March 2022
I used to work in marketing and, over the years, had a number of roles involved in producing "Marketing Campaigns".
I used to work in marketing and, over the years, had a number of roles involved in producing "Marketing Campaigns".
In the early days, these involved creating hard-copy mailers where we would design and print a flyer and buy an address database and post out thousands of stuffed envelopes to unsuspecting "prospects". The cost and time involved in implementing these campaigns were self-regulating in terms of how many items we sent out and how often we sent them.
In later years, we tended to lean towards email campaigns as they were cheaper and you got far more "bangs for your buck" but always had to be aware of being viewed as spam by both the recipients' spam filters and the recipients themselves.
Our Customer Relationship Management software (CRM) included features that enabled us to control how often we emailed the same recipients and we made an effort to try not to contact them too often.
This was fairly standard practice in the B2B (Business to Business) world - but seems completely lost on the B2C (Business to Consumer) world and which has resulted in this particular rant and venting of steam...
"Over-Marketing" is the term I use when a company that you have bought something from, probably online, then insists on bombarding you with emails telling you about other things they think you'll be interested in; even before what you've ordered from them has arrived. And, they continue to nudge you, poke you, annoy you with repeated communications long after your purchase has arrived.
Different products have different buying cycles. For example, I may buy a large bag of dog food online every few weeks or so, but I may only buy a new sofa every ten years or so. However, consumer marketing seems to ignore this and just add you to their weekly (or in some cases, daily) email blast.
When it gets to the point that you have tried unsubscribing and are on the point of blocking their email address, then you have been "over-marketed" to and any positive thoughts you had for the brand have now been replaced by mild to intense irritation. And then, you start sharing this annoyance with your family, your friends and anyone else who will listen to you. All of which negates what the little marketing cherubs were trying to achieve in the first place.
This very thing happened to me a week or two ago. I had purchased something online and the next morning I received an email saying something like: "Hi, look at these lovely products similar to the ones you recently bought - please buy these as well". Despite scouring the footer of the email, I could not find an "unsubscribe" button. In the end, I emailed their customer service team asking them to "cease & desist" and could they please remove me from their marketing database. They replied saying yes they would, but it would take up to 3 weeks for my details to be removed from their database. To which I replied, how come it takes less than 12 hours to put my details into your database but you can't remove them for 3 weeks? No response... And, then the next morning an email pops into my inbox - Hi, look at these lovely products... Ugh!
In a similar "over-marketing" vein, another thing that really annoys me is the "How're we doing?" pop-up survey you get on many websites. You know the ones I mean. You've just arrived at a website and before you can even click to the first place you want to go, up pops a survey asking you to rate your experience of the site, product, service, etc. And, I'm thinking - hang on I haven't even bloody seen the product yet, how do I know what my "experience" is yet? Alright then, yes, I'll complete your bloody survey - is there an "I'm already mildly pissed off" option?
...and, relax...