This is Jonathan Goodman. Welcome to another episode of The World of Internet Marketing. Today we have Shari Maxwell McConahay of The Internet Fairy and Metamorphic eCommerce. In 1994, Shari started transforming her family’s brick and mortar costume business into an e-commerce company. That business then morphed into her own Metamorphic eCommerce, Inc, which she runs with her husband. It is home to AnniesCostumes.com, SantaSuits.com and StageandTheatreMakeup.com. They sell costumes, costume accessories, and professional makeup for stage.
Penguin costumes. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
In 2010, she began the Internet Fairy, Inc. – Magical Marketing in a Digital World, where she specializes in e-commerce consulting, SEO for e-commerce, copywriting, blogging, and social media. She utilizes over 20 years of e-commerce and online marketing experience for her clients. Her writing has been featured online in the Huffington Post, DMANews, Search Engine Journal, PRDaily, Wikitravel, Lucky magazine, and many other websites and blogs. She is also currently the Online Content Chair board member at SFIMA (South Florida Interactive Marketing Association). Welcome Shari.
Shari: Thank you so much. I’m really excited to be here to talk to you today.
Jonathan: Absolutely. Those are a lot of websites to handle. We spoke during the pre-Halloween season and you were frenetic. There was a lot of action going on. Can you walk us through what it takes to run a business that is essentially looking for sales for one day?
Shari: Well, it’s obviously a really big challenge. We kind of have Halloween on the brain all year long. It’s a business I grew up in, so it’s almost second nature to me because I’ve been in the business since I was very young. Before my parents even had the costume business, they had a card and gift business. So that was also very seasonally oriented. That was from the time I was a baby, so I grew up with it. The challenge of a seasonal business is getting it right because you only have that short window of time. Especially in the online space, where A/B testing and things that you can get right for next week or next month, we don’t have that. So it’s a lot of planning throughout the year. And it’s obviously very, very busy all at one time. We’ve gotten to the point where we go over what was wrong right away because in a couple of weeks you’ll forget. We’d also go over what was wrong each year and improve upon that the next year.
Jonathan: What is the window of sales when it comes to Halloween?
Shari: We start to see a very slight lift at the end of July, but that’s really the super early birds who are the Halloween freaks who can’t wait and they already know want they want to be. Around August, right after back-to-school we start to pick up. Most of the country gets into back-to-school mode, and it seems like as soon as parents are done with the back-to-school shopping, they start thinking about fall and start thinking about Halloween and we start seeing a lift there. Obviously, the biggest amount of sales come in October. A lot of them come last minute, which is a challenge for the online space because they don’t want to pay for next-day shipping. Next-day shipping is extremely expensive, contrary to what people may believe. And especially for a small business that isn’t a Zappos or an Amazon with our UPS hub at our disposal, it’s quite expensive. So it’s a short window of time. The date that Halloween falls on can even make it shorter or extend it a little longer. But because of the next-day shipping and the expense of that, it shortens the window considerably
Jonathan: Are you primarily focused on content marketing? Or are you doing PPC advertising?
Shari: For the most, right now I’m doing content marketing. We’re working on redesigning our website. We’ve had a lot of challenges with that, even for someone who is a veteran. I’ve been in it for a really long time, but it’s still really difficult and challenging to get the website correct for what we need. So I’ve kind of put off the Pay Per Clicks. I’ve concentrated on organic and social. All that content is really super important obviously now with all the changes. But as far as Pay Per Click, I started that when it was Go To and then Overture. So I know all about that and I’ve done a lot with that over the years, but right now I’ve had to hold off until our website gets the conversion rate boosted back up to where we need it.
Jonathan: You didn’t experience a hit from the Google penalties, though?
Shari: No. It wasn’t Goggle penalties. It was that at the same time, we went through a website design change. It’s kind of a long story that’s maybe better for a different topic on another day. But because we started so early, we kind of got stuck in a rut with the website that was built in 1999 on ColdFusion and we were stuck with that through the 2000s trying to get out of it and get switched to something new. We had several failed attempts. I like to think I’ve learned from that and impart knowledge from that in my consulting now. What happened was that right at the same time, 2010-2011, we switched over to a new platform. We ran on that ColdFusion the whole time. Since then, we’ve had a ton of problems getting everything integrated.
