Intent to Buy Cartoon #5: Email Offer
By Anurag Wadehra in Cartoons, Email Marketing, Personalization, Recommendations on January 18, 2012
This is the fifth in Baynote’s ten-part series of cartoons by award-winning cartoonist Tom Fishburne, titled “Intent to Buy”. We’ve received some great feedback from you on our cartoons, so please continue to let us know what you think! To say thanks for your input, we’ll send you a print signed by Tom if you post a comment within one week (U.S. addresses only).
Check out the complete series.
In life, there is only one constant: that nothing remains the same. As anyone who had a perm in the 80s will tell you, that can be a very, very good thing. But what happens when retailers fail to take these life changes into account when providing personalized offers to their shoppers?
As Tom Fishburne’s latest cartoon illustrates, personalizing e-mail offers based on old data is a surefire way to ensure they end up in the diaper pail. And sometimes, as confirmed by this bachelor who’s apparently given up one heck of a lifestyle in favor of burp cloths and domestic bliss would surely tell you, it can be downright cruel.
If you want to get the most return on your deals (who wouldn’t?), start first by working to discover clues about your audience’s in-the-moment needs, and then targeting your offers from there. This guy surely would be responding better to that approach, and all bets are on that you would, too.
Your cartoons and insight are so Spot on and simple I Love them! I only recently found your stuff via my Amazing new VP who shares a wealth of knowledge and insight with his team! If everyone had a VP like mine the world of business would be a much better place.
What’s funny about this is the difference between what I have become and how I think of myself. I’ve got kids so I know that I’m not going out, living large and whatnot. But I still find myself thinking that I do. I still look at exotic weekend vacations before I catch myself. I think this type of marketing might actually work because it reminds me of what I was and maybe I’ll grab it and stuff it into my schedule just to hold on to that bit of me a little longer.
The first step to personalized offers is to ask the question/s. Simply offer your incentive in exchange for them giving relevant information that will allow you to customize an offer in real time. With technology today, one can come up with various models that allow you to analyze the data as it is being inputted and present instantly the appropriate offers from your product/service range.
I wonder which one consumers are more concerned about: 1) getting a random spam email that clearly knows nothing about you, and is just an annoying piece of cyber-clutter or 2) getting a targeted email that knows you so well that you wonder how they got that information and what other personal information is out there about you?
What constantly amazes me is not just the incredibly poor targeting of these sorts of email campaigns but that there is obviously no thought given to the detrimental effects of spamming the wrong folks (or the right folks in the the wrong way) on your potential future relationship with them. There are brands that I actively dislike just because of the emails I get from them, and others that I love because I feel like when I hear from them it’s adding value to my life.
I’m always amazed by the advertising I see on social media, especially Facebook. They have so much information about me (I’m married, have kids, am fortunate to have a full head of hair etc…), and yet all I seem to see from them are ads about meeting local singles and baldness cures. All the data in the world doesn’t do much good if you fail to leverage it!
I wouldn’t be so sure he’s given up that lifestyle yet – normally takes a couple of years of responsible fatherhood! I have two kids and personally I would much rather have the thrill-seeking offers, provide of course, there was also a spa offer for my wife on a separate occassion.