Random marketing and its effectiveness was a side topics at one of my meetings today. Some people feel annoyed and often presssured into looking at the junk emails that clog up their email addresss. I never open mine but I understand why companies do it. It’s in the hope that they will grab a second of you time to make themselves known so that maybe you me buy whatever it is they are selling.

But this strategy is seriously flawed because no one I know opens let alone read junk mail or emails so it’s a pointless investment of marketing resources. Apart from the recipients not opening their enails, the idea that random marketing works goes against the concepts taught in fundamental marketing, it ignores segmentation, targeting and positioning! With all the tracking power modern internet technology has, companies can pretty much track  everyone who uses the internet looks at, buys and ignores so there is no excuse for spending money on random marketing. Get forcused and start targeting customers with the right offers at the right time.

Has anyone with a smart phone ever wondered why no company ever sends adverts to your phone? They know all the website you visit, with the location service they even know where you are at what time and with people’s phones always emitting signals it is easy to get into their pockets and send messages or news flashes about product offers, updates ets. My feeling is that junk mail/ emails needs to be more cunning and intrusive especially targeted to the customers who need to get that information being the only ones who get it. There are even some people carrying phones with their bluetooth always switched on and sending message to that is dead easy.

The beauty of getting into the target’s phone is that the message arrives as a sms or mms, people read that because it might be important. It could annoy some people but if the offer is for a product they use there is possibility that they could become a customer. The important thing to remember is that there has to be a benefit for the customers, empty messages should not be sent to customers, avoid wasting their time so that everytime you send a message it is worth reading and it engages the customers to an extent that they consider buying or at the very list the product being advertised occupy a part of the customers’ brain for future references.

This is where marketing should be going and I think it is already 18 months late!