Email Dating: World Market is Nicer in Person.

Ever meet someone at a party or event and they forget your name in the midst of a conversation? Or what about when you go in for an interview and you’re introduced to your potential coworkers with the wrong name?

Remembering someones name or something about them helps establish trust; in any relationship it’s important to find a common connection between the two parties and build from there. I personally respect people that can shake my hand, hold a conversation with me and then introduce me to someone else with my name and a few things about me to the other person. That to me shows interest, intent, respect and a desire to connect. I’m dumbfounded why businesses don’t realize this and do the same with their communications. Most sales professionals know that the relationship plays a huge role in creating sales – marketing isn’t any different. The connection between the product and the customer is embellished by the relationship between the customer and the business. Confession: If I don’t trust you, I don’t care how cool your shoes are and how fast the car is, no thanks.

I signed up for Cost Plus – World Market’s email newsletter about a year ago. I filled out a fairly nice sized form to gain access to the newsletter; the form looked like the one they have now, shown here:

There are enough fields here to market intelligently

After filling out the form I thought to myself, ‘This is a nice form, just enough info to tailor emails to my interests and demographics’. I was wrong. I’ve yet to receive an email on my birthday, I don’t get localized emails for the World Market that’s ten minutes down the street and my gender doesn’t seem to make a difference either. Not only do I not get personalized emails on any of the content, I signed up for the frequent customer card to receive additional discounts and they used my email there too. I would assume that now they can even tie my purchase history to the marketing they provide me online. Cost Plus, what more can you ask for? I’ve given you all my info and my purchase history, you need to do better.

I’ll go a little further to show you the email that was the catalyst of this post.

All Images - no real call to action

Not only was there absolutely no text for me to read, there was no personalization and the subject line provided a weak call to open. I opened my inbox to be greeted with, ‘Shop hot buys this Saturday at our kitchen event!’ Okay, if I liked cooking this may be relevant, but I received the email at five in the morning the day of the sale, this send time is a little optimistic don’t you think? What if I made plans for Saturday?

So, I downloaded the images … ugh.

General/Broad content with no real focus

Turns out the sale starts Saturday. Great, so the subject line was a little misleading. I would put a bet on the fact that this turned people away that couldn’t make it specifically on Saturday. Add this to the fact that I didn’t find out it’s a two week sale until I downloaded the images and scrolled to the bottom of the email, hmm. Feels like to much investigative work on my part to get the details of this event.

Moving past the ad into the bottom of the email there where two more offers – both of which aren’t anything I wouldn’t find on the website. Am I not valued a little more as an active email list participant? I realize that this is a great way to update people on the changes on the website, but I wasn’t treated as if we knew each other. I’m an avid World Market shopper, I love the candy, food, accessories and I even just spent a large amount of money on some furniture there. Isn’t that enough to get a personalized thank you or at least an email on the things I buy?

To conclude, the lesson to learn here is that info is useless if you don’t use it. Don’t collect what you won’t use; don’t shake my hand and ask me my name only to forget what it is. Dating World Market via email has been a self absorbed process on their part with no real outreach to my preferences or likes. This would have been easier to just ask me for my email address – at least then all I can expect is an email newsletter with no segmentation. #worldmarketfail