Jonathan: I would hope that you went to WordPress.
Shari: No. We did not go to WordPress. It’s on the Magento.
Halloween Costumes 1980 (Photo credit: Zombie Normal)
Jonathan: That is another conversation because many companies like yourself started very, very early with basic HTML. Maybe they went to a ColdFusion. I know back in the day, I was working on BroadVision. It was very cumbersome software with a lot of enhancements. If you needed something, it took a developer to sit there and really build it out. It was a big mess. And now as the code has gotten sleeker, you made that transition and it sounds like there have been stops and starts.
Shari: Yes.
The Customer is Not Always Right
Jonathan: Let’s switch gears and focus on customer service. You’re in a particularly interesting area because of the time issue. You’re not focused 365 days a year. You’re saying basically July to October. You were talking about three months prior to October, right?
Shari: Yes.
Jonathan: So how does a company like yours manage customer service and possible negative client service in such a short span of time?
Shari: It’s definitely challenging for us because we’re a small, Mom & Pop company. We always have been. And I’ve dealt with customer service myself growing up in the business. My first job was working directly with people. So I came to the customer service topic from an aspect of not somebody who is going to sit there and tell you that this is the way it should be from a philosophy standpoint. It’s because I’ve lived it. I’ve had customers beat into me and make me cry. I can approach it from the standpoint of where it’s going to be a fair policy for both the customers and for a small, medium-sized business that doesn’t have the financial backing to say “That’s fine. We’ll just refund you.” And the other challenge that we have because we’re seasonal and a costume business is that you can’t wear your costume and then send it back and say you want your money back.
Jonathan: Right.
Shari: And that’s a big challenge. When we had a retail store, which we don’t anymore, but when we did, it was a very strict no-refund policy, There were signs everywhere and there was a stamp put on every receipt because they had to understand that you’re not bringing it back. Even if you buy it in September and on October 15th you decide ‘Oh, I want to be something else,’ that costume was off our sales floor for a very important amount of time. The same with the Web. We don’t take things back. We have come up with a policy that we believe is fair. We allow them to exchange it right up until the last 10 to 15 days. At that point, then there’s none. You can still exchange it, but you can’t return it. And it’s a stricter policy. So we end up dealing with people who get quite upset about that because they’ve changed their mind or decided they don’t want to have a party. Kids often change their minds, about every other day, about what they want to be. So we try to make sure that policy is upfront. Sometimes we might take a hit in conversions for it, but in the long run, I feel it balances out better rather than having upset customers who say ‘well, you didn’t tell me.’ On our website, we have a check box that says they must read and agree to our policy of returns and exchanges before finishing the order. Aside from hearing people say ‘you shouldn’t do that because it’s hurting your conversions,’ I feel like it’s a more fair thing to do for us and for our customers. Ultimately, with a small company like ours, my husband and I are the ones dealing with an upset customer, especially if it’s after season and we don’t have any temp employees left.
Jonathan: Are you actually moving the physical product from your location? Or are these affiliate deals?
Shari: They’re not affiliate. We’re actually a drop shipper. We have morphed our business several times. We had brick and mortar. Then we had our own warehouse and we did our own ordering and fulfillment. It’s very difficult to do that for a seasonal business because you’re paying year-round to warehouse product, employees and everything for only a small seasonal time of business. So we’ve now switched. Nothing is shipped from us. It’s all drop-shipped from several different suppliers. There are 40,000 different products, so that gives us the opportunity to offer a really wide selection and not have to warehouse it or ship it or pay people to ship it.
English: A woman wearing a cow Halloween costume. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Jonathan: With 40,000 products, you really need to have a tight relationship with the drop shippers to know what their inventory is and what their ability is to move that product in a short amount of time.
Shari: Right. And that’s where our website woes are coming in. With the integration of those feeds and making them show up properly. And then instead of being a merchandiser, our job on our end becomes a web optimizer and content manager and marketer.
Jonathan: With the customer service, obviously some people are not going to like it. Everyone has these terms, policies and conditions where people have to check a mark off and say that they’ve read the terms and policies, but you probably actually state what the policy is on the checkout and the customers have to clearly check that, right?
