Last night I received an email blast from a major technology player asking me why they did not get my business, which made no sense (for starters I'm not the decision maker or even an influencer). It is a great example of exactly what NOT TO DO in your demand generation and sales process. I've removed the company's name from the email to save their face.
Let's have a look at this doozie of an email blast (SPAM) so your team does not make the same mistakes.
Last quarter you evaluated "insert solution here" as a possible solution for your "blank" needs. At that time you decided to either stay with your current solution or go with a different solution.
We would like to learn from your experience and better understand why we did not win your business. Did our solution not meet your needs; did our sales representative not understand your business needs; were we too expensive? Most importantly, was there anything we could have done differently to win your business?
All we're asking is 10 minutes of your time to complete the following survey:
Take Survey
As a token of our appreciation, we'll buy your next cup of coffee. We'll send you a Starbucks gift card after you have completed this survey.
Again, thank you for taking the time to provide us with this valuable feedback. We hope to be able to serve your needs in the future.
Sincerely,
Demand Generation Gone Wrong
Things wrong with this email:
- They did not scrub their list against their ideal customer profile or database - I could not be further from their ideal customer.
- I have not heard from them in 3 months - something is wrong with their marketing automation technology
- The email copy does not fit my profile - I never evaluated their solution or spoke with a sales rep. I certainly never made a decision against their technology as I'm a front line sales rep, not a decision maker.
- It was a blind email blast from the list they generated at the event - which was just a veiled sales pitch with a forced demo on the entire audience for the last 20 minutes.
- They are offering a $5 dollar gift card to Starbucks to fill out the survey. This is a giant waste of money, it's not trackable with a tracking URL and does not bring me back to their site or content. They should have sent me a free ebook, blog post, short white paper or something I would have found interesting that I could share on a social network.
Demand generation is part science and art - no campaign is ever flawless, but any demand generation campaign should be executed much better than this one to create results.
What do you think of this demand generation email? What types of emails are you seeing out there?