Comments on: Smart email: If I stop buying, ask me why!

By: Customer intelligence

Customer intelligence — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 13:24:00 +0000

[...] Leisa says: “If you’re smart enough to look for customer intelligence (who’s stopped buying what), then be smart enough to respect a customer’s intelligence.” [...]

By: leisa.reichelt

leisa.reichelt — Tue, 12 Dec 2006 16:06:35 +0000

Having worked on similar integrated email campaigns, the reason why feedback isn’t gathered is that it would end up in a black hole.

Hey Patrick, I tend to agree that this is what would likely happen at the moment, but I guess what I’m trying to get at here is not just the email itself as a mechanic, but how companies can use email to improve the overall user experience, which would mean changing processes so that marketing people DO listen to this kind of feedback, and so that there was a way to refactor the product offering in response to this feedback.

Agile product development perhaps? :)

By: Patrick

Patrick — Tue, 12 Dec 2006 02:13:52 +0000

Having worked on similar integrated email campaigns, the reason why feedback isn’t gathered is that it would end up in a black hole.
To their credit, those marketers have made the right choice. If there is currently no process for making use of the feedback then they shouldn’t capture it in the first place (many times the decision goes the other way).
Ideally it would be possible to collect customer feedback and use it to improve the customer experience (like fix problems with the purchase process), but usually marketing is set aside from actual business operations. Even worse, email marketing is usually estranged from the mainstream marketing. So there’s quite a chasm between the email which arrives in your inbox and the underlying business processes that need to be effected.
OK enough defending email marketing :)

By: Leisa Reichelt

Leisa Reichelt — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 23:02:00 +0000

Ah yes, but why do people ‘churn’? (Ok, I’m no expert on churn, but I know that it’s only partially to do with price).

I frequently ‘churn’ for reasons other than price. Perhaps if there was more of this conversation going on, companies would get better at managing (that is, reducing) churn.

Seriously tho, I’m not suggesting that they start blogging or anything outrageous like that (although, interestingly, Three XSeries is blogging), maybe just give me a little form and a few options as to why I might not have stopped buying. That’s hardly difficult to implement or manage… providing that you’re willing to recognise that your overall offering might be flawed.

By: Eric

Eric — Sun, 10 Dec 2006 02:08:32 +0000

To be fair though they are probably thinking that you did get distracted … by a competitor’s better offer. Customer churn generally accounts for more lost customers than lifestyle changes (eg. no longer buys organic produce).

By: Tim Beadle

Tim Beadle — Thu, 07 Dec 2006 16:13:01 +0000

But that would involve marketers embracing the Cluetrain Manifesto and actually having a conversation. That (as far as they see it) is risky, not to mention a challenge to the received wisdom and training of marketing people whose experience is a mixture of pre and post-internet, on- and offline.

It’ll be a brave (but clueful) company that does it first in any given market.