When I was a kid, I remember walking with my sisters to our near-by Dunkin’ Donuts to pick up a dozen donuts for the family’s Sunday breakfast, while my parents read the Sunday paper. (I know, not too healthy, but it was a fun tradition). Each time we arrived, the store clerks would send us off with a couple of "donut holes." At the time, their donut holes were throw-aways, by-products of making donuts, which they hadn’t yet envisioned marketing as "Munchkins."
The idea of giving away Donut Holes was similar to the old bakers’ giving customers a Bakers Dozen—a little something more than expected—just to put a smile on their customer’s face and keep them coming back.
This September at NEMOA, we tried a new way to give catalog and multi-channel merchants their own version of a Bakers Dozen – a little something extra, in terms of new ideas and networking. In the first ever "NEMOA Think Tanks," the 300+ attending catalogers and vendors brainstormed, discussed, and shared the techniques they’ve been finding to be most effective.
We had four separate Think Tanks:
The goal was to give all of us a forum to consider what's working and what's not, or to envision what might be next in the world of multi-channel marketing. The hope was that NEMOA "customers" would come away with a virtual Baker’s Dozen, more than they expected.
Although it was hard to narrow the list, here’s my "Baker’s Dozen" of take-aways from the Think Tanks:
After the fruitful days of networking and learning, I was happy to come home, cull through my notes and look forward to sending my boys out to our neighborhood bagel shop, to pick up a Baker’s Dozen of bagels.
Posted by Susan Doctoroff Landay, President of Trainers Warehouse and NEMOA Board Member.