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!

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

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

Could not agree more.

-Rudi