Resync Your Data; Save Your Customer

You may have heard the lament: “Save the cheerleader, save the world.” Well, in a wacky-doodle sort of way, that’s kind-of metaphorical for saving your customer and subscriber relationships. Let me explain.

I bristle when a brand gets something wrong with their triggered eMail communications, which are considered the basics of eMail marketing block-and-tackle, and immediately want to reach out to the brand to try to save them.

Some common Trigger eMails include:

• Welcome
• Abandoned Cart
• Order and Shipping Confirmation
• Re-Engagement or Win-Back
• Birthday or Anniversary
• Post-Purchase Follow Up, and
• Event or Appointment Reminders.

Deploying triggered eMail is important because it:

• Enhances the customer experience through personalization;
• Increases engagement and conversion rates;
• Automates customer communication processes,
• Drives revenue;
• Provides data insights; and
• Improves overall marketing efficiency and effectiveness.

Triggered eMail campaigns help brands deliver timely and relevant messages to recipients, based on their specific interactions or stages in the customer journey. Triggered eMail campaigns usually provide brands the perfect opportunity to delight the customer; unless there is a marketing technology glitch with data and/or the business rules triggering the campaign, which will typically leave the customer disappointed or frustrated.

This brings me to two eMail “#FAIL” experiences I had this week. The eMails were from two different brands, both asking me to provide a review of the product I’d recently purchased. Both brands botched my customer experience due to different data goofs. I’ve referred to the Brands as A and B to avoid unnecessary public shaming.

Brand A: In this case, I had returned the products purchased

Brand B: In this case, the product was purchased as a gift and sent directly to a friend

In both situations my frustration (aggravation?) could have been easily avoided.

Details of My Brand-A Experience

I ordered the products online, initiated the return online, and received a PDF of the return label during the online returns process. Yay: my returns process was a success. I took the package back to a nearby Happy Returns location and promptly received a credit to my payment card.

However, all not so-good. Three weeks after processing the return, I received an eMail asking me to provide a review of the products. Clearly, the brand is not incorporating returns data into their post-purchase eMail automation data feed. It would be easy for the brand to create a suppression list, which includes the order number and associated eMail address of returned orders, that can be incorporated into the automation/sending process triggering their product review eMail.  But no; instead, they left the customer (me in this case) frustrated that they really don’t know (or worse, care) about my wants and needs or customer experience. Instead, they made an unthoughtful attempt to connect with me because clearly, they weren’t all that genuinely concerned about my product experience, were they?

Details of My Brand-B Experience

I ordered the product online, indicated the order was a gift, provided a gift card message, paid for gift wrapping, and had the order shipped to the gift recipient’s address directly. We’re all good, right? Not so much. 

Four weeks after placing the order I received an eMail asking me to review the product, which I clearly didn’t receive. It was a gift (!) This brand could easily create business rules to not include gift orders and eMail addresses associated with the gift-givers in their post-purchase product review eMail campaigns.

That didn’t happen here. Instead, they left the customer (me in this case) frustrated that they really don’t know (or worse, care) about my wants and needs or customer experience. They launched an unthoughtful effort to connect with me, because after all, clearly, they weren’t all that genuinely concerned about my product review, right?

In both cases, the brand’s MarTech data is out of sync with their customer’s actions and expectations. If they would resync their data, they could save a customer. I’m a bit more resilient than many, so both these Brands will get a second chance. However, be forewarned in this customer-centric service-is-everything always-on society, many others will be less patient.

My recommendation — Fix your data problems (especially, the subtle ones you may overlook because no one had time to consider the “edge case”); fix them before your customer unsubscribes from your eMail list.