I was sitting at my desk today happily coding away when a piece of mail was dropped on my desk. It was a 5×7 brown envelope that was addressed by hand to me. Being the curious sort that I am, I opened the envelope to find this….
I was a little confused but went ahead and typed in the url and was taken to a clever micro site that had be created / customized for me. I clicked around a bit and was impressed with the interaction of the site. I did not think too much of this and went back to my code. In less than 20 minutes I received a work email from a sales guy.
Rudi,
Good afternoon. I sent that hotel keycard & napkin, and wanted to hear your thoughts of that personalized web experience.
May I request a discussion, maybe Wednesday afternoon? Let me know what works best.
I’m also happy to send additional information at your request.
Cordially,Sales Guy
Now, being more involved in the analytics space I was impressed. Here was a very clever mail to web campaign and it had worked. I went to the web site, they detected that and sent a timely email about the experience. I was thinking about responding to find out more about the site/product/solutions.
But then my desk phone rang. I still had the email from the sales guy up on my screen and the phone number on the caller id matched the email. I chose not to answer, but did listen to the voice mail. Sure enough….it was the sales guy, letting me know that they had tracked me and like Will Smith in “Enemy of the State” they knew my every move. Well maybe I paraphrased that last part.
This is where they lost me. This clever campaign went to creepy in less than 20 minutes. I thought about it for a little while and then emailed the sales guy.
Dear Sales Guy,
With the email then the voice mail it went from Clever to Creepy pretty quick.
A short time later, he responded.
Rudi,
We have no intention to creep you out. We just wanted to show you our capability of being able to put a message in front of a prospect and know in real time that they are looking at it. I want to share an actual VLG customer lead generation campaign.
This dialog marketing campaign has generated a 38% mail to web response. Just click the link below:
I’d like to answer your questions and provide more information regarding our capabilities at VLG. Please let me know a good time to have a brief discussion.
Cordially,
Sales Guy
I do not fault the intent behind this particular sales pitch, but something about it did not sit right. I am fully aware of the effort and opportunities that such a solution could have, but the creepy factor has outweighed the clever factor for me.
What do you think?
17 thoughts on “Clever or Creepy?”
Well, just like any tool, even web analytics can be made to go too far. I was wicha there with the reaction to the phone call. The concept of following up the web visit with a telephone call is okay in theory…until that theory actually means “within mere moments of leaving their site”. At that point it went from “cool” to “stalker”.
However, to me, the aggravating condition was the length of time involved. Had they waited an hour or two or perhaps called the next day around the same time you were on today (thinking that perhaps that’s the time of your day that you might have free time such that you surf sites like you did their’s) then it backs off the “stalker” effect quite a bit…for me at least. PLUS, it gives them a chance to take a closer look at which pages you looked at, for how long, etc and gives them something to talk about with you when they do call.
WA can be a powerful tool…but it can be disconcerting to those not aware of what it can do…and it can be made to be an enabler of “creepy” when overdone even to those who know all about WA.
As an aside, sending someone a door keycard with a cryptic message is fine if they sent it to your work. If such a thing arrived at my house and my wife opened it…well…I may be finding myself splainin’ things in short order. Not the desired outcome of the marketing effort I should hope. 🙂
Bit too desperate always lands up being creepy. That of course always leads people to believe that they will sell anything or trick them into buying something they don’t need. Most people don’t like feeling like a fool so it never works. The point is make customers feel good and not trick them.
Having said that, the campaign is really good!
Once, sitting in the dentist chair, the dentist started to ask me about my latest business trip, my son’s project, my wife job… then I realized she actually had no interest at all, she merely took notes from one visit to the other, and making links between family members (because I had not talked about my wife job). It was not genuine, it was all artificial and only to make it sound like she cared.
Push it just a little too far, just beyond the tipping point, and the effect will be radically opposite to the expectation…
I agree – your experience is too creepy for me. I would not like this at all. My philosophy regarding this: don’t call me, I’ll now on to find you if I need to. If you call me, I will likely NOT call you…
@Craig, @Grishma, @Stephane – Thanks for the comments.
It’s all about the timing. Had they waited a few hours or even a day for the phone call it would not have been so creepy.
-Rudi
I work with the internet specifically to avoid contact with actual people unless I need to call them 🙂
I personally would find this creepy, and cold-calling generally seems like an old-fashioned concept to me. This is the kind of thing that gives industries like web analytics a bad name – taking information provided and using it against a specific visitor in a way that feels like a violation.
I quite liked the idea up until that point though, so it’s something they could work on.
“I work with the internet specifically to avoid contact with actual people unless I need to call them 🙂 ” -LOL
Thanks for the comment Emer.
-Rudi
I think there’s a general consensus here!
If the technologies used for such an “attack” (couldn’t think of a better word!) are all pretty ubiquitous and harmless, then the combination isn’t really directly malicious. It is pretty clever, to be honest!
However, most people (myself included) so far don’t seem to like the idea – and I think that does make it fairly malicious!
It’s generally not the technological aspect that determines the “validity” of techniques like this – but people’s perceptions.
You have to give it to the Sales Guy though, he had a quick turnaround time on that “lead”. It’s a good problem to have. 😉
Thanks for the post, Rudi.
