10 ms·

"For marketers who are trying to establish a personal relationship with their customers..." Isn't that kind of an oxymoron? How can the relationship be "person

by glesica 13y ago

"For marketers who are trying to establish a personal relationship with their customers..." Isn't that kind of an oxymoron? How can the relationship be "personal" when one side of it (the marketer's side) is really just algorithmically-generated (and by that I do not necessarily mean "computer-generated") and the conversation is one-way?

Dirlewanger 13y ago
Key word is trying...
jmduke 13y ago
To give an example, pretend I'm a coffeeshop with a MailChimp list of ~200 subscribers. 1. I send out an email to my subscribers saying "Hey, what do you guys want to see improved with your Uptown Coffee experience?" 2. Customers respond with responses ranging from things like "cheaper coffee lol" to "I really like the atmosphere but I get frustrated because sometimes there isn't anywhere to sit!" 3. I can respond personally to these emails and get more information, at which point I get to make business decisions that result in happier customers and (hopefully) more revenue.
- joeblau 13y ago
  To me an email survey is not personal. If you actually wrote an email to me, saying "Hey Joe, I see that you're doing x, y and z. What can I do to make your experience better?" which is written to me for me and not generic, that's establishing a relationship. I've gotten a hand written card from Fab.com founder Jason Goldberg which I've kept because that is personal.
  - hyperbovine 13y ago
    Don't know why you're getting downvoted, this is spot on. Machines talking to me like we went to high school together is one of my great peeves of the modern era.
  - memset 13y ago
    On that note, do realize that the vast majority of personalized hand-written cards you receive are written by taskrabbits who are trying to give that "personal" touch [1]. Mixpanel is one of the worst offenders of faux-personalized email. "I see you logged on today - were you able to accomplish what you wanted?" "I noticed that you were checking out the funnels feature. Can we set up a time to chat?" Go away. [1] https://www.taskrabbit.com/sf-bay-area/search?search=handwritten https://www.taskrabbit.com/sf-bay-area/search?search=handwri...
    - deegles 13y ago
      I honestly don't see why this is a bad thing. Would you prefer the automated emails? If you were on the other side of the equation, how would you deal with trying to get real feedback about your product? To me, it's fair to thing a company that's goes through the expense and effort to have a real person (taskrabbit or not) contact me deserves just a bit more consideration.
      - memset 13y ago
        I'm saying that those emails are automated - triggered upon a series of click events as part of a "customer lifecycle management" plan. They are just written to sound personalized ("I noticed that...") but to me, are no less spammy than anything else. Funny results of this are the fact that I'll be working on something over the weekend, trigger one of these automated messages, and email a response: "Oh yeah, I had a question, thanks for noticing!" Naturally I don't hear back until some time the following week. It is always hard getting real feedback about your product. But a message like "Hey, you just joined, and I think you could do a better job with the way you structure your sales data" - because a human had looked at our business, looked at the way we used their product, and spent a moment trying to come up with a way to be helpful - would be way cooler to me than an automated tripwire. For me, part of the reason the handwritten notes (shifting away from email for a moment) resonate with us is because we feel like an employee of the company - a grateful, hard-working employee - decided to spend their time painstakingly writing me a personalized note. That's why we write cards to our loved ones over the holidays. But when you can pay someone to do that, then the CEO doesn't care - they're just factoring it into the customer acquisition cost. Which is totally okay. But it is equivalent to saying "I don't mind paying higher prices for Apple products because the unboxing experience is so great."
bdunn 13y ago
I get what they're saying. I run a weekly newsletter, and often my "call to actions" are asking people to reply. Of the 6.5k people on my list, I've probably chatted in one way or another with at least 20% of them. It's definitely relationship building at scale, and while I know it's "write once, send N-times", myself and most of the people on my list see a distinction between my newsletter and a grid of items on sale.
- rrrhys 13y ago
  For what it's worth, your newsletter is one of a couple I've manually moved to my Primary tab.
  - kevinconroy 13y ago
    I consider this to be one of the highest compliments one can pay to a newsletter so I just signed up for it on this basis (also your landing page was pretty good).
toble 13y ago
These algorithms really do stand out when I order stuff for friends and relatives who aren't computer literate, which means I get all their marketing emails. The accounts that order infrequently are showered with discount codes and special offers, whereas the regular purchasers get nothing.
bmelton 13y ago
While I would generally agere with you completely, there are marketers with whom I have a very personal relationship. What sticks out to me (because they sent me an email today discussing gmail's new layout and how to ensure I kept getting their emails) is my comic shop. They go through effort to know what I like, what to recommend to me, etc., etc., and are super friendly to boot (not affiliated plug, Third Eye Comics in Annapolis are AWESOME). I genuinely want the emails they send me, even their most basic one-way emails provide me active value, and the relationship does transcend a more traditional marketing relationship, like the one I have with Amazon. In short, it would not surprise me to know that there are other businesses that share more personal relationships with their customers than the merchant-customer model.
- bumbledraven 13y ago
  I genuinely want the emails they send me, even their most basic one-way emails provide me active value, and the relationship does transcend a more traditional marketing relationship, like the one I have with Amazon. If you drag those messages from Promotions to Primary, Gmail will ask you if you want to do the same thing for all messages from that sender.
  - bmelton 13y ago
    Yes. That's exactly what they emailed me to suggest, but I haven't gotten the new layout yet for it to matter.
- gufyvgv 13y ago
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joeblau 13y ago
I had the exact same sentiment when I read that line. If marketers were typing each email instead of doing a generic name substation, then I could understand this, but they aren't.
admg 13y ago
I guess at least they're referring to them as customers instead of consumers for a change.

