When automated messages make your brand look stupid

Marketers love using emails and texts to be in contact with customers. It's so cheap and easy to get messages out that some abuse the channels and send out daily messages. Even worse, some send out multiple messages a day, which just crowd a customers' inbox and make them start tuning out those messages.

One of the biggest offenders on this front is the Gap family of brands. As the umbrella organization comprises not just Gap but also Banana Republic, as well as the "Factory" versions of both those brands, on top of Old Navy and Althea, it sends me a minimum of three and sometimes even five emails each and every day. So, yes, I tune most of them out now. 

But the one pictured above caught my eye. Can you guess why?

Are you motivated to make a purchase because a brand lets you know that you have free money to spend that amounts to just $0 in rewards? In other words, your purchasing power is unchanged from what you thought it was before.

 It's all too obvious that Old Navy is attempting to personalize the offer not just by using my name but by trying to tempt me to make a purchase that will be discounted by my rewards. As the algorithm is not programmed to discard that message for customers without a reward balance, we get a message that shows not all personalization necessarily fits your marketing message.

A bit later I got this email that made a similar mistake in a PR pitch. Notice how the personalization is worked in without regard for understanding how we address people in real life:

"Setting up your business remotely during Great Resignation

Inbox

KJ Helms via prnewswire.com
to me

Hi Brown, Ariella​ Team,

 

I have a story I think Brown, Ariella​ would want to cover about a firm that can help businesses 

affected by “The Great Resignation,” which is continuing with 4.3 million resignations in 

December 2021 alone ⁽¹⁾.

One other nitpick I have is that it refers to the Great Resignation continuing by citing the numbers from December 2021. As we are in March now, that is a non sequitur. Instead of presenting the sentence in this order  the text should have started with the December stat and then say that the trend continues in 2022, possibly with its own sentence set up this way: In December 2021 alone 4.3 million resigned from their jobs, and "The Great Resignation" trend is continuing in 2022, raising concerns for businesses that want to retain their employees.

 Related:  

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RYAN GEORGE SHOWS BEST AND WORST MARKETING PRACTICES

TODAY'S TARGETED MARKETING IS POWERED BY DATA AND AUTOMATION

7 WAYS TO GRAB CUSTOMER ATTENTION IN SUBJECT LINES

  

Beyond February 14: B2B marketing takeaways from Valentine's Day

Pink hearts photo from Freestock on Unsplash

When we think of Valentine’s Day, B2B is not exactly what we think of when we picture candlelit dinners, bouquets of roses, chocolates, gifts of jewelry. and stuffed animals and cards festooned with red and pink hearts. However, if you think out of the heart-shaped box, you can begin to understand that there are quite a number of parallels.

First of all there is the recognition of  important relationships. Sure Valentine’s Day is associated with romantic one specifically, though data tells us that for many people it is also  a day to celebrate their love for parents, children, friends, coworkers,  classmates, teachers, and even  pets. 

This doesn’t mean that you should be shoehorning your own B2B messaging into a heart shape when it doesn’t fit. Instead, think about how you can advance that relationship in authentic ways that relate to your client’s concerns. That means you demonstrate your commitment to meeting their expectations for your products and services. 

It’s the thought that counts for a gift, right? So is it enough to show you realize you are expected to buy something by picking up a gift conveniently set out on display at the drugstore on your way home?  No, the thought that counts is the one that shows you know what the person is about and what they’d like to get.  The question is: what expectations are in place and are they met? 

One interesting revelation from the National Retail Foundation (NRF)  data on holiday spending is the discrepancy that often occurs between the type of gift that people say they want and the percentage that say that is the type they intend to give. To apply this to a B2B context, you don’t want to disappoint your customers by failing to meet their expectations. 

So the first step, obviously, is getting to know them well enough to be able to grasp what they need, what their business goals and pain points are so that you can anticipate them in delivering the solutions. In other words, if you want to show you really care, you have to do better than just the token nod of a one-size-fits-all bouquet of red roses. 

What does it take to deliver on your B2B customer expectations? You have to listen to what they’re saying about  their current needs and wants. That’s not limited to what they tell you directly if you ask them for information in surveys; a lot of it is already out there. It’s possible to tap into the wealth of data, including the record of their purchases, how they place those purchases, what promotions they respond to, where they’re businesses are and where they wish to get to. 

All those data points feed into a complete view of the business that allows you to show you understand them. On that basis, you can build customized communication that is delivered the way they prefer it, whether that is via text, email, snail mail, a video chat, or an in-person visit. While one client may  love the in-person attention, another may consider it a drain on precious time at the office.

