Hey AOL - making your service worse is not a good strategy.

I'm not quite sure when my AOL desktop started acting up.  It wouldn't load my email newsletters properly and constantly crashed; while they kept sending me sketchy looking messages asking me if I wanted their help to fix the problem.  Hmm.

Then last month they sent me an email telling me that I would now have to pay for the service.  Why would I want to do that when it's so terrible? 

They were a bit cagey about telling me that they are charging $3.99 a month, because they want to rope me in to a 30 day free trial and then hope that I will forget to opt out.  That could be a good strategy.  (Cracklingice, 2017)

But the online reviews of the new AOL Gold are pretty awful, just like my most recent experiences.  Wouldn't it have been smarter for them to improve the user experience before they tried to get people to pay for it? 

Just asking.

Cracklingice (2017, March 12)  AOL Desktop Software to end free access plan.  linustechtips.com.  Retrieved July 14, 2017, from

https://linustechtips.com/main/topic/751011-aol-desktop-software-to-end-free-access-plan/

Note to Century 21 - daily emails? Unsubscribe me.

I know that marketers are very excited by email marketing, but daily emails?  Really? 

I guess there may be some people who want them, but I'm not sure who they would be.  According to a 2015 survey 53% of consumers report that getting too many emails is the reason they unsubscribe - so I guess the other 47% are ok with how many they are getting.  Or not.  I think it's far more likely that they are dumping them into an email account that they have created for just that purpose and are ignoring them. (Schiff, 2015)

I read somewhere that you should send the most emails to your newest customers and oldest.  Perhaps that explains the daily emails to new customers.  But since you have no idea what a new customer wants you can't personalize the emails in any way so they simply become more spam filling my inbox. 

Not that Staples, who I have been doing business with for over a decade, is doing any better.  Saying that an offer is "Just for You" and including items I have never bought is ridiculous.  And sending me coupons that aren't good for my preferred brand of ink are insulting.  I've been a part of your loyalty program for years.  Why aren't you looking at my past purchases properly? 

When I tried to manage my subscription the choices were limited to reducing frequency to two times a week.  Not good enough.  What I really want is an email once a month for something I actually might buy.  Is that too much to ask? 

And as far as Century 21 is concerned, I will be unsubscribing as soon as I finish writing this blog.  I hope they haven't already sold my email address to a million other people so that they too can annoy me with emails I don't want.  But I imagine that ship has sailed.

Quick follow-up: When I tried to unsubscribe from C21 they would not allow me to!  Instead the best option I could find was reducing frequency to once a week.  What are they thinking?  The reason I joined the program in the first place was that I intended to do more shopping with them in the future.  Pissing me off is not a good way to start a new relationship.  I may need to reconsider.

Schiff, J. (2015, March 24)  Top 7 reasons people unsubscribe from your email list.  cio.com.  retrieved April 29, 2016, from

http://www.cio.com/article/2901255/email-marketing/top-7-reasons-people-unsubscribe-from-your-email-list.html

Overwhelming your customers with emails is not a good sales strategy.

The other day I received 22 emails from Staples.  Granted they only meant to send me two.  But as far as I am concerned two emails a day from Staples is two too many.  I discussed the fact that I find their emails overwhelming and annoying with another small business customer and he agreed.  This was last spring.  Then I noticed that they started coming even more often.  Not surprisingly soon after I read that sales were soft.

It’s true that most of the emails they sent included coupons.  But they all had strings attached – good for purchases over $100 – excluding these items, good in-store or online only, limited timeframes etc.  Even the coupon they sent me to apologize for the 22 emails came with caveats. 

I was never too keen on Staples’ emails to begin with because they are not customized based on my purchases.  Instead they tell me what they have on sale that week even if I have never bought anything like those items before.  What’s the point of having a database if you don’t intend to use it?  On the other hand when they have tried to use my data for outreach it is clear that they are not coordinating my offline and online purchases properly even though I always use my rewards number. 

I have canceled every opt-in newsletter I have ever received due to the same issue with overkill.  I noticed recently that when I canceled one I was given the option of selecting a lesser frequency.  Perhaps Staples offers the same option, but given their database dysfunction I am afraid that if I do try to cancel their promotional emails they will stop sending my rewards as well.  So I just ignore them.

According to the Direct Marketing Association, these days only 22% of emails are opened, and just 1.5% result in a purchase.  (Holmes, 2012)  That’s comparable to direct mail rates; and, much lower than the online rates used to be. 

Perhaps if companies gave a bit more thought to both the frequency and the content of their emails they might become an effective marketing tool again.  At the very least they’ll stop alienating their customers.

 
Holmes, E. (2102, December 19)  Dark Art of Store Emails.  Wall Street Journal.  pD1

Is the marketing potential of social media being overhyped?

4/20/11

With over 500 million users, it’s hard for marketers not to see sales potential in Facebook. But is it delivering? According to a recent study by Forrester Research the average click-through rate on Facebook is a mere 1%, with a 2% conversion rate. That’s pretty anemic compared to e-mail marketing which has an 11% click-through rate and a 4% conversion rate. (Woo, 2011)

Facebook argues that the ability for people to like a brand and tell their friends that they do amounts to a giant word-of-mouth campaign. And, findings show that when a friend’s name is on the ad people are 60% more likely to remember it, and four times more likely to purchase.

Several months ago, I hypothesized that the latter might be Facebook’s sweet spot. But, we have yet to see any published results that support this. Until we do, one has to wonder whether advertisers should be paying a bit more attention to their e-mail marketing efforts instead of obsessing over unproven channels.
What do you think?

Woo, S. (2011, April 7) Facebook Won’t Become E-Commerce Force, Analyst Says. blogs.wsj.com Retrieved April 20, 2011, from
http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2011/04/07/facebook-wont-become-e-commerce-force-analyst-says/