by glesica 13y ago

Dirlewanger 13y ago

Key word is trying...

jmduke 13y ago

To give an example, pretend I'm a coffeeshop with a MailChimp list of ~200 subscribers. 1. I send out an email to my subscribers saying "Hey, what do you guys want to see improved with your Uptown Coffee experience?" 2. Customers respond with responses ranging from things like "cheaper coffee lol" to "I really like the atmosphere but I get frustrated because sometimes there isn't anywhere to sit!" 3. I can respond personally to these emails and get more information, at which point I get to make business decisions that result in happier customers and (hopefully) more revenue.

joeblau 13y ago
To me an email survey is not personal. If you actually wrote an email to me, saying "Hey Joe, I see that you're doing x, y and z. What can I do to make your experience better?" which is written to me for me and not generic, that's establishing a relationship. I've gotten a hand written card from Fab.com founder Jason Goldberg which I've kept because that is personal.
- hyperbovine 13y ago
  Don't know why you're getting downvoted, this is spot on. Machines talking to me like we went to high school together is one of my great peeves of the modern era.
- memset 13y ago
  On that note, do realize that the vast majority of personalized hand-written cards you receive are written by taskrabbits who are trying to give that "personal" touch [1]. Mixpanel is one of the worst offenders of faux-personalized email. "I see you logged on today - were you able to accomplish what you wanted?" "I noticed that you were checking out the funnels feature. Can we set up a time to chat?" Go away. [1] https://www.taskrabbit.com/sf-bay-area/search?search=handwritten https://www.taskrabbit.com/sf-bay-area/search?search=handwri...
  - deegles 13y ago
    I honestly don't see why this is a bad thing. Would you prefer the automated emails? If you were on the other side of the equation, how would you deal with trying to get real feedback about your product? To me, it's fair to thing a company that's goes through the expense and effort to have a real person (taskrabbit or not) contact me deserves just a bit more consideration.
    - memset 13y ago
      I'm saying that those emails are automated - triggered upon a series of click events as part of a "customer lifecycle management" plan. They are just written to sound personalized ("I noticed that...") but to me, are no less spammy than anything else. Funny results of this are the fact that I'll be working on something over the weekend, trigger one of these automated messages, and email a response: "Oh yeah, I had a question, thanks for noticing!" Naturally I don't hear back until some time the following week. It is always hard getting real feedback about your product. But a message like "Hey, you just joined, and I think you could do a better job with the way you structure your sales data" - because a human had looked at our business, looked at the way we used their product, and spent a moment trying to come up with a way to be helpful - would be way cooler to me than an automated tripwire. For me, part of the reason the handwritten notes (shifting away from email for a moment) resonate with us is because we feel like an employee of the company - a grateful, hard-working employee - decided to spend their time painstakingly writing me a personalized note. That's why we write cards to our loved ones over the holidays. But when you can pay someone to do that, then the CEO doesn't care - they're just factoring it into the customer acquisition cost. Which is totally okay. But it is equivalent to saying "I don't mind paying higher prices for Apple products because the unboxing experience is so great."

bdunn 13y ago

I get what they're saying. I run a weekly newsletter, and often my "call to actions" are asking people to reply. Of the 6.5k people on my list, I've probably chatted in one way or another with at least 20% of them. It's definitely relationship building at scale, and while I know it's "write once, send N-times", myself and most of the people on my list see a distinction between my newsletter and a grid of items on sale.

rrrhys 13y ago
For what it's worth, your newsletter is one of a couple I've manually moved to my Primary tab.
- kevinconroy 13y ago
  I consider this to be one of the highest compliments one can pay to a newsletter so I just signed up for it on this basis (also your landing page was pretty good).

toble 13y ago

These algorithms really do stand out when I order stuff for friends and relatives who aren't computer literate, which means I get all their marketing emails. The accounts that order infrequently are showered with discount codes and special offers, whereas the regular purchasers get nothing.

bmelton 13y ago

While I would generally agere with you completely, there are marketers with whom I have a very personal relationship. What sticks out to me (because they sent me an email today discussing gmail's new layout and how to ensure I kept getting their emails) is my comic shop. They go through effort to know what I like, what to recommend to me, etc., etc., and are super friendly to boot (not affiliated plug, Third Eye Comics in Annapolis are AWESOME). I genuinely want the emails they send me, even their most basic one-way emails provide me active value, and the relationship does transcend a more traditional marketing relationship, like the one I have with Amazon. In short, it would not surprise me to know that there are other businesses that share more personal relationships with their customers than the merchant-customer model.

bumbledraven 13y ago
I genuinely want the emails they send me, even their most basic one-way emails provide me active value, and the relationship does transcend a more traditional marketing relationship, like the one I have with Amazon. If you drag those messages from Promotions to Primary, Gmail will ask you if you want to do the same thing for all messages from that sender.
- bmelton 13y ago
  Yes. That's exactly what they emailed me to suggest, but I haven't gotten the new layout yet for it to matter.
gufyvgv 13y ago
如果

joeblau 13y ago

I had the exact same sentiment when I read that line. If marketers were typing each email instead of doing a generic name substation, then I could understand this, but they aren't.

admg 13y ago

I guess at least they're referring to them as customers instead of consumers for a change.