Lately, my inbox is full of courses to market via Facebook Messenger.
I actually hit reply to one that began, “What if you could use FB Messenger to make up to $2,500 a week… in your spare time?”:
What if we could have ONE communication channel that doesn’t get polluted by marketers trying to hijack it? There is no refuge anymore! I remember when the only things in my inbox were things I wanted. I remember when I didn’t get blasted with texts from companies that don’t even know me. I am a marketer, and I understand the need to reach out. But damn it, we need some spaces where we’re not getting marketed to.
I do get it. Every time someone invents a great new communication tool, someone else invents a way to sneak marketing messages past the gatekeeper. And then someone else invents some protection. And usually, someone else invents a way to overcome that block.
Postal mail begat bulk mail, which begat opening mail over the recycle bin, which begat postcards and envelope teasers. Telephones begat outbound call centers, which begat caller ID, which begat robocalls with spoofed IDs. Email begat spam, which begat spam filters, which begat messages crafted to go around them, which begat Google’s Promotions and Social folders (which severely impacted legitimate newsletter publishers and didn’t seem to hurt the spammers much).
It’s an arms race. The Cold War in all your inboxes. Ads in toilet stalls. Digital ads on billboards changing every few seconds. Ads on the frame around the taxi rates placard on the divider between the front and back seats in a cab.
But here’s the thing: all of these intrusive methods are dinosaur-marketing. Seth Godin told us 20 years ago about permission marketing.
Seth Godin. Photo by Jill Greenberg. Courtesy of Seth Godin.
Seth has permission to be in MY mailbox. His daily blog shows up every day. I actually open and read every column for his useful information and fresh perspectives. Often, he offers a program or product—but it’s in context .
Seth walks his talk. And I buy from him occasionally. (I also sometimes share or email him comments. That, plus writing a great book, got him to endorse my 10th book, Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World.)
You don’t win customers by shouting louder; you win them by being relevant and helpful, and using the technology intelligently:
Instead of random texting, text your own customers who’ve given you their mobile numbers as they show up within a mile of you, with friendly, helpful information about today’s cool event (yes, geotexting exists)
Instead of using robocalls to make deceptive offers, use them to notify your customer base of important news, like a weather-related school closing or a construction delay on a major artery
If your Facebook page uses the automated FB Messenger feature, send links to your FAQ and three most popular or useful pages on your own website—but also make sure you have a human being reading the inbound messages and responding quickly. And figure out a way to only send that autoresponder the first time you get a PM from any specific person.
So here’s MY soft-sell pitch at the end of this useful (I hope) content: if you need help developing non-intrusive, welcomed marketing, drop me a line or give me a call. Especially if your business or product/service/idea contributes to environmental and social good.
There’s one Democratic Party candidate for Congress whose annoying emails just pushed me over the edge. But the Democratic Party is routinely guilty of this, and I’ve gotten off many of the lists of their various front groups. And probably, so are the Republicans (I’m not on their lists).
As I moved a full 100 emails received in the past month from this candidate’s organization or the Democratic Party on behalf of this candidate, I noted once again the in-your-face headlines. Here are just some of the examples from just the past week, in the order I received them (spacing, emoticons, and capitalization in the originals):
Special Election RUINED
TERRIFYING prediction
this just got WORSE (Paul Ryan)
Paul Ryan = FURIOUS
please, please, PLEASE
HUGE mistake
No!!!!!!!
R U I N E D
I’m a copywriter. I know what this candidate’s team is doing, and why. I know which hot buttons they are trying to push. But just as too much of the finest food still gives you a bellyache, too much hot-button-pushing makes the mechanism seize up. I’ve received 14 separate messages since Sunday morning (I’m writing this on Tuesday morning). It feels like marketing by assault rifle.
My response mechanism seized up. I put them on the not-giving-any-more-money list and unsubscribed. The form asked for a reason, and here’s what I wrote:
I don’t like your constant-crisis approach. I just deleted 100 emails from you all screaming at me, most unopened. I’m really sick of “the Republicans are out to get us, send us money again.” And also sick of “we’re on the verge of victory, send us more money.” I wish [Candidate name] well and hope he wins, but I want the Dems and especially [Candidate name] to market to me via intelligence and not fear. I am a marketer and have run successful campaigns.
