February 20, 2005
Fake personalization makes you look like idiots
My wife and I received a direct mail piece recently that led off with the following:
Dear Deborah & Ken King,We know you love [popular ski resort], so we want to make sure to keep you informed of the latest...
The problem: neither of us skis, nor have we ever been to the hill in question and, while I won't speak for Deborah, I know I don't "love" the resort. It leaves me wondering how they know.
That sentence might make sense if they had records showing that we'd skied there every weekend for the last five winters. That sentence might make sense if we'd responded to a customer satisfaction survey and indicated that [popular ski resort] makes us tingly inside. It does not and cannot make sense to send that letter to everyone whose name ends up on a mailing list somehow.
I am left with the impression that the resort's managers are idiots, either because they looked at this piece and thought it was great or because they weren't paying attention. And then there's the ad agency - do they show this crap to prospective clients?
What is your direct mail saying about your company?
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UPDATE:
Okay, if you think this is bad, check out this example of bad mail merge execution.
Posted by kenking at February 20, 2005 8:45 AM
