‘Tesco in e-mail marketing assault’ - I couldn’t have said it better
Published November 14th, 2005 in E-PRA sale is not something you pursue, it is something that happens to you while you are immersed in serving your customer
The BBC’s headline ‘Tesco in e-mail marketing assault’ is one of the best headlines I’ve seen in a while because it sums up what Tesco carried out last month perfectly, whether the company realises it or not.
The company started 44 seperate email campaigns last month, something the company was so proud of that it issued a press release about it. Why didn’t they just tattoo ‘I’m a happy spammer’ on their forehead?
I’m not the biggest fan of email campaigns, but even their biggest fan can’t defend that spam attack. The firm behind the campaign, Interactive Prospect Targeting Services, even boast that Tesco is issuing 16-20 million emails per month.
It’s time companies pulled the plug on agencies like this. Why is it that every web developer or so-called email marketer wants to run an email campaign, never a mention of combining them with anything new like a blog or an RSS feed for bargains? Seriously folks, sign up with BDM Innovate or Tom Raftery. If not for the sake of my sanity, that of your customers and the money that you are wasting or prehistoric ‘new media’ solutions.
Interactvity no long means point and click, it’s about participation. A spokesperson for Tesco said ‘We know that customers hate junk mail so we try to target them as much as possible and make it easy for them to stop receiving emails if they don’t want them.‘ If they understood their customers they would make it easier to find the information and create communications vehicles that consumers would freely subscribe to.
Technorati Tags: Internet Marketing, Piaras Kelly, Tesco
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Thanks for the plug Piaras - I didn’t actually know Tom was a e-mail marketer!
To be fair to Tesco and their agency, you could be jumping the gun a bit here (I’d have to know more to be sure). Presumably these e-mails are going to their ‘ClubCard’ holders - who have said they would accept emails. I’m a ClubCard member and don’t get any mails from them, because when I signed up, I ‘opted out’.
‘Opt In’ is a more ethical approach, but Tesco have so far done nothing wrong. Now take all the data mining they can do, and the email newsletters they send out could actually be fantastically targeted and provide real value and access to promotions for the recipients.
I’d say, if it’s being done right, Tesco’s email campaign IS worthy of a Press Release and a bit of boasting. Now, the real test of ethics will be if they release the statistics and we see how many sales were made as a result of it. If it was genuinely useful, clicks-throughs would be high, if it’s as poor as you assume, then you could tell from the analytics, as sales would be as low as common spam mails.
On a comparative note - how many emails do you think Amazon send out EACH WEEK? And how is there a difference between them?
Yeah but with that amount of mail going out, how many of their opt-in members do you think will opt out?
What amount of mail? That figure could have been 1 mail per month per customer. Again, people will ‘opt-out’ if the campaign is poorly done and doesn’t provide any value to them - the results will speak for themselves (although I’m sure we’ll never see them)
16-20 million across 44 different campaigns. I can understand getting one every so often from Amazon, which I never read anyway, but if I were a tesco customer getting barraged I’d be adding them to a spam list.
44 different campaigns doesn’t mean 44 mailings to 16-20 million people, which is actually closer to 800 million emails a month. I still read this like the email campaign CDWOW, PLAY, AMAZON and others do.
Yeah I know that. What I’m saying is that as an Amazon or CDWOW customer I’m happy to receive my one email per month. Understandably I might get another one during a sale or coming up to Christmas, but I never read these emails.
Now if I was a Tesco customer and I’m guessing these emails are sent judging on what interests you ticked or what products you bought, then I suspect that you’ll receive more than one email when the one should do.
Email campaigns should be like the Aldi newsletter (hard copy), where they showcase the best deals. If that newsletter can be tailored to the interests you have ticked or the products you have purchased, then they’re all the better. However I don’t want to get numerous emails when one will do.
People complain about the amount of ads and jingles coming up to Christmas, that nightmare shouldn’t be transferred into their inbox.
I agree with you - I’d just check to make sure that’s not what Tesco are doing. Maybe they don’t send multiple e-mails per person.
i’m getting really fed up of finding my inbox stuffed with tesco’s spam. and i have never signed up for their clubcard and can count on the fingers of one foot the times i’ve shopped there in the last millenium. and i’ve tried having it all sent to my sopam folder but it didn’t work. surely this is dodgy. if they’d been based in miami (as one major spammer was) then they’d have been hunted down and dealt with.
Never a customer, never a card holder, over 30 emails from them a day!!!!?????
Please STOP!!!!