shotgun emails don't hit the target

When I'm teaching segmentation and target marketing I often use the analogy of shooting: a rifle picks out a single, identified target and a shotgun fires off a thousand pellets in the hope that it hits something useful. I apply the same concept to email marketing. If you send thousands of emails one might hit the target -but like the innocent victims who might get caught in the shotgun blast, most people simply get fed up with a constant barrage of irrelevant emails arriving in their inbox. The net result being damage to the brand. My example of this comes from kitchenware retailer, ProCook. 

Back in November I saw a dish drainer in one of their retail outlets, but not in the colour I wanted - so I went online and order one in a suitable colour. That's it. A one-off purchase. I hadn't even heard of the company before this. And I doubt I am in their target demographic. Certainly the product arrived promptly - but the emails soon followed. This culminated i[n the run-up to Christmas Day] when I received a promotional email from them every day from the 11th to the 24th of December. That I was deleting them without even opening any should have triggered alarms at ProCook - I just was not interested in their promotions. Or for that matter, their products. Sure, I could have hit the 'unsubscribe' button - and to be honest I let them keep coming just to see if they would take the hint and stop them without me saying.

Equally bad for volume - though I am, perhaps, in their target demographic - is Orvis. Previously in this blog I have praised their service and quality of product [see good after-sales service], but since they delivered the jacket I ordered, they have also delivered a promotional email every two or three days. Again, I deleted most without opening them - that should have been flagged on their system.  

Oh sure, I know the run-up to Christmas is peak sales time and in a poor economy companies have to go for every last penny with the potential for gifts as well as personal purchases - but hey, both of these examples are closer to blunderbuss than shotgun - and there has been collateral damage to the ProCook and Orvis brands.

[more] good after-sales service

In an earlier entry I mentioned that I had ordered something from Orvis. Well, this blog is mainly full of examples of bad practice, but Orvis deserve a mention for their after-sales service.

I placed the order at 8.53 pm on Tuesday 19th of October. Although I was on their UK site, the jacket was dispatched from America. It arrived at my house on the morning of Tuesday 26th of October. That's less than a week - including a weekend, and the shipping cost was only £4.95!

It doesn't end there, however. And before I go further, I should add that the product was - to me - expensive [though perhaps no so much for others] and so my service expectation was high. But no matter how high it was - it was matched and more.

First was the packaging. A robust cardboard box. Upon opening it up I find a 'suit holder' containing the jacket - which came complete with a nice and wide, wooden coat hanger. The jacket itself was as described [though I had tried on a similar one in Orvis's Harrogate branch].

Then there's the letter that was enclosed [see images at the end of this entry]. OK, so by UK standards, the wording is a bit syrupy, but hey ... that's better than too formal. Best of all is the facility for returning the jacket if I had need to do so. Free return shipping, pre-printed address label, a dedicated UK phone line and email address and an online live chat feature available from 11am to midnight. If I had got ordered the wrong size, a replacement would be sent shipping free.

I've been in business long enough to appreciate that I have paid for all of this service within the price of the jacket, but hey ho; it's a quality jacket and a competitive price - as I have said many times, price isn't everything.

BTW - still no sign of the £10 discount :)

good job it's not a Christmas present

For reasons that I won't go into, I spent several hours today killing time in the lovely town of Harrogate - and I called in one shop called Orvis. They had a nice jacket - but not in my size. The staff told me about the website, so when I got home I took a look. Selecting my size I found there was a problem with availability ...

Yep, that's the end of December before it can be dispatched. That's five months away. Hmmm. Furthermore, in the shop it was on sale - 30% off, but no sign of such an offer on the website. Consistency of pricing on- and offline is an issue, with best practice normally being 'same price' for all channels. I know I would have been sick if I had bought online and then seen the jacket in the shop for 60-odd pounds less.

As a footnote: this is only my suspicion based on my retail experience - but I suspect that this particular jacket is being discontinued, to be replaced later in the year with a new style. This would explain the long lead time for online orders and the discount of what sizes remain in the shops. If I'm right, why not just say that? Indeed you could actually make it into 'good' news, and collect email addresses of folk who want to be informed when the new style is available.

As is the case in all my entries to this blog: if Orvis's reputation management team pick this up [which they should - if such a team exists] I would be happy to amend my assumption if I am wrong.

Footnote: as you can see, someone from Orvis did contact me and we exchanged emails with regard to the issues - he concluded by saying my comments would be passed on to the appropriate folk.