Lured by Cyber Monday deals, I bought something from ToysRUs.com for the first time this past weekend. Besides the order confirmation email, I received six additional promotional emails from the company, in just three day. That averages about two a day. Annoying? Sure! But ToysRUs is not alone. In the last one to two years, I have seen major retailers dramatically increase their email promotion frequency. Just a few weeks ago, I had removed myself from the email lists of well-known retailers such as New York & Company, Victoria’s Secret, to name just a few. Some of these companies were sending me daily if not more email messages about something on sale. It appears that either the recent economic recession has turned these retailers desperate, or a new marketing bible is out there somewhere teaching these retailers to bombard consumers with emails.
Is this strategy effective? Business aside, let me ask you this: have you ever met someone who can talk your head off and don’t know when or how to shut up? If you can’t picture that, think about Adrian Monk’s upstairs neighbor in the hit TV show Monk. What do we do when we meet people like that? We usually try to avoid them like the plague. I did with those retailers. When I asked my students what they do, they said they simply deleted the emails. I am sure this is not what the retailers intended.
Photo by Flickr user oddharmonic | CC2.0
Now, I am not discounting the effectiveness of email marketing. When used appropriately, emails can be an effective and low-cost way of communicating with customers and keeping a business in consumers’ mind. But just like most things in this world, too much is not a good thing. Let me present a few reasons why daily or too frequent promotional emails are neither necessary nor effective: Continue reading “When Your Business Talks Too Much”