While consulting with tech support this afternoon to try to figure out why my TV was having trouble displaying HDR content from HDR Blu Rays, I noticed something extremely odd about the manufacturer's website. I typed (InsertTVManufacturerName).com into my browser and as soon as the page was loaded, I was immediately confronted with a popup asking me to complete a survey about the webpage. Because I was a bit frustrated about the fact that I was there in the first place, my immediate response was to agree to the survey with every intention of raking the company over the coals. Was the website clunky? No. Was the customer service experience bad? I hadn't even chatted with a representative yet. Did they provide an inferior product? I hadn't even yet determined whether there was a legitimate problem or if it was user error. The only thought on my mind at the time was the fact that a very expensive product wasn't working and the company had either knowingly or unknowingly erected a barrier between me and the help I was looking for. Was there a better way they could have solicited customer feedback? Possibly, but it certainly wasn't the most intrusive approach they could have taken.
You may be wondering why, then, if I was so agitated at that popup that I'm giving so much grace to (InsertTVManufacturerName). The thing is, I understand and even appreciate a company that cares about how their customers feel about their product and services.
Customer feedback is necessary for any business that wants to ensure that they're providing a relevant product or valuable service to their customer base. Businesses that operate as if they don't have to care about the desires and/or perspectives of their customers are
just a recession /competitor / paradigm-shift away from bankruptcy. That being said, there is a fine line between communicating with your customers and pestering them. If a business can't figure out how to straddle said line, they run the risk of pushing away the customers that they need to survive. I'll give an example:
So when is the last time someone asked for your email address? If you spend any significant amount of time online, this probably happens regularly. Pretty much every website I visit these days seems to have some popup that appears shortly after you land on the site soliciting you to sign up for their newsletter / special offers / brochure. I almost never put my email in these popups and I suspect that most of you don't either. The problem isn't the fact that we don't think the information they'll provide might have value. It's not even the fact that we're worried about them selling our email address to another solicitor (
although this is a valid concern). The problem (for me at least) is that I receive so much email on a daily basis that it's hard to filter through the noise. I can't tell you how many times I've missed out on an important email because it got lost in the deluge of stuff that's irrelevant to my current plight. At least once a quarter I go on an "unsubscribe spree" because I'm so sick of trying to sift through everything. When that happens, whomever I'm unsubscribing from isn't making contact, moving product / services, or getting feedback, and they probably haven't been for some time.
We've all at some point received an email from our unknown millionaire uncle in Nigeria who needs our account information to wire over our inheritance. This is obviously spam, and most people who are at least moderately technically savvy would never fall for it. The problem comes when emails from legitimate businesses that are intended to advertise valid products and services that we may desire to partake of get mentally categorized in the same way that useless spam does. This can happen for a multitude of reasons, but the primary reason is due to excessive frequency. Anyone who's ever taken an economics class recognizes that ubiquity lowers value. If I receive an email every day telling me about a once-in-a-lifetime deal, I'll automatically assume that once-in-a-lifetime must mean 365 days a year.
There's nothing wrong with advertising, but one of the things business must strive to do is ensure that their advertising to the appropriate customer base and with the appropriate frequency. This is important because we want to make sure our advertisement doesn't have the opposite effect. I've heard it said before to "spread the net wide to increase your chances of catching something" but the problem is that when you go from being a source of value to a source of nagging, people generally start avoiding you and your communications. Ideally, you want your potential customers to look forward to hearing from you.
Lastly, I'll address what I consider to be the cardinal sin of advertising. There's nothing illegal about it (yet), but it's almost certainly guaranteed to earn you the ire of a potential customer. For me, the one thing that should always be avoided when advertising to customers is
unsolicited cold calling / emailing. I can't tell you how many times I've received a random email from some company trying to sell me a product or service and my first thoughts were "who is this person / company, and how did they get my information?" Usually, when this happens, I'll embark on a hunt to determine where the leak came from. I suspect that most people aren't that thorough, but I also suspect that most people don't particularly care to have their personal information used in a manner that they didn't approve of when they initially provided it. Many businesses sidestep this issue by creating the now infamous
"must agree" terms and conditions, but this doesn't take away from the
dishonest nature of the scenario, and actually creates opportunities for malicious actors as it takes the burden of safeguarding information off of the information collector and instead puts it on the customer. As long as there's a market for personal information, someone will collect it, someone will sell it, and someone will buy it. I'm not going to be the ethics police here, but I will say that it's probably not a wise idea to gain personal information in an unethical manner, even if it is legal. When data breaches make their way into the media, there's always
plenty of blame to go around, and I personally would prefer to be as far away from unethical data mining practices as possible.
So how do you advertise without nagging / stalking potential customers? There are a few things I'd do. First, be sure that who you're emailing is actually a potential customer. Not doing so is essentially wasting your advertising dollars. One of the best ways to do this is by asking people actually opt-in to mailing lists when they do business with you. Another is by advertising to people you've already made contact with either in person or on social media. If you absolutely must cold-email people, be sure that their contact info was gathered in a reputable manner and even then, instead of immediately emailing them a pitch, send an introductory email perhaps detailing how you know them / how you got their information and asking if they'd like to continue receiving communications from you. Lastly, avoid creating a deluge. What I mean is don't send emails on a daily basis. The more infrequent your communications are, the more valuable they'll be. There are certain companies whose emails I always read just because they almost never email me. There are certain others who I'm contemplating unsubscribing from as soon as I'm done writing this post just because they're a part of my daily must-delete task list. Overall it may be unfamiliar and uncomfortable to consider, but it's important to ensure that in your enthusiasm to gain new customers you don't frighten them off by being too aggressive or spamming their inbox. There is a balance and if you get it just right your customers will look forward to receiving those periodic emails instead of hitting the delete button without even reading them.
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