ande macpherson

I have had 3 communications in the past week that have all broken the golden rule of digital communications - they aren’t real.

I was reminded of this with David Cushman’s post that included the sentiment; The more digital we become, the more connected we become, the more human we demand.

I expect that anyone who I have entrusted my details to must have real conversations with me. Fundamental to that means having a memory for our past conversations/transactions etc. So these are the transgressors of the past week.

- barclaycard: I received a text with an offer out of the blue. I assume they had just added this functionality to their CRM programme but it came as a real shock. Why was the first text not one that said “hey we’ve got some great offers we can text you - are you interested?” You may gather I don’t really go for txt spk (it would be clever if they knew that as well). But no - beep beep - new text - big sales message.

- photobox: an email worded quite nicely asking if I would give them some feedback as to why I hadn’t used their lovely new site since they had relaunched it (a month or two ago). I may have responded to this survey request apart from the fact that I had used the site about a week previously. Come on photobox, pay attention…

- quote email: this was a following up a request I had made for a quote about 3 weeks ago. This appeared to be an email from a person and wanted to know if I was interested in the quote. Well it can’t have been from the person as I had spoken to him an hour earlier. I have decided not to use them and this has played a big part.

So as I see it. Good communication and conversations from brands that have my details are welcomed and will increase the feeling I have for them if done well. In fact it is likely that they will make me a fan. However, done badly I’m out. Unsubscribe and see you later. I’d rather have a generic communication rather than a personal one done badly.

The personalisation opportunities are massive and when done well the rewards can be equally huge. However, done badly the reverse is true. You can’t play at personal consumer communications. Better to do nothing than do it badly but the winners of the future are those who do it well first.

Tagged as communication, email, text + Categorized as radio & brands, service