Most companies should fire their Relationship Marketing Director. I am referring to a cadre of young, smart, gen-x-ers who majored in Marketing at college, and then scored their job because they had 800 friends on Facebook. They are so plugged-in to their smart ass phones that they have developed a tin ear to the complaints of their victims - er customers.
These over connected wireless e-terrorists are a plague, they pump out content to you like a fire hydrant spewing water.
Relationship Marketing is another new technology that is fundamentally not understood, and therefore mis-used by the people who manage it. These purveyors are so enthralled with the idea that they can reach zillions of eyes for small money, that they think nothing of wasting your time with daily sendings. It costs virtually nothing to gather the emails of victims, er customers and send them something every day. One company called Avenue that sells big size clothes to fat chicks somehow got my email address. Now, no matter what I do I cannot get off their mailing list. Avenue sends at least one annoying sale alert every day. Someone at that company is probably taking credit for any online sales, citing the quality of their vast mailing list.
But I suspect many others, like me, eventually figure out how to make unwanted mail go directly to spam blocker. It's aggravating to have some stranger lurking in the shadows and confronting me whenever I check my mailbox. It is plain and simple junk mail and it goes quickly into the trashcan, just like snail mail.
Avenue.com has no way of knowing how many good addresses they have because they fail to clean-up the list. This is just one company. I have similar problems with Dockers, Staples and a bevvy of others that I have on my blocked list.
Even worse are the Facebook pages. I had to "hide" all "updates" from my favorite beer company (Sierra Nevada) because they posted some inane and irrelevant un-entertaining thing every day. Facebook does not have a convenient way of de-friending the companies if you have "liked." their Page. [update: you CAN get them off your wall; just go to their page and "unlike" them]. It would be ok to post something once a week or so, but this yammering every day is just aggravating.
GM recently announced that they were stopping their Facebook ads because they were not getting results. Maybe other companies will soon realize that most of the FB subscribers just want a free space to connect, but develop a blind eye to ads.
Here are a few suggestions to Relationship Marketers, not that you asked...
1. Do not e-mail every day. No matter how much they love your product, you just don't have enough pertinent content to keep getting their attention every day. Realize that multiple mailings punish those who responded to your initial ad. Be respectful of those who give you their e-mail address.
2. Maintain your database. Remove those who have requested removal. Do not sell those emails to other affiliated parties. Getting spammed by a company that you asked to remove you is infuriating. Do you need negative mentions on Facebook?
3. Asking prospects to "Like" you on FB is a sure way to get them to hate and hide you, if you post every day. If you do that most people will hide you and unsubscribe from your posts and you will never know.
4. Take me off your list.
Other than this I have no strong feelings on the matter.
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