'Commentary,Marketing'
Groupon goof: How careless marketing can create hard feelings
25 NOV 2016 0
I received an email this morning from Groupon, the popular coupon / discount seller that was the tech darling not too long ago. Personally, I haven’t used the service for at least 3 or 4 years now and don’t really have any interest in using it anymore. Like many of you I'm sure, most of my groupons ended up going to waste as I would never get around to using them.
In a case of what I can only imagine is marketing automation gone awry, I got an email from Groupon reminding me about a gift I purchased from them five years ago - suggesting I might want to buy another gift for that individual.
The problem is, that was a gift that I bought for my now deceased Father. It’s been a little over two years since he passed, and while I miss my dad (naturally) I’m in a good spot. But, for many the grieving process can take a long time, and certainly nobody likes waking up to a reminder like that.
This blunder highlights how important relevancy is to today’s online marketer. What a customer did with your business 5 years ago, is likely to have no bearing on where they are today. In the best case scenario, the (former) customer is going to be annoyed with you and worse case you’ll create a profoundly negative reaction.
In short, basing an automated ad-mail on buying habits in the last 3 – 6 months is probably okay, but going back 5 years is a really bad idea.