Shari: No, it just says please check here to say that you’ve agreed to our return and exchange policy. I can’t think of the exact terminology right now, but it doesn’t list that because I think that would be too much of a hindrance in the checkout procedure. If I’m talking to somebody else in a different business, you always want the least point of resistance on that shopping cart side to get that sale.
Jonathan: Absolutely.
Shari: So I came up with my own compromise. It does say it’s a return and exchange policy and hopefully the customer might understand that. With other companies, large companies, offering no-hassle returns and exchanges 365 days a year, it makes it difficult because everyone thinks that’s the way it should be for everybody. And that you should be able to return your dirty, used costume on November 10th and get your money back.
Jonathan: Right. You’re dealing with the small business against the large corporation mentality. I understand that.
Managing Customer Service through Social Media
Jonathan: Some of these customers, good and bad, must be using social media to talk about your product. You, of course, are talking about your product in social media. How does that work when you have to deal with something over the Internet?
Shari: Obviously, it hits home and it’s hard to not take it personally, which is something that you can’t do when you’re dealing with customer service. It’s hard to take myself out of the personal situation, like they’re attacking me or my product and my company. So I’ve learned not to take it personally, especially when it comes to social media. I let them know right away on the post or wherever it is that we’re addressing the problem, that we’re looking into it and that we’re sorry. All of the top 3 things that they want to know: that you care, that you answer them, that you’re not some robot, that you’re not a company overseas. And we try to portray that this is our family company, we’re doing the best that we can and we’ve been doing this for a long time, so they know it’s not just a 30-day store that pops up for Halloween time and then goes away. That is our business year-round, year after year. We let them know right away on social media. We address the problem, we apologize and take it off-line instead of having a big debate back and forth – - this isn’t the right size, it doesn’t look like the picture, well, you don’t look like the model and maybe that’s why you don’t look like the picture. Anyone looking at the complaint on Facebook or Twitter or anywhere will see, ok, they addressed it, she replied to them right away, she said she was sorry. Then I’ll even go back to the post and say ‘Thanks so much for letting us know. I’m glad that we were able to take care of this on email today,’ or something like that. So it’s me doing it. It takes time out of my day, but it’s something I wouldn’t hand over to somebody else.
Jonathan: Are you monitoring these things using a HootSuite or some type of tool to give you an alert that somebody is posting something?
Shari: I actually run everything manually right now. We’re only in three spaces. I’m on Facebook everyday anyhow. I see it almost immediately. I get alerts on Twitter if somebody sends a message. The other one is Google Plus and I would see that right away too. So I keep it small and manageable for myself rather than what a large company would do. And I try to address and fix things right away.
Customer Acquisition vs. Customer Retention
Jonathan: Before we did this session, we were talking, going back and forth about elements, and you were talking about customer acquisition and customer retention. You said that acquiring a new customer can cost 6 to 7 times more than retaining an existing customer. Can you walk us through customer acquisition vs. customer retention?
Shari: Sure. Basically what that statistic speaks to is that customer service is so important because it helps you keep that customer rather than having to spend money on Pay Per Click or on organic looking for new customers. If you treat the customers you have well and keep them, they’ll stay with you. Then you have a happy customer and happy reviews from the customer plus the lifetime value of that customer. For us, we love to see customers come back year after year. We love to have our customers send us their pictures. We benefit from that. We’re in a happy category. It’s not medical supplies and it’s not boring widgets. It’s something that we hope customers are happy about and not sad, upset about or bored with.
Jonathan: You said that over a 5-year period, customer acquisition rates could reach as high as 50% if databases aren’t left dormant. I think what you’re saying there is that for the customers that you’ve held on to, if you still don’t tug at them and market to them, you could actually lose half of those people that you’ve retained previously.
Shari: Right. If you’re too complacent with your marketing, they’re going to forget about you. They’re going to see somebody else’s ad and go with them. Part of what customer service does is create loyalty. We go for those personal relationships. We’re Mom & Pop, it’s just us running it. You’re going to talk to the owner if you call or email. The other part of it is that we still try to have touch points with the customers throughout the year even though it’s not Halloween. We are open all year. We note all the other holidays. We have fantasies.com. Christmas is our second biggest time of the year. We sell professional Santa suits, Christmas costumes and even costumes for plays at churches. This time of the year we still stay busy. We just had Gasparilla. That’s in Tampa, near where you went to school. You don’t know about Gasparilla?
