Comments on: Cash or credibility – The ethical dilemma

By: Melissa

Melissa — Sat, 12 May 2012 06:24:28 +0000

Ethical choices vs business choices, how do you decide on the correct decision? In the business environment management often finds themselves caught between two choices during the decision making process, do they do what is best for the business or do they do what is ethically correct. The business choice is the decision that is made with the improvement of performance or maximizing benefit of the business in mind. The ethical decision is based on the concern of the stakeholders or customers needs over that of the business. The introduction of incentives such as commissions, profit sharing, and periodic bonuses as motivators to improve business performance may actually encourage employees to act unethically (Quintress, Hollis, Mehenna 2008, p23). According to Quintress, Hollis, Mehenna (2008, p26) business are shifting their focus from incentive based rewards to rewarding ethical behavior. What is the practical decision? This is for the business to decide. There is continuously a conflict between what decisions are made for the benefit of the business and what is ethically correct. Narrowing the gap between business choices and ethical choices may be the best option this could involve having to make fundamental changes in your current business practices (Quintress, Hollis, Mehenna 2008, p28). Reference Quintress, L 2008, ‘The business choice or the ethical choice: decision-making in an incentive environment’, Business Renaissance Quarterly, vol. 3, no. 4, pp21-29, retrieved 12 May 2012, EBSCOhost Business Source Complete.

By: James Duthie

James Duthie — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 11:08:11 +0000

Thanks for the input Jenn. I’m sure you’ve seen it a few times over at SEP. In our case the client is indeed stubborn. But testing has been the agreed outcome. So I guess it’s the best out of a bad situation.

By: Jenn Osborne

Jenn Osborne — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 20:21:23 +0000

I love this post! I think every Internet Marketer has been in this position where a client is dead set on doing something that makes no sense.

With some clients you have to take a stand – otherwise they’ll try to micro- manage you. But other times it’s just a situation where the client is stubborn and has to learn that it’s a bad idea for themselves. That’s where testing is a great solution. I’ve never had a client refuse to do a test. And once they see the data they can see for themselves that the idea wasn’t a good one.

Great post James!

By: James Duthie

James Duthie — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 04:08:41 +0000

@ Marsello – You are correct. Numbers resonate with most business people. The challenge is finding a documented case study, because we have never made such a switch with a client before.

By: Marsello Oentoro

Marsello Oentoro — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 01:57:49 +0000

Interesting topic, business people sometimes do not translate into sensible marketers, especially once greed takes over. But they would normally listen to past examples as to why a certain email marketing campaign would fail, if you would be wise enough to attach figures to the argument.

By: James Duthie

James Duthie — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 00:27:26 +0000

Rest assured Ken that I am such an awful dancer that an I-told-you-so-dance is completely out of the question

By: Ken Jones

Ken Jones — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 10:15:37 +0000

@ Matt – Thanks for the back up mate.

@ James – Good luck with the test dude. You know it makes sense. Gives you and the client the best of both worlds.
Just promise you’ll try to fight the urge to do the I-told-you-so-dance when the group on daily email all unsubscribe

By: James Duthie

James Duthie — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 03:40:06 +0000

@ Ken & Matt – Thanks for the input. And of course I am totally embarassed that the thought never crossed my mind. It’s email marketing 101 people… A testing process would protect a portion of his database and demonstrate we were willing to at least give his idea a go. Looks like we have our solution.

By: Matt

Matt — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 20:09:41 +0000

I agree with Ken,

Testing, measuring and analyzing the open-rates, click-rates, unsubscribes, etc. is a crucial element of a successful e-mail marketing campaign.

A/B test the two campaigns for a few weeks. How can he disagree with the numbers? If he still wants to convert the whole list to a daily frequency, even after you’re evidence presents itself, then I guess you have to let him dig his own grave!

Keep up the good work,

-Matt
Tender-Thoughts.com

By: Ken Jones

Ken Jones — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 12:55:53 +0000

Maybe you could suggest a split test of the new email schedule.

Divide the list and send one group the daily shots, while keeping the other half on the original weekly shots.

Quantify what, if any, effect the change has. Does the new group show a marked increase in the take up of offers? Do more people end up opting out of recieving the mails?

Give your client the option of having a trial period where you can assess the effectiveness of his plan. If it works then you can switch the whole list over. If it doesn’t then at least he hasn’t burnt all 40,000 subscribers.

He’s a businessman, numbers and dollar signs will say a lot more to him than the ethical quandries of “that guy from the digital marketing agency” ever could.

Besides, I know how much you love your statistics, this gives you an excuse to crunch some numbers