One to robot: October 27, 1997 issue of New Thinking

October 27, 1997 New Thinking:
One-to-robot

Website content management

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October 27, 1997

One-to-robot

By Gerry McGovern

I don’t know about you but it’s really getting to annoy me when I see a website or a mass email that says to me things like: “Hi, Gerry, Welcome Back” or “Gerry McGovern, enjoy this email!”

This is supposed to be one-to-one marketing? This is supposed to be relationship marketing? This is supposed to be customization? It stinks.

Words are a bit like flowers. If you water them and take good care of them they bloom. If you water them too much, they die. When words die they lose their power, their meaning. They become empty shells; shiny on the surface, shallow underneath. At the moment, the word ‘relationship’ is getting lots of watering.

Much one-to-one marketing we see today is in fact one-to-many marketing in disguise. Relationship marketing? Relationships take time. Relationships are not easy to build. Relationships take effort to maintain.

If you want to have relationships with your customers you have to accept these facts. You have to measure the time spent in building and maintaining a relationship with regard to the extra business you can do with that customer as a result of having such a relationship with them.

But don’t fool the customer. Don’t send out a robot to do a human’s job. Don’t try and get too chummy with someone you don’t know. Don’t start a relationship with a customer who you are not prepared to spend time with. Because it won’t work. You’ll run the risk of not just offending them, but turning them against your product.

We are in the honeymoon period for relationship/one-to-one marketing on the Internet. The first few times I got these ‘Hi, Gerry’ messages, it was interesting. I thought that it was a clever trick. But after a while, it began to feel like a trick.

I have absolutely no doubt that relationship marketing and customization are extremely powerful tools on the Internet. They have major potential and companies such as Dell are already realizing that potential and new profit opportunity.

Allowing a customer to customize their computer or car has a tremendous logic. Using email to regularly keep in touch with a customer to make sure that you are meeting their needs has real value.

However, there are dangers. The technology can become intoxicating. Be wary, very wary of the gee whiz factor. Don’t get carried away.

The technology can also make you lazy. For example: It can take you an hour to get in touch with 10 people on the phone. In an hour you could send 30 emails. In a minute, you could send a mass email to 100,000 people. Just because you can doesn’t mean you should. Those 30 brief but specific emails to real people addressing real problems or opportunities could be far more beneficial than the same bland message to 100,000.

If you talk about relationship marketing then you should think about relationships. Because, you can trick all of the people some of the time, and so on.

Gerry McGovern

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"Gerry's presentation was very well received by the more than 400 higher education delegates. I've chaired this meeting since 1994 and very few speakers have generated the same level of enthusiasm. Wit and wisdom is always an unbeatable combination."
Bob Johnson, American Marketing Association

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European Association of Directory Publishers

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Don't fool the customer. Don’t send out a robot to do a human’s job.