Jonathan: I have no idea what Gasparilla is.
Shari: Gasparilla is a huge pirate festival in Tampa right on the bay. It takes place every January. It’s usually the weekend of January 30th and 31st.
Jonathan: I bet that started after I graduated.
Shari: It must have. It’s probably a more recent thing. But it’s pretty big. All the pirate enthusiasts are really big into that. So there’s that. Then Valentine’s Day. Down the stream here, we have Dr. Seuss’s birthday. It’s actually big for Cat in the Hat costumes because all the schools do something and all the libraries do something. We have that. Than we have Mardi Gras. We have St. Patrick’s Day. Then Easter is a really big one for us with bunny and Biblical costumes.
Jonathan: I do find that you’re completely reinventing the home page and the navigation based upon the celebration that’s in effect.
Shari: Yes. We try to keep up with what’s popular and what’s going on and what’s coming up. It still is a tricky thing with our email list because some people are not interested in those holidays and we don’t want to bother them all year with emails. So we’ll only send a few emails that reaches the bulk of our list. Then the ones that have subscribed to get holiday emails would get one probably once a month or once every other month. Ideally I would love to be sending emails out once a month. But if they’re just not interesting, it will damage the list if they only want to hear from us around Halloween.
Jonathan: We’ve had great success with MailChimp. This isn’t a plug for MailChimp, but we recently switched from Constant Contact to MailChimp because MailChimp really allows you to segment your audience. So if you have a list of 10,000 people in your email list and you’re able to determine that 1,000 of them, in addition to Halloween, also buy for St. Patrick’s Day, you can move them into a segment. Then during Halloween, you can email everybody, but during St. Patrick’s Day, you can email that specific group within that segment.
Shari: Right. And that’s kind of what it’s about. Segmenting it to make sure that we’re not bothering the customers and making them unsubscribe if they still want to hear from us August, September, October about what’s going on for Halloween. We do try to keep busy the rest of the year, but still 80% of our yearly sales are Halloween.
Customer Service Integration into Every Department
Jonathan: Going back to customer service, one of the things you said was that customer service really needs to be integrated into every department. How do you see that?
Costumes (Photo credit: Alan Light)
Shari: For us, being a Mom & Pop business, we are every department. What it means is that for a small business like mine, I’m always thinking about the customer service aspect when I’m emailing and when I’m creating content. So it’s not always about sales. It’s not always about buy this. It’s about what you’re going to get by buying from us. So integrating it that way. But when it comes to larger companies, integrating customer service into every day, every department, and the everyday lives of all the employees will help with customer retention and with not having a problem with social media when somebody goes into a store or buys online and has a great experience, but then runs into a problem with the billing department or returns department or anywhere along the way. That goes for any type of business, like a doctor’s office where you get great customer service when you go in, the front desk is wonderful to you and the doctor is great, and then all of sudden you get a bill and insurance paid for it. So if the billing department is integrated within your company, it needs to hold customer service first above the billing department details. If not, you’re going to run into a problem. Obviously, if somebody owes money, that’s a billing issue. They owe money. But you still have to have training in customer service to at least listen and try to understand what the problem so that you don’t run into a problem.
Jonathan: Right.
Shari: Or if it’s anywhere across. Last week on the podcast, Jenny talked about how she has an issue between marketing and user experience. We all know about the classic clash between marketing and IT, but marketing has to integrate with customer service as well. When you have a marketing department, they need to realize that customer service is going to drive a great deal of the marketing because you won’t have to do as much acquisition if you spend money keeping the customers that you have happy. We see that now with the phone carriers. They’re all changing. I know that I was offended and I left Sprint many years ago because I was so aggravated that if I was a new customer, I would get a great deal on a brand new phone but not if I’d been with them for a long time. I was with Sprint many, many years and paid my bill on time every time, but they didn’t offer me anything. So I would say if I move to one of the other carriers, they’ll give me a new phone and a better, lower rate. What they finally caught on from my rants going on for years is that you should retain the customers that you have, especially when they’re good customers that pay their bills on time. You want those customers. You want to offer them the same thing, if not better, than what you would offer a brand new customer. So customer service has to go through the marketing department too.