Can’ we be better than this? I want candidates who will tell me what they will do FOR their district and their country, and not just that a powerful opponent hates them.
A citizen votes. Photo by Kristen Price.
Remember: you are in someone’s email box because of the recipient’s good graces. Don’t abuse the relationship or overstay your welcome. If you annoy, you don’t get read, and eventually, you lose a subscriber. You could even find yourself blacklisted for spam.
Many years ago, I signed up for a Discover card for some very specific reason (it may have been in connection with buying an appliance from Sears, which owns Discover). I use this card so rarely that at least twice, when I’ve received replacement cards, I noticed that I had never bothered to activate the one that was about to expire.
So I was extremely amused to get a very hypey 4-page mailer—it looks like the copywriter studied all the greats and completely misunderstood the lessons—that begins (bolding and underline in original—see picture),
Headline of the lying letter from Discover
YOU’RE ABOUT TO BE REWARDED … The Loyalty You’ve Demonstrated The Past 14 Years Has Earned You This Exclusive Invitation.
How Exclusive? Fewer Than One Discover® Cardmember In Five Is Receiving This Mailing.
And then it goes on to tell me I qualify for fast-track balance repayment that could shave a year and several thousand dollars off my repayments.
What’s wrong with this picture? Let me count the ways:
As I mentioned, I’m not a loyal customer. I don’t even keep this card in my wallet. So I don’t believe the copywriter’s attempt to make this offer sound exclusive.
Even if this were my primary card, I’m not exactly bowled over to learn that 20 percent of a user base in the millions is getting the offer. Exclusive? Ha ha ha.
One more way to assure me this is nothing resembling the exclusive offer it pretends to be: the invitation code (required to participate in the program)—is 23 characters long, not counting hyphens.
The lack of segmentation—OK, so this is the mailing manager’s fault, rather than the copywriter’s—is appalling. I never carry a balance. On ANY of my credit cards. I use them as 20- to 50-day access to funds without accruing interest, an easy way to track my purchases and save on postage (by paying one bill on line rather than a bunch of bills with mailed checks), and oh yes, a way to get air travel by accumulating frequent-flyer points for stuff I was going to buy anyway. So under any circumstances, I’m not even in the target market for this “exclusive” offer.
The text of the letter is actually a strong argument against running up credit-card balances. It shows just how much this costs—something many consumers barely think about. The takeaway I get from this letter is don’t buy what you can’t afford, and pay your bills on time and in full, as I do, so you never pay these exorbitant charges.
The meme of “make 2015 the year you took control” is ludicrous. You want to take control of your credit card debt? Pay off your balance and stop running it higher. Switching from five to four years of repayment servitude doesn’t cut it.
Finally, the visual layout is a real turn-off. The thing is just drowning in too much bold, too much underlining (and the underlining is inconsistent—either underline the individual words or the phrases including the spaces, but don’t mix them), too many call-outs in a fake-handwriting font (does the designer really think we’re going to be fooled by the slight bowing in the underline?).
Page 1 of the lying letter from Discover
Oh, yeah, on page two, which is even more cluttered with bold, underlining, and “handwritten” pull-outs, a footnote mentions that not everybody gets the spiffy 6.99% APR that “Jim” gets. Some people are going to pay usurious rates of up to 18.99%—YIKES!
It’s letters like this that give marketers a bad name.
This letter actually did inspire me to take action. First, I’m writing this blog. I get to use them as an example of how not to do direct mail. And second, I’m finally going to cancel my Discover card. I don’t choose to do business with companies that lie to me.
By the way, if you’d like marketing that doesn’t scream, doesn’t lie, addresses its exact target audience and effectively differentiates your products and services, give me a call at 413-586-2388 (8 a.m. to 10 p.m., US Eastern Time) or drop me a note. I make my living as a marketing and profitability consultant, with particular emphasis on green/socially conscious, businesses, independent small business, and authors/publishers.
Aaargh! Tomorrow is an election day in Massachusetts. We’ve been getting calls for months, but today, its completely out of hand.
