Marketing automation gone wild

This is a short story on how marketing automation can go awry, and back fires right at you. This happened not so long ago as the transcript below will tell us.

Fortunately, I share some tips we can extract from this case. And at the end of this post, you’ll see that this could’ve been a movie scene!

Friday, 5:01 PM:

Dear Walter,

I tried to contact you but I didn’t manage to reach you. My Name is ~~unreadable name~~. I am a Recruitment Consultant at ~~unreadable company~~.

Sunday, 5:57 PM:
Dear Walter,

I tried to contact you but I didn’t manage to reach you. My Name is ~~unreadable name~~. I am a Recruitment Consultant at ~~unreadable company~~.

Sunday, 8:01 PM:
Dear Walter,

I tried to contact you but I didn’t manage to reach you. My Name is ~~unreadable name~~. I am a Recruitment Consultant at ~~unreadable company~~.

OK. I have heard that song before.

First check on the company: seems legit.

Then on the guy himself: seems legit too.

OK. Here we go. Click on reply:

Monday, 8:25 AM:
Hello ~~unreadable name~~,

I was in the office, so I don’t understand why you couldn’t get hold of me.

Monday, 8:48 AM:
Good Morning Water,

I just got answer machine. I tried calling you but your in meeting. Do you have a few minutes for me to introduce our services?

Monday, 9:03 AM:
At what time did you get the answering machine, ~~unreadable name~~?

Monday, 9:09 AM
Hi Walter (Hey you got my name right!),

Yesterday around 19.00 – 20.00hrs I was in the office doing some research and I found your vacancy on your website. I called to discuss the job and to see if the candidate I sent is matching your requirement? If not we do have other candidates that would fit.

Monday, 9:11 AM
But you sent me the mail at 17:00?

Monday, 9:23 AM
This was to follow up to check if the candidate is relevant. I was speaking to other clients and sent out at least 12 x Candidates CVs to other clients am working with.

Monday, 9:36 AM
Very good to follow-up on an e-mail, but in your mail you mentioned: ‘I tried to contact you but I didn’t manage to reach you.’. This mail was of last Sunday at 17. So I didn’t quite understand that you called me at around 19, and the mail was sent at 17. Probably the blame is on me for not understanding.

Monday, 9:46 AM
No problem. Can I help you find the candidate for New Business Manager multilingual speaking?

Monday, 10:26 AM
As we don’t work with agencies anymore I am afraid you can’t be of any help right now. I’d appreciate it if you unsubscribe me from your mailing list.

Monday, 11:18 AM
Thanks for letting me know. I have took you out of the mailing list. This does take a bit of time. So please give it a few days. If you do get anymore mails for colleges please let me know and I can deal with immediately.

So what does this learn us?

Avoid marketing automation to back fire

1: Sending automated mails on Sunday, evening, is weird, calling companies at that time even weirder.
2: Get your spelling right
3: Especially someone’s name
3: If caught: just confess it is an automated mail
4: Don’t send out e-mails like a machine gun. you want to touch on someone, not riddle him with your e-mails.
5: Try to get slightly sarcastic undertone in a reply
6: If you say you’ve called someone, make sure you have called. Don’t lie about these kind of things
7: Unsubscribing shouldn’t take two days
And most important:
8: Use marketing automation as the powerful instrument that it is!

What does this remind of us….?!

Oh yeah, I remember: