Commentary

The Dead Great Grandmother Email Marketing Campaign

There’s creepy databased marketing practices and then there’s really, really creepy databased marketing practices. And the difference most likely comes down to how the user experiences. That was the net takeaway of the “What’s Next” section of the “Searching for the Next Big Thing” panel discussion at the Email Insider Summit on Amelia Island, FL, this morning.

Case in point: Getting an email from Ancestry.com that they’ve found your dead great grandmother.

“There’s definitely a line there,” said Ancestry.com Vice President-Marketing Karen Peterson, who also moderated the panel. Petersen said that type of email campaign would be verbotten at Ancestry.com, because it just comes across as too creepy for the consumer, and that a better approach is an email simply teasing them that Ancestry.com has come up with new findings relevant to the user.

“The dead great grandmother campaign,” concurred Ryan Phelan, Vice President-Marketing Insight at Adestra, shaking his head in bemusement.

As it turns out, the next new thing in email -- or database marketing in general -- is likely to straddle creepy lines, simply because it’s difficult for a brand to have personal data insights about consumers and to convey that in a way that seems natural.

“I mention something on my computer and a message pops upon the side that was listening to me,” Kurt Diver, manager of delivery consulting services at Sendgrid, said, citing an example of a bad data mining practice.

“Creepy data is data the consumer doesn’t know you have or you’re not supposed to have,” added Phelan, noting, “If that’s a question that comes to you from the consumer, then you know you’re done it wrong.”
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