I recently received an email from an online photo site. I have diagrammed the email to illustrate how unfriendly it is and why it does not incent me to remain a customer.

1. ‘don’t forget to preserve your Snapfish account’ -really? It probably is a good thing they reminded me because I would have forgotten. But why do I have to preserve my relationship with them? It is not to my benefit.
2. ‘Just a friendly reminder…..’ telling me the reminder is friendly does not make it friendly. This is essentially a scare tactic.
3. ‘So what are you waiting for….’ Hmmm, maybe I’m waiting for you to offer me something as a customer that I might want. If I haven’t ordered from you in such a long time that you need to send me warnings, maybe you are asking the wrong question.
4. ‘risk losing…’ I’m not losing anything.
5. ‘Lastly, remember….’ Except this isn’t the last message, so the use of the word ‘lastly’ is just plain wrong.
6. And finally after all that, “Thanks for being a customer….” Thanks? If you really wanted to thank me perhaps you would stop sending hostile email and use some form of persuasion to bring me back.

They do provide a benefit to customers, free unlimited online photo storage. However, this benefit is provided at many other places and it is buried deep within the email copy.

I think this is a really good illustration of how marketing materials get created at companies but they are not really created with a customer in mind. We have much to learn about online marketing. This is a good example of what not to do. We need those examples so we can strive to be better.

more cat pictures

In the spirit of a John Hodgman twitter post, that is all.

This picture was taken on November 15th, 2004.

“I was tempted, I bought it, but I never used it.”
- THE REV. TED HAGGARD, a leading evangelical, on the methamphetamine he bought
from a male escort.

———–

Question: Has anyone ever sought out meth and thrown it away? Me thinks this is a suspicious claim…….

What do all of these things have in common?

ANSWER:
These are all things that may not be easily trusted.

And yet the sound continued. We grew confused. How could this be, we thought we had removed EVERYTHING. we had not obviously. and then i saw it. it was under a basket that contained papers and some cd’s. it was beeping. a high pitched sound that could eventually drive someone mad if the source had not been located.

Suduko! it really ate our brains that night. The whole night did not go as planned after that. Everything was turned upside down after the stress and confusion of trying to locate a high pitched ‘my battery is dying sound’. You can imagine the relief when the sound was eradicated. My husband and I laughed til we almost cried. We recovered, but not without an altered opinion of the device/game Suduko. That’s a really good thing to test with consumers. That freaked us out and it was impossible to tell it was the game. Our world just gets more interesting and confusing. Another great example, Suduko.