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No, they paid $4M to have an existing business relationship with a demographic that is incredibly valuable to a bank (and hard to reach). Email marketing is on

by timr 4y ago

No, they paid $4M to have an existing business relationship with a demographic that is incredibly valuable to a bank (and hard to reach). Email marketing is only one part of that. Regardless, marketing works, and yes, it's valuable. It's a business thing that I wish I could snap my fingers and make engineers understand. Even a 1% monthly response rate on a 4M member list is 40k leads a month. If your conversion rate is 1% (low), that's 400 sales a month. If your EV is $1000 (not at all unreasonable for a financial product), that's $400,000 a month.

JPws_Prntr_Fngr 4y ago
Thanks for the downvote and the explanation, oh wise one. Marketing works, goddamn, I wish I'd thought of that.
soulbadguy 4y ago
> It's a business thing that I wish I could snap my fingers and make engineers understand. I find interesting that "engineers" (what ever that means) do not understand the concept of marketing... The question here is not whether not "marketing works", but to which extent it does and also the privacy and ethical concern around buy peoples contact (with out their conscent) and basically spaming them.
- timr 4y ago
  I realizing I'm stereotyping, but it's with love (since I, myself, am an engineer, and I also carried this misconception around for a long time). But to explain: in my experience, engineers are quick to complain about all forms of marketing, and dismiss email marketing in particular as "spam". OP was a specific example of an attitude I've encountered many times before -- taking this so far as to suggest acquiring the users was "just for spamming". In addition to "all marketing email is spam", other non-truths that engineers believe about marketing: * if you send more than one email about something, it's intrusive and a violation * most people unsubscribe from marketing emails * nobody sees ads * people hate ads, and would opt-out of all advertising if they could

by timr 4y ago

JPws_Prntr_Fngr 4y ago

Thanks for the downvote and the explanation, oh wise one. Marketing works, goddamn, I wish I'd thought of that.

soulbadguy 4y ago

> It's a business thing that I wish I could snap my fingers and make engineers understand. I find interesting that "engineers" (what ever that means) do not understand the concept of marketing... The question here is not whether not "marketing works", but to which extent it does and also the privacy and ethical concern around buy peoples contact (with out their conscent) and basically spaming them.

timr 4y ago
I realizing I'm stereotyping, but it's with love (since I, myself, am an engineer, and I also carried this misconception around for a long time). But to explain: in my experience, engineers are quick to complain about all forms of marketing, and dismiss email marketing in particular as "spam". OP was a specific example of an attitude I've encountered many times before -- taking this so far as to suggest acquiring the users was "just for spamming". In addition to "all marketing email is spam", other non-truths that engineers believe about marketing: * if you send more than one email about something, it's intrusive and a violation * most people unsubscribe from marketing emails * nobody sees ads * people hate ads, and would opt-out of all advertising if they could