E-mail marketing is big, big stuff these days. Possibly bigger than ever, as it has become so difficult to reach overloaded people.
When people let you into their inbox, you really should treat them with a little respect.
Here are a few of the things I'm not liking right now, (and hoping to heck I am not guilty of the same.)
Auto-responders
When someone replies to your mass e-mail, it is really kind of rude to send them a note saying you can't be bothered to read your stuff. We read their stuff, didn't we? You were all charming and witty and talked like we're kind of buddies, because that's the tone people take now. But hey, you're busy over here, and won't be responding.
Well, at least it's honest, I'll say that for it. Except for the "thanks"part, which is clearly all liar-pants.
I got one of these today that had a list of alternative ways to contact. Not bad, but still not great. Especially the part that says "If you are a customer... " Hell, yes, I'm a customer. I thought you knew that? And this from a specialist in e-mail marketing, no less.
In today's charming incident, I got a SECOND auto-responder, with this charming message tacked on at the beginning. I'll let you decide how you feel about the tone here.
This was Lead-Pages, but honestly it could have been many others.
Unsubscribe Options
I have a couple of modest little email lists -- the biggest is only about 1,000 names. But I do try to respect the time of people who are on that list. And I've been working harder at giving them options of what they want to see and how much of it.
It's amazing to me how often we DON'T get options. You can either get all the repeated sales pitches, or get nothing at all, even if you are a customer.
Again, I'm picking on LeadPages because they are handy, but it's a big club. Here's what I found when I tried to cut back on the messaging.
First attempt was to unsubscribe, thinking I would get options. Here's where the unsubscribe link goes. All or nothing. Well, as a customer, I can't really choose nothing without missing some potentially important stuff. This is when I wrote them a letter and got the offending auto-responder.
I realized there was a second option in the e-mail, so went to have a look at it. It sends me to a leadpage option to choose how many blog posts I want to get. But I'm not subscribed to the blog. And this wasn't actually a blog post.
My take
This is certainly not the only example. Only yesterday, I received unsolicited email from the wealth management group at CIBC Wood Gundy, a rather biggish enterprise. When I unsubscribed, I got a second email from the sender asking for feedback, telling me he was only 25 years old and trying really hard, blah, blah, and would really like to know why I unsubscribed. [I am NOT making this up - who could make this stuff up??]
I like LeadPages services, and would recommend them. Heck, I HAVE recommended them. Their product is easy to use, and seems to work well.
But I think they could be a little more customer friendly. Not just sound all customer friendly.
What's your take? Who's doing a great job on e-mail that we should give a shout-out to?
