I can check yours out. (WARNING: My plugin is creating multiple duplicates of people who enter their information so I”m disabling it for now until I get some answers on how to fix it! I’ll update this post when I have more news.)
