You may not be trying to sell me little blue pills, a sure-fire way to get my website on the first page of Google search results, or the opportunity to ‘rest’ $15m in my bank account. But you’re as bad.
I define spam as unsolicited messages. Communication that is forced onto me, that I haven’t asked for. Spam exists in various forms. Apart from all those email messages that we all receive, there are spam messages that come into the comments section of this blog. There are spam SMS messages that I receive from my cellphone provider. I even get spam messages to my Twitter account.
You probably hate spammers too. In which case why do you choose to adopt similar techniques when communicating with your customers?
- Why do you automatically add every customer and sales prospect that you’ve ever known to receive your online communication?
- Why do you send your email communication from a “no-reply” email address?
- Why do you blast the same message – verbatim – across all of your social media channels? Don’t you realize that your intended audience ends-up getting the exact same message – but from 20 different places?
- Why are you mixing personal messages with professional ones? Learning about a new promotion from your Facebook page may be interesting. But seeing your recently-posted photos of last weekend’s drunken BBQ (usually) isn’t.
- Why do you make it so difficult for people to unsubscribe from your mailings? Click here, then here, then enter my email address, then give a reason why I’m unsubscribing. Are you serious?
Blanket message distribution rarely accomplishes more than creating a distrust and dislike of your brand. Today, we’ve moved into the realm of permission marketing – obtaining customer consent prior to delivering your message.
The tools of marketing engagement have been refined to the point that messages can be tailored to groups of prospects – or even to individuals. Engagement channels continue to grow – blogs, social media, variable data, QR codes. Subscribing – and unsubscribing – to mailing lists is now a painless, ‘one-click’ process.
Customers are smart. When they see your spam-type messages – and message delivery mechanisms – they make a judgement about your company and your business value offering.
Suffice to say that it’s not a positive one.