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I received an email campaign from a PURL service provider today, inviting me to learn about their new service by visiting a personalised Web site. Curious to learn more, I followed the link to my personalised site. Unfortunately, I was rather disappointed by the whole experience. Firstly, they managed to spell my name incorrectly (in the PURL and on the site) and secondly, the site wasn't relevant to the data they collected on me. But, I'm really not holding that against them, and I'm not going to disclose this particular vendor, I just want to share my story as there are lessons to be learnt from it.
On my personalised website there was an invitation to a cocktail party, which will be held at an upcoming industry event. Unfortunately, I can't attend, so stepped through their survey and selected "I am not attending [tradeshow]". I continued on through the survey pages, updated my name to it's correct spelling, and arrived at the confirmation page, which displayed the message "We look forward to seeing you at the [vendor] Party at [tradeshow]. You will receive an email momentarily with the details."
Needless to say, I was rather underwhelmed by the whole experience. The fact that I had selected that I would not be attending the tradeshow, only to receive a message that they look forward to seeing me there, doesn't really say too much about the capabilities of their solution. And I never received the email they promised me. I'm not sure whether this is just a limitation of their solution; if they're unable to display conditional messages based on data then I suggest it's a pretty significant limitation, but whatever the reason, they should have tested the various scenarios first.
If you're creating a personalised campaign, no matter what media channel you are using, you really need to make sure that the marketing messages support your customer data or the information you collect from them. Then test it. And test again.
Posted on Saturday, 18 October 2008 at 12:29 PM | TrackBack: http://www.veedeepee.com/cgi-bin/mt-tb.cgi/183
I too had this same invitation, and had the same experience as you, well at least they got my name right. As an active user of this vender's PURL service I was surprised by the lack of personalization and conditional response in this message. Their PURL solution can handle this with ease, we do this is every campaign. The personalization in their message didn't even differ for us registered and active users of the solution or the fact we're in Australia.
This is another example of a variable data solution provider promoting their own services with very poor execution. It's disappointing so see this as their campaigns should be full of fresh ideas and push the limits to act as the showcase of what can be done. Instead I looks like a quick and dirty, last minute scramble to try and get a message out... my PURL address in the email wasn't even hyperlinked to my PURL.
Posted by Michael on Saturday, 18 October 2008 at 5:16 PM
Michael, I agree. It's obvious the campaign was poorly executed and not thought through. Not really what I'd expect from a vendor who's trying to showcase their own product. I really don't intend to pick holes in the campaign, but seeing as you started, I can't help adding to it. You're right, they didn't prefix the url with http://, so the PURL got buried in the email with no hyperlink. Also, when I went to update my address, the "country" dropdown menu only included one country: United States. Why bother to have a dropdown menu if there's only one item? And why didn't they include other countries? Maybe they're only interested in selling to Americans...
Posted by Eliot Harper on Sunday, 19 October 2008 at 8:43 PM
While reading the initial article and then Michael's response, I was thinking, "this seems like a simple lack of planning"...then of course one of Michael's last comments is "looks like a quick and dirty, last minute scramble to try and get a message out"...exactly!
One of things that people need to realise is that just because you want it tomorrow, doesn't make it so. Any form of data driven personalisation (sorry, is there another kind!) needs to be thoroughly mapped out and planned...and as mentioned, tested, tested, and tested again. Although it has never been good, 10to 15 years ago, people still expected that personalisation mightn't be perfect - especially those with surnames like McDonald and O'Reilly - however today, consumers simply won't put up with it, and I think Eliot went further than a lot of people would, eg. they've got my name wrong, they don't know me, seeya, bin!
Service providers and end-users alike need to realise that it takes time to get your data right, before going ahead with processes like this, whether it be a simple marketing message, a DM campaign, TransPromo implementation, pURL usage, or a combination of an/all of these. It takes time to get it right...but of course once you do, it can definitely pay off!
Posted by Brett Dashwood on Thursday, 23 October 2008 at 12:15 PM