–> In the past two hours, from 6 to 8 p.m., I have received FOUR calls. Two from Democratic Party volunteers, one human from the National Writers Union and one NWU robocall. This doesn’t count the barrage of calls over the past week and earlier today.
In an era where the NSA can read our phone logs, I don’t understand why the Democrats and their allies can’t run a “merge-purge” to eliminate duplicates. That technology has been part of the direct-mail world since the 1970s.
If Republican Gabriel Gomez wins tomorrow against Democrat Ed Markey, I’d wager that it was because the Dems over-called to the point of harassment, and turned people off. Since there are more Democrats than Republicans by a huge margin, more Democrats than Republicans will get annoyed.
Personally, I have a low regard for Mr. Gomez and a reasonable degree of agreement with many of Congresman Markey’s positions. And so I will vote Democratic tomorrow. But I also have a ery low opinion of repeat intrusion marketing. I will vote for Markey despite the campaign’s tactics, and not because of them.
As a marketer, I hope the campaign can survive its own excesses.
Scary warnings and official-looking documents from Publishers Clearing House
Publishers Clearing House still believes in direct mail that scares people into action. The envelope and packet are full of legal-looking documents, dire warnings in big bold print, etc.
The “involvement devices”—labels to pull off and attach, gold-covered panels to scratch off, very complicated instructions to follow exactly—are variations on the same stuff I remember from Publishers Clearing House mailers in the 1970s and 1980s. And they were old and tired even back then.
Publishers Clearing House apparently never got the memo on credibility in marketing. Instead of using real credibility builders such as testimonials, they fill the mailing with official-looking layouts, fake stickers with bar codes, and language on the return form with language like “I am claiming eligibility…” Oh yes, and they’re still using celebrities, as they used the late Ed McMahon for many years (in fact, I first heard of Ed McMahon through PCH sweepstakes, and had to find out later that he was a TV star). Now, it’s Brian Williams.
Back in 2000, the PCH sweepstakes mailings inspired this quote in the Direct Mail section of my earlier book, Grassroots Marketing: Getting Noticed in a Noisy World:
Forget about glitzy, complicated sweepstakes offers, with seemingly dozens of different-sized papers, foils, stickers, and scratch-off cards; your production cost will be enormous before you even start. Besides, they cost you tons of money mailing to and following up on false prospects.
A simple, straightforward approach is far better. Use ordinary paper sizes and stocks, and win the prospect over through the strength of your offer—not gimmicks or packaging. You’ll stay within your budget, and target serious prospects, not a bunch of chiselers hoping for a million dollars from you, Ed McMahon, or the tooth fairy.
That was true when I wrote Grassroots Marketing, and even more true now.
Publishers Clearing House sweepstakes-related inserts vs. ad delivery from other companies
Of the 44 pieces of paper in the envelope, only 9-1/2 were actually related to the PCH sweepstakes and offer. The others, including the back of one of the Publishers Clearing House pages, were ads from other companies. Given that so much magazine content is available online, for free, that a whole generation will barely pick up a paper magazine any more, and that numerous other channels provide the information we used to get from general-interest magazines, it makes sense that Publishers Clearing House realized its business model had to change. Now they’re apparently in the business of delivering cheesy offers from other merchants—what could have been a good use of the partnership strategy I advocate, if the offer quality and targeting hadn’t been so pathetic.
Geotargeting has become more sophisticated. One of the slips announces “SHEL HOROWITZ, THE SEARCH FOR A MAJOR PRIZE WINNER IN THE SPRINGFIELD-HOLYOKE TV AREA INCLUDES YOUR 01035 NEIGHBORHOOD!… There will DEFINITELY be a Major Prize Winner of $1,000.00 from Your Local TV Area, which includes your Zip Code!” (capitalization, punctuation, and underlining are exactly as they were in the original). So Publishers Clearing House is now matching zip codes against media markets, and guaranteeing at least one winner—note the SMALL dollar amount—in my media market (which contains dozens of zip codes).
Technology isn’t perfect. My envelope contained two copies of a several-page ad bundle (one of several in the mailing)—and DID NOT contain the actual form to select magazines! Even if I’d wanted to subscribe, I couldn’t do so from this mailing.
