How To Lose A Customer In Two Easy Steps

PropelGrowth Blog

No Helpful Content, Just Email Spam

Your email marketing strategy may be too company-centricI’ve been getting bombarded with promotional emails recently from a web-based company that I use to market my rental properties. I’m already their customer, and have been a customer for several years. I love their service. They help me find tenants very quickly for a reasonable price.

The promotions offer discounts if I buy an ad within a limited period of time.  There is no content — no help to landlords on how to decrease turnover or maximize profits – just sales spam. I don’t have lots of rentals with lots of vacancies. I need to use their service maybe once every year or so. Hence, I am not interested in receiving their promotions.

I Tried to Unsubscribe

I got tired of the spam, so I clicked unsubscribe. Problem.

The unsubscribe page makes it clear that unsubscribing will delete me from ALL their lists. So that means when I have a property listed on their site, I won’t get notifications if someone sends an inquiry.

Let Them Eat Spam!

I decided not to unsubscribe, and sent them an email asking them to remove me from their marketing list but to keep me subscribed to emails related to my listings. Here’s the response I got:

Hello Candyce,

Thank you for contacting [Name Withheld].

We apologize if the Promotional emails are too frequent. Our Marketing team releases a new promotion routinely once a month for our clients to be able to save a little money on their purchases. Recently with the launch of our new website [withheld].com for Property Managers the marketing emails may have climbed to two a month. It is very important to our business to update our customers on new features and promotions. Again we do apologize if this is felt as too excessive.

Thank you for being a valued customer. We’re committed to providing you with the best service possible. If we may be of any further assistance to you, please contact us.

Have a Great Day,
[Name Withheld]

What About The CUSTOMER’S NEEDS?

Are they kidding? It’s important to THEIR business to update me on promotions? What about MY business as their customer? This is a great example of what NOT to do when nurturing customers. The company is so focused on their needs, that they pay no attention to their customers’ interests or needs.

“Nurturing” Me Isn’t Going To Make Me Need Their Services

I’m not their typical customer. I made it clear in my email that I am a small client with very infrequent vacancies. I’m not interested in using their service when I don’t have a vacancy (obviously), and I’m not going to have an increase in vacancies just because they send me “nurturing” emails.

So Here’s The Thing…

As marketers, this is a really easy mistake to make. We get so wrapped up in OUR content and OUR strategy, that we don’t consider how it’s affecting our existing customers. So be careful. Step back and reconsider your email marketing strategy. Do you have any blind spots that might frustrate or annoy certain groups of customers?

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