Marketing Failure Prevention - 3 Steps. | MAD MARKETING TACTICS™ !

Thursday, August 11, 2011

Marketing Failure Prevention - 3 Steps.

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If you should send anyone (i.e., prospective clients, existing clients, estranged relatives, strangers on a list you've rented, etcetera) an unsolicited correspondence via text or email and you would like for them to read it, remember these three things: 1) It must have a wonderful hook in its subject line (a call to attention); 2) It must contain some informational content of general interest; and, 3) If it contains an advertisement or a request, show some respect for your involuntary by making it clever, inconspicuous and uncluttered with flash, graphics and other festoonery -- if you fail to follow these three rules, your solicitation will not only be treated as a moron-o-gram and tossed into the spam compacter -- you will be remembered by your recipients (and not in a positive light, either), and might get yourself blacklisted with a number of them.

Your mailing list manager, MailChimp, iMail, AWeber, Constant Contact, or JiffyMail (whichever one you overpay for their delightfully labyrinthine double opt-in subscription feature), might even suspend your account (read their Terms Of Service ... they can) pending an explanation from you, and a promise to "never, ever be naughty again."

Good communication is one of the keys to any successful marketing campaign. Don't insult your audience. Show them some respect, and give them something of benefit for their having opened your email or text message -- even if it's just an inspirational quote or a fun factoid.

Following is an unsolicited "item" (a euphemism for a fetid, steaming pile of yak excrement) which I had the distinct displeasure of receiving. It inspired me to write this article, so there was a benefit; but it was an inadvertent one. I just can't let these folks off the hook...

My distaste for this unsolicited communique was not a function of xenophobia [after all, I do write The Internationalist Page Blog as well as The Global Futurist Blog]; it is a function of universal disgust. The question each of us must ask himself, herself or itself (so as to be politically correct) is this:

"If the recipient of this thing were to receive 100 emails hourly, or ten texts hourly, how would he/ she/ it feel about me, as the sender, after having opened it?"