Do Your Marketing Emails LIE?

Every once in a while - as you who read my blog know - I get a bit irked at the irresponsible email practices of companies that play fast and free with their databases. So, here's my latest rant about bad email practices.

Although, this one is simple - Don't Lie to Your Leads!

The sad part about this is that it's from a marketing solutions company.

They start off with thanking me for visiting their booth at Dreamforce. Which I did not. And the message tells me they likely sent a blanket email to the entire attendee list.

Then there's this paragraph:

"I have appended a "Weekly Marketing Insight" below which I thought you would find interesting. Sent to your Inbox automatically, it helps uncover where you might consider saving marketing dollars, which of your online prospects should be followed up on immediately, and which web pages are viewed the most by your target markets."

I thought, Cool - something useful. And scrolled down. But what I found wasn't useful. Heck, it wasn't even truthful.

They proceeded to show me a few charts professing to reveal activity at my website. However, when matched against my analytics for the week specified, the numbers had zero correlation to reality.

The next chart showed what they said were statistics for the top 5 web pages visited during that week and asked me if my content was up to date.

The extensions for those pages included:

• Home
• About
• Leadership
• Pricing
• Careers

I only have 2 pages that correlate to those. None with the same name on the title or meta tags, or navigation - so I'm wagering this is a guess at matching to a stereotypical corporate website structure. As well, the numbers were laughable they were so far off. And, of course had to be counting ghost visitors for those pages that my website doesn't have. Too bad they missed Halloween.

Obviously the whole thing was a big joke. A bad attempt to fool me into thinking they had provided something valuable.

Did they think I wouldn't know? If I didn't know, do they think I wouldn't go to my people who do know and ask?

The big question is: Did they bother to think about the damage they'd do to their credibility and reputation when they sent out such schlock? Because, as far as I'm concerned, they just stuck a fork in themselves. They're done!

Do NOT lie to your leads. Not ever.

Do NOT make cheap attempts to fool them into responding to you, or clicking on the associated link for a free trial under false premises.

The truth eventually comes out. I can't imagine it would take longer than 5 minutes in this case. What a waste of engagement points.

Comments

[Mike Volpe]

If the truth eventually comes out... why not tell us who it is? Over 10,000 people who went to Dreamforce got the email. (Someone from HubSpot got it too, forwarded it to me and at first I was intrigued, but then I saw the data was fake and it pissed me off too.)

I could not agree with you more. Would you trust anything the sales person said on the demo? I wouldn't. I am surprised in a world where there is increased transparency and everyone is a publisher (like you!) that they think this was a good idea.

[Steve Gershik]

I got the same email too, Ardath, but I think your bigger point is one well worth remembering.

Not only is it not ethical, appropriate or sound business sense to always tell the truth to your customers and prospects, but these days, it takes 7 seconds for an individual to spread the word globally about your company.

And all the hard work, money and time you put into your marketing becomes money wasted when you damage your reputation through these tactics.

By the way, this is just an especially egregious example. More commonly, companies will fail to deliver content they promised, add people to email distribution lists without consent or sell or barter your contact information to "partners."

[twitter.com/fearlesscomp]

As I like to say, it takes years to establish a good reputation and seconds to destroy it.

This is why Jill Konrath, a lady I know very well and respect tremendously, guards her reputation intensely at all times. Anything that can even be construed as getting mis-represented is nixed.

Be gentle, be honest, be helpful. I think those three will be helpful to anyone.

Jeff Ogden, President
Find New Customers
http://www.findnewcustomers.net
"Lead Generation Made Simple"

[Ardath Albee]

Thanks Mike and Steve - glad to know I'm not alone. The egregious ones are when I slap on my rant hat! The others are just lazy. Trust is so hard to build and so easy to destroy.

[Mark]

That email does not expect to get you. They expect to get the people that don't check their stats, don't read the full text (pretty charts are, well, pretty), don't know any better, etc. They absolutely thought you wouldn't know. You would be surprised by how many clients send me this kind of email to investigate this "new service" or ask why we don't provide this sort of useful information.

While technically a "marketing campaign", this was just well crafted spam that got through your filter software. We (and I include myself) sometimes forget that anti-spam filters can be fooled too.

I do agree with your main point, however: don't lie to you customer (or prospective customer). Ever.

[Robby Gates]

Robby Gates - 12-11-09
I am 52 years old and have been in old fashioned sales and marketing most of my life. I have decided to utilize the next 2-3 years catching up with the rest of the world. I am using formal and self taught education. The bulk of my study/research is on the web. I spend a huge amount of time culling through scam sites. I can't believe the lying and cheating sites out there waiting to suck someone into their nest.

Sincerely,
Robby Gates