Jonathan: Looking at your profile, I see you’re writing content and you’re getting it up on all these really fantastic websites, including the Huffington Post. What does that speak to about getting a lot of eyeballs on a really great piece of content?
Shari: First of all, I need to put a disclaimer in here. That’s under ghostwriting, so if somebody goes to look up my work in Huffington Post, they’re not going to find it and it’s behind NDA, so I don’t tell you what it is. But ghostwriting is one of the control things that I do in writing content for others.
Jonathan: Did you write that content for Huffington Post? Or did it wind up on Huffington Post because of the popularity?
Shari: I wrote it for a client that has a relationship with Huffington Post and gets posted on them regularly. So it’s under the client’s name, which is what ghostwriting is about. I know that ahead of time. I just love writing and I do consulting for it. But the secret to getting it on there is solid content that is informative, actionable, information that’s on there that the reader can quickly read, figure out what it’s about and then have takeaways of what they should do next or how it should apply to their business. Coming from somebody with a very small Mom & Pop business, but who also consults for very large companies, I try and scale everything so that if you’re a small company, you could do it like this. I figured out how to do it for my business, so I can help others do it, both small and large companies. Basically, that’s what I try to aim for when I’m writing. I try to have good content that’s informative, but content that the reader will get something out of. I’m not writing for just information sake. It’s for learning and teaching.
Jonathan: Did you figure this out as Google changed their method of promoting websites and when it became more content oriented as opposed to backlinks. The backlinks are still included, but really now there’s such a push for unique and interesting content coming from a website. Has that benefited the three websites you’re working on now? For example, have you seen a piece of an article that has skyrocketed sales directly correlated to that?
Shari: Not in particular. Because I’ve had issues with our website over the past couple of years, we are trying to getting it integrated, but it’s not really at that point yet. I do write for our own companies on our blogs. I try to keep in mind that, for us, it’s not always about sales on there. It’s about the funny parts of costumes, like what movies won an Oscar for costumes. What play won a Tony for costuming. And the big thing I love to write about is the movies. The superhero movies coming out. Those are the biggest costume draws. So I’m loving the rise of the superhero movies coming out because those are fun things to write about that people want to hear about. And it indirectly sells costumes because people are interested in them. Kids want to wear them and even adults want to wear them. So writing about fun things like that. Our makeup business is a smaller scale and more niche market because it’s for stage and theatre makeup and for professional makeup artists, but I love writing things about that. Like the makeup that the girls are wearing on American Idol. Especially lately, they’ve been wearing very glittery makeup and we sell that makeup. Actually the makeup artists on The Voice and American Idol use the makeup that we sell.
Jonathan: Wow.
Shari: That’s a big avenue for me to blog about and tell people about and write about. So for our business, that’s where I go with information content writing. I try and keep it fun. But when writing for clients, it’s usually about education and learning and maybe that sales pitch at the end.
Four for Friday – Questions Everyone Is Asked
Jonathan: Fascinating. We’re now at the time where we do our Four for Friday, questions that everyone is asked. Let’s go through these questions. What is your idea of perfect Internet Happiness?
Shari: As you might expect, I spend a lot of time in front of the computer on the Internet. Way too much time in fact. So my perfect Internet happiness would be to get to the point where I can find a better balance and not be stuck in front of the computer on the Internet so much. I’d like to be a little more efficient because being in love with social media can be a time suck. So a better balance of time and being more efficient I think would be good. The other thing that I love about the Internet is how it connects people. Obviously social media, but also email and otherwise, is a great way for people to connect. And I hope that on a grander scale, not just for me personally, that connection continues to make the world a little bit closer and smaller and hopefully a better place rather than using the Internet for bad.
Jonathan: What is your Internet regret?
Costume Contest Winners (Photo credit: Tancread)
Shari: My biggest Internet regret would be the failed website revision that we did. I really put my faith in a company thinking that all of my years of experience and industry connections should have helped me along the way. But I still got burned. I feel like it wasn’t my fault, so the regret I guess would be putting trust where I thought it belonged.
Jonathan: You did talk about that a little bit. It sounds like you were in contract with a development company to rebuild your website and it completely failed?
