Perhaps the ultimate irony of being a mom is that after a long day of several small people pawing at you, the ultimate indulgence would be to surrender yourself to the expert hands of one large person.

Yet why don't moms -- most in need of massage -- get massage?

Two reasons:

No Time. Most massage therapists schedule weeks in advance and many do not offer evening appointments.

No Money. Who can justify $100+ an hour for something "unnecessary," especially if you may have sacrificed your salary for the unpaid career of mothering.

To the rescue comes the recipient of this month's coveted Warm Blanket Award: Massage Envy.



This nationwide "chain" of 810 massage clinics offers massage for just $49 an hour. They are open seven days a week and stay open until 10 p.m. every weekday. They have so many massage therapists that you really can get an "on-call" massage as easily as a booked-in-advance one.

This business model is ingenious. Too bad the marketing folks aren't smart enough to shout this positioning right from the home page. Buried in the "About Us" section of the website is this copy which would make any mother swoon:

We have learned the primary reasons that people do not receive massages on a regular basis are time and price. Massage Envy has partnered with massage therapists whose prime objective is to be available more hours and charge less so that more people can take advantage of their services. We have utilized a membership based approach that brings massage therapy out of the elite and expensive circle and makes it available to everyone. We are committed to delivering a highly professional, very convenient and affordable experience every time.

As if we couldn't love this company any more, they are offering $35 massages on September 15 as a Breast Cancer fundraiser. From all of us tired moms, we say to Massage Envy: "Thanks. We are putty in your hands."

Labels: Marketing to Moms, massage, Massage Envy

Please leave your thoughts and opinions in the comments section below, even if -- no, especially if -- you don't agree with what I've written.

Yes, yes, you read that right.

The 10-years-in-the-making, greenest museum on earth is the recipient of this month's uncoveted wet blanket award.

Here's why.

There are 895 reviews on Yelp for the Academy. Of the 20 most recent posts, 18 come from mothers. Of just these 20, 17 make reference to crowds, lines, difficulty parking, and cost.

Some excerpts:

"And the crowds are thick...really thick."

"We did not get to see that exhibit as there were no passes available. That was a big bummer. Even if we had gotten passes, the people in line waited a long, long time to get into the exhibit."

"Parking is very frustrating. We were at this place for less than 3 hours, parking was $10 AND there was only one, yes one, parking ticket paying machine on the entire and huge parking level. The line was ridiculously long. The machine location is
downright stupid...right in the path of cars driving in the ramp."

"Just far too spendy to consider revisiting; $24.99 per person."

"Overall, it was a great experience minus the crowds and minus the price."

"Arrive before the doors open if you want to be assured a spot inside. There was a HUGE line ALL DAY."

These quotes are nothing compared to those on TripAdvisor, likely because those visitors traveled from other states or countries to see the museum. Their postings have titles like "Totally underwhelming" and "Overhyped and overpriced."

What these reviews reveal is a critical truth every marketer must know. Your customer's entire experience is your brand. No matter how glorious your museum's architecture appears, nor how pithy your tagline, the single most critical thing is the takeaway for the customer. Your "living rooftop" gets lost in a customer's mind when all she can remember is the gridlocked parking lot she endured with her cranky kids.

My biggest beef with the museum is that they don't seem to be minimizing these well-publicized problems. Case in point. When you finally join the huge line out front, ticket in hand, you aren't able to just file in at once.

No.

That.
Would.
Be.
Too.
Swift.

Instead, they pull each group aside to pose in front of a blank backdrop and have their picture taken. This delay is entirely in the interest of the museum and another profit source that seems usurious given the steep cost of admission, parking and food here. Whoever at the Academy greenlighted this offering either doesn't know how frustrated museum-goers are or, worse still, doesn't care.

Labels: Bad Customer Experience, California Academy of Sciences, marketing to mothers

Please leave your thoughts and opinions in the comments section below, even if -- no, especially if -- you don't agree with what I've written.

