Do you belong to any membership or subscription programs?
I do… several in fact as I often consult with businesses on how to improve their retention rates and like seeing what others are doing.
One of them is a $97/mo investment with a Facebook Group where 95% of the program takes place.
Over the last couple of weeks, I started receiving 3-5 emails/week from the program host.
And the emails were such that I couldn’t quite understand the point — were they nurturing (they had good info/content) or were they inviting me to join the program I was already in (link was part of signature)?
So I responded and asked.
Turns out they’re sales emails sent to get me to join a program I’m already in.
I asked if it was possible to segment their emails so, as a program member, I didn’t receive program sales emails.
While their response was “of course, thank you for asking” (didn’t want to get into why I shouldn’t need to ask), it still hasn’t happened. Another email arrived today sharing all the reasons I should join.
Overarching email marketing tech issues:
- Whoever is doing the actual email sending doesn’t understand the business/client care strategy of not asking members who are paying for your program to join that same program.
- Whoever is hosting the program either doesn’t understand the tech capabilities of their email system or assumes their tech person “just knows” to segment as from a client care perspective, it’s an “obvious” thing to do
This frequently happens when a business owner/manager “doesn’t get tech” and/or presumes that their team automatically gets the business impact of things done in the system and they hire someone who understands systems/tech, but not the intricacies of client care/retention.
How about you? Do you “speak” both languages? Do members of your team?
It’s an uncommon skill set. And if you don’t personally have both, be sure someone on your team complements you and you ask each other questions to ensure intent matches expectations and execution.