Another email lands in my inbox today that simultaneous skeeves me out and irritates the hell out of me in the same breath; a sales rep from a website I recently perused indicating that they “saw you visited our website but abandoned your cart before purchasing [redacted]”.
Lead nurturing is a topic that is often top of mind for marketers in the demand generation niche. In a digital and social generation where customers lead the sales process, it is important that we don’t inadvertently cross the line between helpful/proactive and obnoxious/pushy.
As marketers, we work tirelessly to develop creative, inventive, valuable programs to build trust and credibility with potential and existing customers, thus enabling our brands to stay top of mind and attract buyers on their own terms. Even with the best of intentions, we look around and see some of our peers mistakenly crossing over to the dark side, leveraging the same pushy tactics in new media that were never entirely effective in traditional media.
While I can appreciate the technology and benefits that emerging marketing automation tools have afforded the industry, I can’t help shake my head when I get that intrusive, creepy email from a sales rep reminding me that my online habits are anything but private.
Marketing automation tools give us the ability to understand the behaviors of website visitors at a very granular level. We can tell who is perusing our sites, where they work, how many times they have been there, which tabs they went to, links they clicked, collateral they downloaded, videos they viewed, the amount of time spent with each.
There is, without question, much to be gained from studying behaviors of our target audiences on the web – observing how they interact with their peers, their families, listening to and engaging in their conversations on social networks, gaining insight into the areas that are of value and that which is not. But we also have much to learn about the ways in which we utilize that information to enrich user experience without engaging in ways that are awkward, pushy, and intrusive.
While it may seem like a personalized email acknowledging a visitor’s behaviors on our site would be an improvement over the outdated email techniques in which we bomb the rubble with mass messaging without time or consideration into their unique situations, we must also look at it from the perspective of the visitor and take into consideration their feelings and communication preferences.
Before we run the risk of completely repulsing our audience, we need to stop and think about how we can communicate in ways that are helpful and authentic.
In the words of Rob Frankel, (@brandingexpert):
