Help me. I am Trying Understand

I have been in marketing & advertising for 40+ years. We have worked with Top 10 Global brands as well as small businesses. I have long been an advocate of the best way to serve my clients (brands) is to help them understand and know their customers. Marketing is a very customer-centric sector. The North Star of every business is developing better relationships with their customers and prospects, leaving the “funnel” to the sales department.

And I have seen a significant shift in that since the start of online marketing or digital marketing. Brands that I used to feel did stuff FOR me, now seem to be doing stuff TO me.?

For example, we recently bought custom blinds for 5 large windows in our living room. During our purchase journey, we did our homework. First we tried to get Hunter Douglas to service our electronic, very expensive blinds. With 5 large windows my living room is an absolute greenhouse sauna on a sunny day. That was quite an experience.

Hunter Douglas tries to come off as “high end” but it seems everyone in the industry knows they do not back that up. These beautiful custom blinds were purchased by the previous owner of our house so Hunter Douglas was very quick to state that change of ownership immediately ends the warranty. Thing is, we were not talking about warranty. We were talking about the blinds working. They just stopped working.

We replaced all batteries, cleaned the tubes, bought and programmed a brand new remote unit. Nothing worked. We just wanted a service person who knows Hunter Douglas to come and fix them. We were happy to pay for a service call. We live 50 minutes from the nearest city so we even know there is often a travel fee charged. But the only solution Hunter Douglas could provide was to remove the blinds (which I have no idea how to do), pack them up so they do not get damaged in transit and send them to Hunter Douglas in Halifax. Suffice to say, customer service is an oxymoron at Hunter Douglas, not unlike many “big name” brands we all deal with every day.

So this had us decide to replace them with non-motorized blinds that work. We went online and spent a little time looking at our options in a relatively small marketplace (Moncton). There appeared to be a few alternatives but we wanted a firm that would service the blinds - even after the warranty runs out.?

After reviewing a few websites, looking at online reviews and having a few phone conversations we decided on a local franchise for a National firm. They made an appointment, looked at our choices, discussed the pros and cons of each options and arrived at a proposal that we agreed to to. The Owner was great, professional and pleasant to deal with. She made a note, including the fact that all of the windows that need blinds had non-motorized versions already. We paid the deposit and the blinds were ordered. Within the time frame promised, the service team called to book an appointment and that went smooth as well. The serviceman ensured I knew how to remove the blinds if needed and even helped me remove the old Hunter Douglas blinds. Again, very happy with this brand’s professionalism, quality service and fair prices. A very pleasant experience so this point.

I immediately received an email thanking us for our business and confirming final payment was deposited. Fair enough.

What I am trying to understand is why I kept receiving emails offering deals to buy blinds! The marketing department seems to have simply added my email address to their master list and just blast messages a few times a week. I let it go of a couple of weeks and then unsubscribed, a process they made easy and simple as they should. This kind of activity is what I call the early stages of Repellent Marketing. Most or all of the pleasant experience to that point was erased because I now felt like a number rather than a person.?

Yes, I am being harsh, but like you, I have hundreds of these kind of irrelevant messages every single day and I am exhausted with it. This was just the straw that broke the camel’s back. This brand was in the right place at the wrong time. All of their positive customer experience gets wiped out by one Repellent Marketing tactic. Thankfully they are not buying lots of digital ads and stalking me around the internet. Hopefully they never sell my data to make a few extra bucks (new revenue streams) like many big brands are doing. At this point, they are not popping up in my Facebook feed.

In an alternate universe, a good marketer would have subscribed my email address to a “happy customer” list. I would have been happy to recommend them to 5 of my neighbours if they had sent me a message to do so. I even would have filled out a customer satisfaction poll had they asked.?

What I find interesting as a Marketer, is that both those activities would have made me even more of a brand fan than I already was.?

Once a year they could send a follow up asking if everything was working and making it easy to talk to someone or book a service call if I needed it. Now I am a raving fan. So an occasional “forward this to a friend in need” email would likely resulted in me doing exactly that, resulting in more opportunities for sales. I think that's the true objective of all this.

Instead, I unsubscribed. Gone.

In reality I would recommend these folks and if I ever needed more blinds they would likely be my first call. But as a valued, proven customer, why send me irrelevant emails? What were they trying to accomplish? What objective were they trying to achieve. “More emails” should never be the rally cry. “Relevant” messages that lead to profitable sales should be the game.

Again, as a Marketer, my email program should support our business objectives - creating more sales. Relevant to a prospect is very different than relevant to a paid in full customer.

Are there Repellent Marketing tactics in your organization that you can stop doing right now? I would love to understand if you think I am off-base.