The takeaway from Valentine’s Day for building up a happily ever after relationship in B2B is the following:

1.Avoid the one-size-fits-all messages that will disappoint a large number of clients.

2. Put in the effort to get to know what they really want from you.

3. Deliver on those expectations and plan for how to anticipate their future needs and wants.

4. Repeat as necessary.

Acting on wrong assumption in pushing a one-size-fits-all attempt at communication when you should be personalizing doesn't show caring but a lack of consideration for what your recipient prefers. That can be as much a disaster as sending flowers to someone who is highly allergic to them or chocolates to a diabetic because you assumed that the popular choices are the way to go with everyone.

Related: True love meets marketing

Amazon uses snail mail for direct mail

I got mail from Amazon. I don’t mean a package for something I ordered or the usual email marketing marketing message but an honest-to-goodness paper letter that was folded into an envelope and sent to me via the post office. 

So here’s my response:

Dear Amazon Prime Video,

I have received your letter and do appreciate your taking the time to reach out to me, though I do wonder at your inability to match the personalized envelopes with a letter that would address the recipient by name. 

 The real reason I don’t use Prime Video is because there is nothing on there that I would want to see.Let me correct that. There are a few movies that have caught my eye, but they all require another paid subscription on top of Amazon Prime. In other words, they would not be included free with my membership.

As with any business, don’t assume people aren’t using your service simply because they don’t know about. Consider the possibility that your service doesn’t meet their needs or interests.

Thank you,

Ariella Brown

To read my analysis of what Amazon got right, see Dear Amazon Prime Video Team

Related: Ryan George shows best and worst marketing practices

Seeing stars

eBook on AutoML

 AI can enable marketers to deliver on those expectations because it can anticipate not just what customers would want to hear about but when and how they’d want to receive that communication. “With AI, such personalization can now be achieved with previously unimaginable precision and at vast scale,” insists H. James Wilson and Paul R. Daugherty. The company that does that for music is Pandora. Delivering personalized music selections involves “billions of data points that are tracked across dozens of systems, including media servers, device clients, and ad servers.” To keep all that running smoothly, it needs to detect and address anomalies as they occur. It’s a tall order that is answered with an ML system with the capability to do just that in near real-time, something Pandora will also draw on in assuring its ads are performing as expected.

Read more in my eBook: 2019: the year AutoML takes off

The Personal Touch in Marketing

Digital platforms open up new opportunities to reach people wherever they are on multiple devices and to pick up reams of data to feed into marketing campaigns. But with thousands of forgettable, repetitive ads coming at people every day, the challenge is not merely to blend into the background noise, but to offer relevant and personalized communication.

The second Adweek Executive Lab, which took place on Tuesday in New York and was sponsored by Tapad, included several discussions about using data to achieve personalization.

Read more in The Challenges of Drawing on Digital Data for Customized Communication

Enhancing engagement with RCS

Rich Communications Services (RCS) effectively “drives engagement,” Brian Heikes, Vice President Product, Solutions and Analytics at 3Cinteractive says, because it makes it possible for people to experience “the same richness” provided by OTT “with the ubiquity that SMS has.” That opens up possibility of custom branding and other rich media used with native messenger.

In effect, it can offer “the depths of capabilities that have been locked behind an application” within “the messaging experience.” That's a significant benefit in light of the fact that “more than 95%” of people who download apps quit using them after just 30 days. As a result, brands can't capitalize on the promise of app engagement with the “ubiquitous capability” enjoyed by SMS.

At the 2017 Mobile World Congress, 3C showcased some of the possible applications RCS, with an illustration from its client, Walgreens, and Early Access Program partner, Google. This video, shows how Walgreens gives consumers personalized beauty recommendations seamlessly by uploading a selfie.

Read more in

RCS To Set a New Standard for Mobile Marketing

Personalized video marketing

“What's in a name?” Possibly quite a lot when it comes to personalized marketing.

Several months back I received a marketing email from Sprinklr that was rather ironic given its message about effective use of data. It opened like this: “ Hi {lead.First Name:default=}.”  Obviously, something went wrong, and I saw the code rather than my name.

Of course, personalized emails are not all that unusual any more, so some marketers have upped their game with personalized video. After receiving the “A Dog's Purpose” video (above) — in a correctly personalized email — I contacted Adgreetz's co-founder and CEO Eric Frankel about what data is used for this kind of personalized video marketing, and how the video was delivered to people who are 1) dog owners, and 2) have a dog of that particular name? 

read more in A Marketer's Best Friend