Shari: Yes. It was in 2005-2006. It’s a very large company that was an offshoot of a Fortune 500, possibly now Fortune 200, company. They flew us up to New York. My dad and me. And we were wined and dined and sold. Along the way of the development process, the CEO of that offshoot – I probably shouldn’t name names. I can tell you later.
Jonathan: Right. Don’t name names. But this is a critical story here.
Shari: The CEO decided that he didn’t want to do that anymore and he was more interested in the World Poker Tour. And the company fell apart subsequently. The whole time that our website was in development, we were paying for it and we lost a lot of money.
Jonathan: Oh my goodness.
Shari: Yea. So that’s a big regret. I guess it should be a lesson for other people that it’s very easy to get burned, even when you’re somebody who is experienced. This year is my 20th year anniversary of doing e-commerce on the Internet. I should know better, but I got swindled.
Jonathan: It’s very hard when you fail. I’ve had a major failure in my life that cost me a significant amount of money. And you always kind of have that monkey on your back. Until you start to talk about it and say ‘hey, this is what I went through and maybe you should be careful too,’ you kind of feel like you’re the only person rowing this boat and you feel so insecure about the fact that this happened to you. So you’re unwilling to talk about it until you realize that your life lesson in the failure is going to save other people a significant amount of money and possibly cause them to have success because of your failure. It’s you talking about it that can really illuminate the conversation and be so great. It’s very easy. In your case, it sounds like a big company came in. I hear this a lot, particularly from lawyers because there’s a company out there that likes to wine and dine lawyers, tell them they’re going to do a great job and then do nothing for them, but sit back and wait for the check to roll in. It’s that ‘I’m a small company and I want to deal with a bigger company than me’ that gets people into trouble a lot.
Shari: Definitely. Not only that. Since then, I’ve found that the whole genre of developers is very touch and go. That was my first really super bad experience. But since then, I haven’t not had too many great ones.
Jonathan: So past that, you’ve even dealt with other developers.
Shari: Right. You would think that I’d learned my lesson and I’d try to go with a smaller company, not such a big company. Well, that didn’t work. I tried to go with a company where I knew the CEO, and that didn’t work either because the rest of the company has to follow through with what the CEO knows. Then I tried independent developers and they just aren’t big enough either. So you’ve got to put a shout out there for honest and able developers.
Jonathan: We like to think of ourselves as honest and able developers. But at the same time, we’re not going to work in Magneto. That itself might be part of the problem there. You might need to make that jump to WordPress. You kind of have to work with the latest technology. I know we’re getting off topic from the questions, but the advantage to WordPress is that you’re able to install plug-ins, so e-commerce installs are very easy to do. Transfers of databases are very easy to do. And if you don’t like your developer and you don’t like the development team, you’re able to just pick up, take the WordPress with you and move on and find better people to work with. The other thing that I would recommend is not working with offshore companies. I think so many people make that mistake thinking they’ll save a buck and IT comes back and bites them.
Shari: Right. I would add that I wouldn’t go offshore and I haven’t gone offshore, which makes my experience with developers even sadder.
Jonathan: Wow. I am sorry about that, Shari. That is not good. We’ll have to talk offline. So here is question #3. What do you consider your greatest Internet achievement?
Shari: My greatest Internet achievement is that I’ve extended my family’s business. It started out as a brick and mortar Mom & Pop and now it’s an Internet company. Still a Mom & Pop, but we now ship all over the world and we’ve morphed. That’s why I call it Metamorphic. We’ve morphed and changed with the times. I just saw yesterday another Mom & Pop costume business closing. That’s a sign of the times. It’s too hard to keep up with a seasonal business like that when you’re Mom & Pop and all that goes into it. It’s really sad because they are awesome places to visit and awesome companies to have and to grow up with like I did. But it’s a sign of the times. So my greatest achievement is that I’ve been able to morph it and I’m still here.
Jonathan: That’s fantastic. That foresight to move into the Internet as early as you did probably saved your entire family business. When you look at small Mom & Pops that have to rent the facilities, hire the employees, pay the insurance, pay the insurance on the product, some of the product doesn’t move. All of these things. You’ve narrowed it down and streamlined your business to be profitable online and then get it to a point where you can grow that business instead of struggling every year, looking at the books and having a harder time with it.
