Thank you, local Portland Funeral Home, for sending me a solicitation letter asking me to pre-plan my death and buy my future grave site today! Thank you for reminding me that, even though I just turned 31, impending doom is near. Here I was foolishly thinking that my thirties are a great time in life to enjoy my youth. Thank you for reminding me how wrong I was.
Far be it from you to consider finding your target market when sending out a solicitation letter. Considering the demographic that might be interested in your products and marketing to that group – what a waste of time! Clearly that’s not for you. You prefer the random mailings to strangers who may or may not have anything to do with your brand.
And speaking of branding, why should you even think that a sensitive topic like planning for one’s burial may require expanding your marketing toolbox beyond the callous generic form letter? We, the public, love being confronted with what we want to happen to our dead bodies in a dear john/jane letter. Forget about coming up with a creative, innovative – or even polite – way to approach this topic.
What’s this tirade have to do with banks? A lot, actually. I know many financial institutions with very similar marketing techniques – send anything to everyone. If I’m 31, please don’t send me information about youth accounts. And at the same time, skip the brochures about retiree services. Bank marketing professionals need to realize that not taking a targeted approach can actually drive people away. So study your demographics!
{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
I wouldn’t like it either. But maybe they know something about the actuary tables for ad folks?
How is what the funeral home did any worse than when I see a commercial on TV for dog food or cat food? I don’t have a dog or a cat. Funny how we don’t expect TV advertisers to be able to target their useless ads, but if somebody sends you a piece of mail that’s irrelevant to your life, then it’s called “junk” and warrants a blog post to berate the firm the sent it.
1. I think most TV commercials are junk mail too.
2. TV does target people based on channel and time slots.
3. Mail and TV differ, you can select your audience way more with mail. Especially if the mail is coming from an organization (like a bank) that has a lot of personal information about you.
4. You should get a dog or cat!
1. Then why didn’t you write an open letter to all those advertisers and ad agencies to put out that junk?
3. Banks may have “a lot of information about you” — but in reality, much of it turns out be useless in helping them target their messages.
4. I’ve got three kids — that’s enough mouths to feed, backs to clothe, and tuition to pay, thank you.
This definitely brings up an interesting psychological analysis. For some reason, not surprisingly I guess, getting told “you’re going to die, so please buy death products from us” strikes a nasty chord with us–we take being alive very seriously. What’s funny is that I hear LOTS of financial people use the idea “people take their money seriously so as a bank we have to be serious with their money” as an excuse for being boring and conservative. Yet, when we receive a letter from a bank saying “your bank is not stable, so come to our bank” (which, to Ron’s point, is the financial counterpart to the funeral home letter Irina received), for some reason we can brush it off and say “whatever” without freaking out like we do over a funeral home campaign.
That kinda proves that while people may take their money seriously, they’re still able to keep it in perspective more than death. Is it rational? Nope. But it’s sure interesting!