Les O'Dell

Years ago when I worked in marketing for a website development company, one of the things I always shared with clients was the uniqueness of doing business on the internet. I often told people how marketing on the web was, from the user’s perspective, “pull” advertising, meaning your customers got to choose to get messages from you. This was in contrast to traditional “push” promotional means where you shoved messages out to your customers.

With the advent of all of the new media (email marketing, Facebook, Twitter and the like), understanding the difference is so important. You cannot be successful if you treat pull channels as push channels. If you push too much, consumers will just push back.

Here’s an example. I was (and the emphasis is on the word “was”) a fan of a radio station on Facebook. That is until the station sent me five Facebook messages in the course of 24 hours promoting some contest they were running. Of course, each of those messages also arrived in my email box.

It’s not just the little companies that are guilty of abusing the privileges I granted them when I chose to opt-in to their marketing; even the big guys are guilty, too. Time for another example, but first let me make something perfectly clear. I am a huge fan of Franklin-Covey Day Planners. Have been for many years. I even refer to my classic planner as my brain.

So, given my love for this company and its products, I thought it would be natural to opt-in for them to send me emails of great deals and new product announcements and special sales. Well, I’m just about to opt out. See, Franklin-Covey sends an email a day. There is such a thing as too much of a good thing. They don’t have to bombard me with emails to get me to like them. In fact, sending me too much stuff is having just the opposite effect.

Not only that, but like many other people with so-called “smart” phones, I have mine set up so that emails go to my phone. My phone alerts me when I get emails with a beep or, if I remember to silence it at night or during church, a vibration. That’s not a problem except that at 3 a.m. I can still hear the vibration shaking the nightstand or dresser where my phone resides. Almost without exception, the middle of the night emails are from Franklin-Covey. Ugh.

So, hear me, marketing geniuses: it’s okay to send me emails and promotional offers and messages occasionally, but lighten up. You’re coming across as a nerd begging the cheerleader for a date. Back off for a while. If you don’t, I’m afraid we can’t be friends anymore.