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.
