There are a few things that annoy me more then blatantly lazy; marketing, targeting and/or segmenting when it comes to email marketing… one of these things happened to me today.
When targeting promotions to individuals based on their age you should do one of two things… Verify their age and segment/target appropriately or give them the option to opt-out of age specific promotions in the future.
Lets dissect this promotion for a second
– Are you under 28 – NOPE
– Are you in Media buying or Planning – NOPE
– Willing to travel – SURE, but I’ve already been disqualified from participation (TWICE).
– Think you Cannes? – WTH is CANNES? I know the place in France, but I don’t know how to CANNES anything? This is a poor play on words.
This example is actually the second mailer in recent months that started sending content based on age… This one is close – I’m not too far from 28 – but I’m excluded because I surpassed this benchmark a few years back. Sending messages like this without the option – as a subscriber – to say ‘This is not relevant to me’ or I’m over 28 don’t send me these types of messages again can (and likely do) hurt your relationship with your subscribers.
The last faux pas here is that the opt-out process for these messages actually stop all further communication from the sender, there is no method to stop these (under X yrs) messages from being sent in the future… thus alienating your subscribers further.
Don’t make this same mistake, gather the proper profile information before sending (Age qualifying promotions), or give people the option to opt-out of these types of messages while remaining part of your core program.
Seems like this kind of mistake probably stems from thinking of email as a billboard or a brochure, rather than a direct one-to-one communication. Nobody (well, almost nobody) would walk up to you on the street corner and shout those questions — instead, they’d start a conversation.
Email is a conversation, too.