Shari: Right.
Jonathan: Here is Question #4: What is your favorite Internet book?
Shari: I have a confession to make that I hate make when we’re talking about books. But I never have time to read. I don’t get to read a lot because I’m doing a lot of jobs. I read a lot for those jobs and I have to research a lot before I write. Sometimes I’m writing for clients on topics that I am not familiar with so I’ve got to read about that. I could tell you about books that I have lined up to read.
Jonathan: Let me change the question for you then because I understand that sitting down to read a full book is difficult. Is there a blog that you find extremely useful?
Shari: I read a lot of blogs. And I read a lot online of stuff that comes in. MediaPost is one of my favorite publications that I get a lot of information from. Of course, I keep up with Mashable, which can also be a source of time slipping away because there’s so much content on there and so much information. I like keeping up with Peter Shankman. I like his writing and his candid information.
Jonathan: Excellent. Shari, I understand that you’ll be at the SFIMA conference coming up.
Shari: Yes. I’m really excited to be doing a session. PubCon is hosting our SFIMA summit. So we have our South Florida Interactive Marketing Association. This is our fifth annual summit and the second one that’s being hosted and run by PubCon down here in Ft. Lauderdale. My session is going to be on the on The Dark Side of E-Commerce.
Jonathan: That sounds great. Tell us what you mean by dark side.
Shari: I’m going to be talking about credit card fraud and how it affects merchants. I’ll talk about how merchants can prevent themselves from some, if not most, of the credit card fraud that happens. Because we’re on our own, I’m opening up about a topic that people don’t know a lot about. Over the years, I have always refrained from talking about it for fear that credit card fraud would get worse. But I’m at the point of frustration with the system and with the banks issuing credit cards because all of the financial risk and losses fall on the merchants and most people don’t know that. I really feel like it could be prevented. My feeling might be controversial, but I feel like the credit card companies don’t do anything about it because they profit from it.
Jonathan: Oh wow. That’s a strong statement.
Shari: It is. That’s why I say it’s controversial. I’ve talked to people about it and they insist that credit card companies don’t really profit from it. But they just don’t have any incentive to fix the system where they could prevent fraud all together. And the U.S. is behind other countries when it comes to credit card fraud. It looks like maybe – I’m keeping my fingers crossed – that maybe on the horizon we might have that digital chip coming. I’m really hoping.
Jonathan: I just returned from England in October and all the credit cards there have that digital chip. They were surprised that we don’t. I was sitting at dinner one night and I took out my credit card. I was talking to the guy sitting next to me. He saw that I had to swipe the card. He said, “Don’t have you those pin chips now?” I said no and he replied, “Here in England, we always think of America as being so far ahead in technology, but we’ve had the pin chips here for 5 or 6 years.” I told him that I thought he was right. There would have to be a sociological change for a credit company to come and say that either Target is suing us because of the way credit cards are dealt with or the government is suing us, so now we’re going to change. There’s really no incentive for these credit card companies to make these changes.
Shari: Right.
Jonathan: That sounds like a fascinating talk. I loved that PubCon conference last year. I unfortunately can’t make it this year. Much to my disappointment, I have Broadway tickets the night after your conference, so I can’t just jump on a plane and fly in and fly out for that day. I was about to submit my proposal and then I looked at the calendar and said ‘oh shoot.’ Next year I’ll really have to do it.
Shari: Awesome.
Jonathan: Well, Shari, this has been great. I really appreciate you being a part of this podcast, The World of Internet Marketing. For all of you listening, I really appreciate your continued growth on Google Hangouts and YouTube and Spreaker and all of that. Thank you so much.
Outro
Again, this is Jonathan Goodman and this is the World of Internet Marketing. You can follow me @HalyardConsult on Twitter. New episodes of the World of Internet Marketing can be heard every Friday. You can access the archives of my previous shows on Spreaker.com – user name Jonathan Goodman. The podcast is also available with transcription at halyardconsulting.com and geekcast.fm one week after the episode airs. Thank you all for listening to another episode of The World of Internet Marketing. Don’t forget to pick up my book The World of Internet Marketing on Amazon, and if you like this podcast please share it with your network of friends and family. Have a great week.