If you ask, you must listen
About once a week, I get the same mailing offering me a credit card that earns miles in Continental’s frequent flyer program. It comes from Chase, and it has the Continental OnePass logo emblazoned on the envelope, with a note that says “IMPORTANT - Do Not Discard.” I immediately open them and shred the material inside, because contains my name, address, and other personal information.
I would think of this as just the usual junk mail - I get similar offers from American Airlines all the time, even though I haven’t set foot on one of their flights in at least five or six years - except that I was on the Continental web site. (I fly them almost all the time, because Houston’s a hub, I have elite status in their program and a ton of miles.) And I noticed something that jogged my memory: you can set your marketing preferences, and I did that quite some time ago, carefully checking the box that said that I do not want to receive any offers by mail.
Yet this mailing comes like clockwork every week.
If they’d never asked, I wouldn’t have given it much thought; but they did ask me what they should do. And then ignored my answer.
If you’re going to ask a customer what they want, you need to them follow through and do it. If you can’t get that right, just don’t ask.
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And they wonder why us bloggers are such a cranky lot…this reminds me of a recent letter from AIG “The information you requested” emblazoned on the envelope. Curious, I opened it. It was three pages, with the “custom” quote I’d gotten over the phone, and GEICO is still lower. The service rep thanked me for giving them the opportunity and I thought that was that.
But - no - apparently their system is set up to automatically crank out totally wasted paper. It would be simple enough to have a yes/no path for auto generation. Or, do they think that I’ll somehow decide I want to pay more for auto insurance??? Grumble, grumble…and another tree falls so we can get information we DIDN’T request.
Don’t Blame the Advertiser, Blame the Agency
John,
You really get a lot of bad mail. What I don’t understand is why you blame the advertiser. It’s not their fault; it’s the fault of the agency. It’s not in the agency’s financial best interest to not mail you. Oh, I think the advertisers needs to put someone on the staff to better manage the agency, but let’s be real, agencies know better. They just haven’t figured out how to make money mailing less. The agencies know that targeting is the best way to raise response rates, but they don’t care. If the client will accept lower response rates and continues to raise the mailing budget to compensate, then where is the incentive for the agency to recommend smaller more targeted mails.
Today we see consumers insisting on having do-not-mail legislation. Why? Well like you, they are tired of having personal information put in unsecured trash, and there is a growing movement in this country for a greener approach to consumption. The legislation would kill two birds with one stone. The problem is, once this legislation is in place, advertiser can literally kill the medium with some bad behavior. I point to the Do-Not-Call legislation which was in place for years with somewhere between 10-15% of phone numbers on the list, then the mortgage industry came along with saturation calling. Within two years the percentage of numbers on the list jumped to 85%, effectively killing the medium.
Advertising is important; it communicates available offers to the market. For example; if you have a high interest rate credit card and you deserve a better rate, an advertiser willing to give you a better rate should be able to communicate that to you. If you put all direct mail on a Do-Not-Mail list, you will not receive new offers and you will continue to spend more on interest than is necessary. Competition for your business is good. Advertisers need to do a better job of making their agencies provide them with more targeted and cost effective approaches to the market.
I’m sorry, but the advertiser is responsible for what their agency does, period. I say this as someone who has managed agencies. Sure, a good agency will be thinking of ways to offer more value to clients, but the fact that some are not that good doesn’t really excuse anybody involved.
As a consumer, I’m not terribly worried that I’m going to miss important information if I don’t get lots of direct mail. As a marketer, of course, I’m worried that people doing it so badly will poison the well for all of us.