Some of Alan's views on this digital marketing malarkey ... there's more on: AlanCharlesworth.com

Wednesday, November 16, 2011

just the ticket. not

At the beginning of the year I posted register - just to check availability complaining that I had to register on the Blackpool FC website just to see if there were any tickets still available for a match. Welllll ... that's not the end of the issue, because yesterday I received this email:

Now, I'm pretty sure that somewhere in the registration there was small print saying they could contact me with marketing offers [I can't remember if the was a tick-box to opt out], so this isn't illegal - but it is very bad practice to send direct marketing emails out on a 'cc' basis so that all of the recipients can see all of the emails addresses of all of the other recipients. I would be really surprised if my address - along with around 300 others isn't already doing the spam rounds as I type.
 
Oh, and by the way ... related to my original posting - take a look at the greeting on the email: 'dear BFC season ticket holder' - clearly I am not. 

Thursday, November 10, 2011

demandware demanding too much

I've hi-lighted this kind of thing before - but it seems some folk just don't learn. This one is more ironic because the requested document is a piece of commissioned research - let's hope the research questionnaire was better designed than this form.

I can remember back in the 1990s how it was common practice for US-based organizations to insist on a 'zip code' on their online forms. Well, I thought we'd moved past that ... but apparently not. This form actually gives the user of choosing their country from a long list - but still insists on a State being entered [Sunderland is now in Wyoming, by the way]. All it needed in the 'States' field was a 'not in the USA' option. Or better still, have the techies override the necessity for the 'State' field to be completed if the user selected a country other than the USA.
 

Monday, November 7, 2011

an email from Emily Bronte?

One of the problems of having me as a customer is that I get the opportunity to point out your faults - and it's KLM again. My personalized copy of the latest edition of their 'ifly' online magazine looked like this:
Am I the only one in thinking that this greeting was not only a bit too personal, but from the pages of a Nineteenth Century novel?

Friday, November 4, 2011

double vision

No explanation required on this one - though be sure it is the designers' fault and not that of my computer. If my PC couldn't handle whatever software that is being used it is not my fault for owning that PC, it is the designers' for serving up a page which its target market couldn't read.