Our little agency in Dallas, Texas (http://wefightboredom.com) crafted the “Crescent Bluffs” campaign to communicate with marketing managers that need help delivering sales leads, launching products, retaining customers and more. We work exclusively in the B2B space and have successfully run campaigns, albeit not as aggressive as this one, for some fun, well-known companies (http://vlgadvertising.com is our brag page).
This campaign was risky for us and something we’d never do on a client’s behalf, but it is effective. Although the call may seem creepy to some we know studies show diminished sales results the longer you wait to call a prospect. (http://su.pr/21w2vk)
Our Dialog Marketing approach is not for everyone. We get it. The vast majority of our clients do not make real-time phone calls. They do use a prospect’s online behavior to target on a 1:1 basis. The goal of course is to shorten the sales cycle and generate revenue.
I appreciate all feedback. Shoot me an email (msimmons@wefightboredom.com) with any questions you may have. Thank you for your time.
Cheers,
Michael Simmons
President, VLG
@wefightboredom
Michael,
Thanks for the comment. I do understand the intent and the technology/approach is kinda cool. For me, it just went too far.
-Rudi
Mr. Simmons:
I followed the link you left to the Kellogg study you cited in your response. I can’t refute what seems to be the common sense knowledge of “strike while the iron is hot” that the study’s findings seems to promote.
I won’t pretend to speak for Rudi, but for me, the combination of the email AND the phone call was what generated the creepy factor.
Site visit + 20 minutes + email re: site visit = fine
Site visit + 20 minutes + email re: site visit + immediate phone call = creepy to the point of pushy
Nobody objects to clever innovative marketing strategies. Pretty much everyone however doesn’t like being stalked. I understand that your firm is merely the provider of the tools to your clients and they decide how to use them and their use ought not to be a direct reflection of the tools. However, your clients probably aren’t as savvy about dialog marketing as your firm surely is and I’d bet their lack of informed sophistication in the area would likely equate to “if one immediate contact is good, surely two is even better” kind of thinking.
As I mentioned before, I won’t presume to speak for anyone here but I’d guess your client might could use a little advice about how to use…and not abuse…the tools your firm has built and provided them. I mean, consider that all they had (ostensibly) was Rudi’s name, email and business mailing address. Since they’re a hotel and resort, a prospective guest contacted through this means might have serious concerns about the data they’d generate if they were to stay with them. Home mailing address and telephone, credit card info, vehicle make, model and tag, description of appearance, personal habits, likes/dislikes in the restaurant…all the way down to which complimentary toiletries they used and how much.
Acquiring and collating data to improve your business operations is one thing. But give someone just a hint that you might not be responsible doing it and given the concerns these days about privacy, identity theft and the like and you risk giving some guests a reason to actively decide against patronizing their business.
And as we all know…bad news travels fastest. As is witnessed by this blog entry.
/just my 2c
Craig,
Could not agree more.
-Rudi
Craig-
Another great post. However, I wouldn’t characterize any of these posts necessarily as “bad news”. Criticism is a great way to fine tune the approach and gives us great insight into where the lines should be drawn. We don’t do consumer campaigns for many of the reasons you stated and more.
We’re going to spend a couple week backing off of the real-time call for our internal promotional, which is the topic of this discussion. I’ll score the impact vs. our current approach. Again, thanks for taking time to do your homework and put up some excellent points.
-Michael
Michael,
Thanks again for your comments. While I disagree with the approach of the campaign that I experienced, it is nice to see that the President of the company would take the time to respond and in such a manner.
I am interested to see what results your testing will have!
-Rudi
Michael,
Yes, perhaps “bad news” wasn’t the most effective word choice I could have made to express the notion I was trying to get across. I hope you got the gist of it though. It is just criticism and I have to echo Rudi’s compliments on your taking the time to respond and do so in a positive fashion. It speaks well for your firm. I would like to clarify something though and then make a suggestion.
I wanted to make clear my opinion that I thought the following up of the visit to the site by the prospect with the email and/or phone call was clever marketing. It was merely the proximal timing of the phone call following the email (apparently by mere minutes) that suggested that some might see that as being somewhat pushy (I think someone else used the word “desperate” and it could have been construed that way as well). Of course, where the timing comes in, one person might see “pushy” where someone else might be okay with it. It is certainly opinion.
The suggestion I wanted to make was rather than back off entirely, perhaps leave a portion as is and back off another portion and measure the relative effectiveness of the two. Or, perhaps set up other blocks of contacts differentiated only in the amount of time between email (which I assume is automatically generated from the users’ site departure) and the personal sales call. I’d be interested to know what time interval you discover is most effective and which are less effective. I’d wager the researcher at Kellogg would be interested as well in what you discover.
Anyway, thank you again for your prompt and even responses. It’s always nice (and unfortunately, all too rare) to see. Good luck with your campaign!
I would agree that this Sales Guy’s timing was off. However, if you have never been a “sales guy” you probably don’t understand how difficult it can be. Cold calling or cold emailing potential clients is an arduos job that (even with practice) can prove fruitless with certain prospects. The ease with which recipients can discard a thoughful and relevant to-your-client email can be disheartening from the sales person’s perspective. I commend this technique for being innovative.
That said, his execution should (and undoubtedly will) be fine tuned.
-Johnny