How Sending Customers Irrelevant Marketing Can Be Detrimental To Your Brand

When you send customers irrelevant marketing, they don’t just simply throw it in the trash. In a recent report from ParcelLab, they discovered that when customers are wrongly targeted by a brand, nearly half of them unsubscribe from the brand’s marketing list and a quarter of them even block the brand on social media. Point proven: personalization in marketing is essential, and sending irrelevant marketing will cause you to lose out on sales and customers for life. The mantra for your campaigns should always be: a great email sent to the wrong person is wasted effort. And how to keep this mantra continuously alive in your routine? Take the time out of your day to really pay attention to your customers wants and needs and separate your marketing lists accordingly. Segment your audience based on their goals, so your sending the right people the right material. If you have any questions about your marketing strategy or want us to handle it for you, reach out to us at Prebuilt Sites or The BBS Agency. We’d love to help you out!

A recent report from parcelLab identified that irrelevant Marketing is driving customers away, and making them turn away from brands. Of the 49% of people that were wrongly targeted in email and social media in the last six months, 42% decided to unsubscribe from the brand’s Marketing lists and another 24% blocked the brand on social media.

According to “The Emotional Shipping Experience” report, people have lost patience with brands who send incorrect or inaccurate Marketing materials, and immediately unsubscribe from the brand’s content. In other words, they break any relationship with the brand.

Let’s find out in detail what some research on the topic has to teach us about personalization.

How irrelevant Marketing is impacting brands?

In numbers, the Parcellab report found out that nearly half of all U.S. customers said they were targeted with irrelevant Marketing in the past six months. Of those, 88% took action to distance themselves from the brand.

You may be wondering why this happens, and the reason for customers to take such drastic measures. Well, personalization is a “must-do” for Digital Marketing. Another study said that “personalization increases email open rates by 26%”. So it is pretty relevant, right? On the other hand, if your content isn’t targeted to your potential customers, they will not pay attention to it, and it will end up in the trash. 

This happens because people want to feel connected with your brand, they want to feel recognized and have the feeling that their individuality matters. So, when brands make any mistakes regarding personalization, the customer will instantly know, because they are expecting you to do it in the right way. 

And how can brands and marketers avoid getting personalization wrong? 

This may sound a little obvious, but it is not just numbers that you are losing when sending incorrect or inaccurate Marketing materials: you are losing sales opportunities. So, the first step is to see these numbers as they really are: people who can buy from you. Everyone should matter. 

The mantra for your campaigns should always be: a great email sent to the wrong person is wasted effort. And how to keep this mantra continuously alive in your routine?

• Know exactly who your audience is. And here we are not just talking about knowing their first and last name, but their actual pain and needs. How are you genuinely contributing to that specific person’s life and goals when you hit the “send” button? This needs to be clear to you in each campaign. 
• Take time out of your routine to take care of your mailing list. It’s important to keep them updated, clean, and only with leads who have given you permission to be there. This will help you to organize your contacts and have the mailing list always ready for sending campaigns. 
• Talking about mailing lists, it is nice to have different ones for different goals and campaigns. Thus, you can better target your communication, knowing exactly who you want to talk to, when you want to talk, and, even more importantly, what you want to talk about. 
• Try not assume the message is more important than the audience who will receive it. You may think you have super relevant material, but is it relevant for your persona too? Or is it just for you? A killer email can lose all its power if it is sent to the wrong person. So, instead of enchanting them with useful information, you’ll drive them away from doing business with you in the future. 

Are you ready to put your customer at the center of your communications? I’m sure they will appreciate it, and you will have better results from it. 

Originally published by Alina Neves for Rock Content.