I may get an onslaught of comments pointing out that Publishers Clearing House’s methods are obviously working, or they wouldn’t keep at it after all these decades. Of course they work! I freely grant that.
But to what effect? What’s the real benefit of developing a large list of purely transactional contacts who didn’t necessarily even buy—they entered a chance to win big bucks for free. Do these people have any loyalty? Has PCH done any segmentation other than geographic? Can they market to these people as individuals in any meaningful way?
The negative answer is obvious in the kinds of junk offers crammed into the rest of the PCH sweepstakes envelope: tchatchkes and trinkets and home repair products of dubious value—the sort of stuff that gets sold on late-night TV ads over obscure cable channels. It’s these clueless merchants that I actually feel sorry for.
Thanks, I’m guessing, to the no-junk-mail opt-out list, it had been quite a few years since I’d heard from Publishers Clearing House.
Front of the envelope from Publishers Clearing House
Yup—Publishers Clearing House. The infamous magazine subscription discounter that used to clutter up my mailbox with screamy hype implying very strongly that I’d won some enormous fortune, if only I followed all the (seemed like) 39 steps to claim it.
The same Publishers Clearing House that once sent a mailer to Dance Spree, a community arts group, boldly announcing, “D. Spree, You May Already Have Won a Million Dollars” in a mailmerge whose dot matrix fonts didn’t match the rest of the offset-printed letter.
On a whim, I decided to open the envelope—not with any intention of entering the latest Publishers Clearing House sweepstakes, but to see if the business world’s shift over the last dozen years or so in the direction of switching off the hype in favor of softer and more ethical marketing approaches—a shift that I like to think I had at least something to do with—had made any impact on Publishers Clearing House, King of the Old-Style Hype.
The quick answer is no. What I received was a smoother, more sophisticated version of the same junk that Publishers Clearing House has been sending for decades.
Here’s some of what I noticed.
Very high environmental footprint. Not only did the fat envelope contain 42 separate pieces of paper, but several of them are on shiny paper stock that may not have come from trees, contain decals, etc. In other words, the packet will be difficult to recycle.
Improvements in printing technology are noticeable. The customized portions were done on a very high-quality digital printer that looks almost as good as offset. No more hideous dot-matrix mailmerge—except that on the mailing address “label” (you’ll understand the quote marks in a moment), there’s some all-caps text meant to simulate a hand-typed look, reading “THIS IS THE BULLETIN WE ALERTED YOU TO LOOK FOR”
Rear of the envelope from Publishers Clearing House
Disguises and subterfuge. If you give it a casual look, you might think the envelope had three added-on labels (one of them crooked and another upside down), two checkmarks, a note, and a circle in pen, the aforementioned hand-typed-look message, and both black and red rubber stamp imprints. But actually, as far as I can tell, all the various items on the envelope designed to create a feeling that a human being prepared it individually are actually printed on. You’ll also see phrases scattered throughout the mailing, like “prize patrol,” once again designed to convey the impression that a human being is out there, trying to match you up with your winnings. Most people won’t be looking so carefully, of course—but we are not stupid, and I’m betting only a very tiny percentage will think any part of this is actually hand-prepared.
To be continued tomorrow (including a deeper look at the psychology they’re using, and why I discount it).
In the Dumb and Dumber department: I opened a letter marked “Personal Correspondence,” knowing full well that it was not. It used a very obvious handwriting font, nonprofit bulk-mail indicia instead of a postage stamp, and a sprayed barcode, and on the back was a Washington, DC mailing address with no name.
Personal correspondence, my arse! I opened it up because I wanted to find out who was lying to me.
Turned out to be a charity group that works on gay and lesbian rights issues, a group I’ve previously donated money to. Inside, there was no longer any attempt to look personal. It was a fairly standard fearmongering letter, some slick full-color inserts and a decal. I separated the decal into the trash, put the rest of it in the recycling—but I kept the postage paid return envelope. I’m going to print this blog post and mail it back to the org at their expense, to make a statement that I don’t like being lied to, do not condone unethical marketing even from causes I support, and to make it a few cents more expensive to treat me as a fool.