Hard to believe that as recently as the mid-1990's, gift cards didn't exist. Now they're so commonplace that I actually carry a separate mini-wallet just to hold them all.

Moms love gift cards for the following reasons:

1). Time-Saver: no packaging or wrapping involved

2). Good for the earth (see #1)

3). Flexible: The recipient can pick his or her gift -- a real bonus when buying for kids whose interests change daily, sometimes hourly

4). Convenience: You can purchase gift cards from dozens of retailers right in line at the grocery store, saving a trip (see #1 and #2)

5). Ease: Retailers like Starbucks are making tiny giftcard fobs that fit right on your keychain. When you've got a baby on your hip and a hot latte in your hand, this kind of simplicity is a beautiful thing.

Retailers love gift cards for different reasons:

1). 33% of gift card value is never used: a handy profit due to consumer forgetfulness

2). Those who do use their gift cards typically spend 20% more than the card's initial value

3). Cards are reloadable so that once a consumer has gone to the trouble of registering a card online, they're more inclined to keep using it

What's really new and exciting in this emerging space are the sites cropping up that let consumers buy, sell, swap, auction or donate their cards. The biggest players so far seem to be Dog Paw Giftcards , Plastic Jungle and Card Avenue.

That gift card you got from your mother-in-law from her personal favorite retailer where they sell the sequined Christmas sweaters? Swap it. That card with the small balance not even worth the drive to redeem? Donate it. That card you wish was cash instead? Sell it.

Even better, many of the sites let you buy gift cards at a great discount from other sellers. On Plastic Jungle, I found a Talbots gift card with a value of $337 offered for $204.99, a savings of 39%. In this economy, savings like this add another reason to the list of things mom love about gift cards.

What's in it for you, the mom marketer?

Here's a tip: if you do any kind of couponing to moms, consider changing your formatting to be more gift-card like. Retailers report that when they switch from paper gift certificates to gift cards, they sell between 50-100% more. Direct mail companies also report upticks for gift-card "coupons." I've encouraged several of Maternal Instinct's clients to print savings coupons on heavy card stock with rounded corners and to snot-glue them on mailers. There's just something about this format that telegraphs value and practically screams: "pull me out and put me in your wallet."

Labels: Card Avenue, Dog Paw Giftcards, Email marketing to moms, gift cards, Plastic Jungle

Please leave your thoughts and opinions in the comments section below, even if -- no, especially if -- you don't agree with what I've written.

Slate posted an interesting article recently called Orphaned Tweets: When people sign up for Twitter, post once, then never return. According to a study at Harvard Business School, 10% of the service's users account for 90% of the tweets.

This tells us two things.

1). Twitter matters or Harvard Business School wouldn't be studying it.

2). Early adopters are monopolizing the Tweetsphere.

This study doesn't surprise me. I am astonished daily to see dozens of tweets from a single person I'm following, often posted within seconds of one another, so that their thumbnail mug appears like a repeating pattern down the left-hand column of my web page.

Here's what I don't get: when do these people work?

I believe in social media. I believe Twitter is a valuable method for reaching customers and quickly disseminating information.

I also happen to believe that technologies like these can be so disruptive that true thinking -- that which requires longer increments than a few minutes -- is bypassed to compete in the Internet's seductive popularity contest of amassing followers at any cost.

This subject resurfaced for me today because of a blog posting I saw about a real-world experiment. The author is purposefully limiting his Internet usage to two hours a day simply because it's the only way he can get his work done. In a truly ironic twist, it took an Internet outage for this guy to grasp a real lightbulb moment. In the absense of Twitter/Facebook/Craigslist (insert your own Internet time-suck here) distractions, real genius flowers.

Labels: Harvard Business School, Marketing to Moms, Slate magazine, Twitter

Please leave your thoughts and opinions in the comments section below, even if -- no, especially if -- you don't agree with what I've written.