The events of the past several years have impacted our lives in so many ways … sadly, including a deterioration in social interaction skills. While technology developments helped fill the gap, they also accelerated a tendency to hide behind devices and evade direct interactions. The result: a loss of grace and civility.
When creating a business development strategy, there’s a fine line between robust outreach and over-the-top, intrusive marketing. Incessant, interruptive multi-channel marketing doesn’t build the rapport needed for lasting customer relationships. An appropriate marketing approach includes respecting boundaries.
Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should
As a solutions partner for an email marketing provider, I recently received a marketing email promoting their SMS (text) marketing plans. The message promise was that “adding text marketing to email and social channels will give you and your clients the ability to reach customers in the channel they prefer.”
I found the premise off-putting, both as a business owner and a consumer. The channel who prefers? For me, the notion of text marketing evokes the image of a bull in a china shop, crashing through the glass window with reckless abandon. Clearly, no apparent boundaries.
While some recipients may be receptive to text marketing, it’s a deliberate step
into the recipients’ personal space. Prior to implementing a text marketing strategy,
ensure you’re not engaging in any of these boundary-busting approaches.
Boundary buster #1: Missile-fire email cadence
Have you purchased from an online retailer and found your email flooded with multiple emails per day? More is not always better. In fact, it’s often not better.
Email in-boxes can be a source of stress. Recipients inundated by your emails may become irritated at the deluge. Without the ability to retain some measure of control over your emails, they are likely to simply unsubscribe, terminating the relationship.
Are you enabling subscribers to:
- Pause marketing emails for 30 days?
- Manage preferences to cater content topics according to their wants/needs?
- Select the cadence of your marketing emails?
If a subscriber elects to pause, manage preferences or unsubscribe, ensure the requested change is implemented — and back off with grace.
Boundary buster #2: Implied relationship hard-sell approach
This approach uses phone calls, voicemail, email and text messages over a period of minutes, and an overly-familiar approach to infer or imply a relationship that doesn’t actually exist. The goal of this multi-channel barrage is to elicit a sense of urgency so the recipient answers the phone call (validating the telephone number).
This approach is inadvisable because it is both inauthentic and aggressive. Grace? Nope.
Boundary buster #3: Threats and disrespect
Another aggressive marketing approach penalizes recipients for unsubscribing or requesting a more restrained marketing pace … for example, denying discounts, free shipping or special account features.
Holding prospective customers hostage is not an effective way to develop a lasting relationship.
Text marketing (and texting) with grace
Appropriate implementation of a formalized text marketing strategy should include an opt-in that favors the recipient. To minimize customer irritation, allowed time of day (or night) is an important factor to consider.
Outside of a marketing channel, there are appropriate uses for texting within a business context, such as to call attention to a deadline or time-sensitive email. However, it’s important to respect boundaries — especially in off-hours. Always review messages for clarity, completeness and spelling (speech-to-text can result in significant transcription errors). Confusing or multiple follow-up texts can quickly cause irritation and negatively impact a client relationship.
