I’m not sure why but the volume of junk email marketing arriving last week reached a tipping point.
Here’s a sample of what arrived in my email box one day last week:
- Connecting up ... “Can we set up a call? What time works best next week?”
- Followup ... “It’s Josh. I just wanted to followup and see if you received my earlier email?”
- Top Issues in all 50 States ... “We recently asked reporters in all 50 states and Washington, DC.”
- Dear owner of scdgroup.net ... “We make digital floor plans using below software based on your Handsketch/PDF/JPEG files. We offer a wide range of drafting services and we have fulltime staffs working Inhouse at our office located in India.”
- All were unsolicited contact from companies I’ve never done business with.
- All senders were obviously ignorant about my company and what I do.
- All “signed” their emails with a “personal signature” as though we were friends.
- “Does anyone have a good membership list vendor they use? We use the usual suspects but have one client that is a specialty in the healthcare arena and is looking for a potential list for membership recruitment.”
Really?
Isn’t there a better way?
- Several years ago, during a marketing committee call of one of my clients, the committee struggled with where to get a list of chief medical officers for a marketing campaign. While they discussed options, I did a quick LinkedIn search for the title they were seeking. I shared with them that there were nearly 7,000 people with that title on LinkedIn. And, suggested rather than rending a list, they may need to develop a LinkedIn engagement strategy through which they engaged prospects via a LinkedIn group and white papers.
- Develop personas for each of your target audiences ... don’t assume all are the same.
- Do your research to know the communications preferences of your personas: email, social media, texting, etc.
- Create a content marketing strategy that engages members (and nonmembers) where they are.
- Keep refining your process based on results.
Steve, I'm with you! I've suffered (and continue to suffer) from countless thoughtless pitches from the events industry, and wrote a couple of relevant articles that might be of interest to you and your readers.
ReplyDeleteThe first is a great example of how to do this kind of marketing right:
http://www.conferencesthatwork.com/index.php/event-design/2014/08/how-to-sell-me-stuff-right/
The second tackles a pet peeve: vendor pitches that give no information up front on how much their products/services cost:
http://www.conferencesthatwork.com/index.php/soapbox/2012/07/a-letter-to-event-technology-companies-trying-to-sell-me-stuff/
Thanks Adrian. The spam (some call it email marketing) continues coming in.
ReplyDelete