You receive an email promoting a new solution.
The value proposition resonates, the offer is tempting and the graphic design is pleasing to the eye.
Your reaction: disappointment and frustration.
Why? You are already a customer and have been spammed by your vendor.
An example: a data provider to my organization sent an email to me with an offer to upgrade our solution. However we had already upgraded.
Another data provider sent an email with an offer to me with no recognition that we had recently downgraded our subscription nor that we were already a customer on the basic version.
In both cases it was a data provider who sent a Batch & Blast email to the same email address that I had used to register our subscription. Clearly, the data providers did not run their email list against a suppression file of customers. In an earlier post on Batch & Blast email, I describe how the market is moving away from this approach.
It’s ironic that both data providers who promote the quality of their data, do not take the extra step of treating customers differently that prospects. Neither are small vendors.
Second, if email is widely recognized as more beneficial for retention than acquisition, why are customers not treated with distinct messaging?
When I read a recent post from Adam Needles on taking email segmentation to the next level, I can’t help but feel that the next level is a quantum leap for many B2B marketers whose email marketing is at the rudimentary Batch & Blast stage.
3 Comments
Robert,
Great post here, and I’ve been (as well as my BDR’s have been) on the bad end of a teleprospecting call where the list given to me by clients have INCLUDED their customers! It is so critical that lists get scrubbed before their marketed to.
Chris
So true, Robert. And agree that there is a big disconnect — heck, that’s why people like me are out there trying to get marketers to bring their game to the next level.
The issue is that we focus on the medium — e-mail — and ignore the purpose. We don’t think about our communication from the buyer’s standpoint. And that’s where we go wrong.
The first step towards getting this right is thinking about your buyer (or customer), thinking about the stages of engagement with your organization and the content consumed/channels communicated through, and then saying, “What am I saying to who, when and via what channel?”
Once you’ve rationalized it should start becoming clear — for instance — that a new offer via e-mail should be suppressed against customers becuase that offer is only for NEW customers, and because it is easy to suppress b/c you have a customer list already. And so by rationalizing in this way, you’ll have thought through the process of who this should be sent to … and who it shouldn’t.
Yet too many of us buy a list, hit send and forget. We’ve got to stop that as marketers. Our job is to engage buyers and customers, not to e-mail more people than the other company!
Great point!