Can You Market To Your Customers Too Much? YES

I’ve been a VistaPrint customer for a few years now, mostly because they offer prices that can’t matched by anyone local – and the print quality is excellent. But I’m amazed at how often they send me “specials”. Just for fun I kept track of all of the messages I recieved from them over a nine day period:

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Six messages over a nine day period? That’s an average of one message every 36 hours. They all pretty much contain the same deals as well – every one offers 99 cent business cards, so after a while (a short while) as a customer I don’t percieve their “specials” as being special at all. It’s like that store in the mall that has had a “90% Going Out of Business Sale” banner hung over their storefront for the past two years. The value of the marketing effort is diminished, if not destroyed, by over-use. And in some ways, it can even backfire: I’m starting to resent VistaPrint for their insanely high volume of email. I could unsubscribe from their mailing list – yes – but since I do order products from them every couple of months I’d have to sign up again and again. So instead I delete their messages as soon as I see them, without even looking, pausing only when I need their products. Hardly an ideal situation to put a long-term customer in, is it?

Ideally as a customer I’d like to control the frequency that I’m marketed to: if the company decides that sending out a promotion every 36 hours is good business for them, I’d like to recieve their best deals once ever two weeks. Give control to your customer and he’ll be more receptive to your marketing efforts.