Stop the Emails

Long time readers of my blog will know that I've complained about companies who sent me promotional emails daily. I said something like once a week is enough. Well, these companies have not heard my complaints. In fact, they've gone the other direction.

There are companies who are literally sending two and three emails a day!!!

The first email in the morning is usually the offer email. The second email will be a reminder and generally comes mid afternoon. The third email comes at night--sometimes really late for the east coast--telling me it's my last chance to get their fabulous offer.

Once a day was annoying enough. Two or three times a day is ridiculous. I'd been hesitant about unsubscribing because when I want to buy something, I'd like to see the deals available, but I can't do three emails a day from one company. I've started to click the unsubscribe button.

The smart companies will offer an option on their unsubscribe page to receive fewer emails. That's the option I click if it's available. The rest are just an unsubscribe.

What marketing genius said, Hey, this person signed up for our emails, let's bombard them until they hate us and never want to see an email from us again? That's how I'm feeling right now about a number of companies. We're not talking one or two doing this--it's at least a dozen!

Dear companies promoting via email. STOP it or I will unsubscribe from you, too!

Smart Cross Promotion

I'm not a big fan of the Geico commercials. I think the bundle of money with the eyes is totally stupid, I'm not a fan of the cavemen, and the gecko is okay, but no AFLAC duck. :-) (Although the AFLAC commercials this summer have been pretty lame, so maybe the duck has run it's course, too, but for a while those were some of the most entertaining and clever commercials on television.) But Geico, despite a series of ad campaigns that I rate as so-so (and yes, it is personal taste, I understand that), hit a great strategy in their last few cavemen commercials and so did the music group involved.

For a while now I've noticed this song during the caveman commercials--Let Me Be Myself. I liked it, but I figured it was some commercial jingle and never considered things beyond that. But the more I heard the song, the more I liked it and I started paying attention to the entire commercial when I heard the song. Before this, I would flip away when the Geico commercials came on because I didn't like them. I even stopped everything I was doing to listen to this 30-second song.

And then the other night I started wondering if maybe it was a real song. Maybe I should do a little searching online and see if I could find out. After all, I loved the Secret Agent Man song in the Chase ads and found out that was a real song. And while I was thinking this, in the lower left-hand corner of the screen a little three-line graphic came up. It gave the name of the song and the name of the band. Jackpot!

I don't know what Geico paid 3 Doors Down to use their song, but it was a win-win for both band and company. It's a win for Geico because I actually sat through their ads, something I didn't do before, and it's a win for 3 Doors Down because while I'd heard of them, I hadn't listened to their music. Whoever had the idea to add the musical credit to the commercial was a genius.

Thanks to licensing their music to Geico, I hopped on iTunes and found the song I liked. I also listened to more song samples from the rest of the album, decided I liked them, and bought the whole thing. I can't be the only one who's done this, so it's pushed sales for the band.

Now if there was just some big brand who bought lots of TV air time who wanted to use, oh, say a book in their ads. :-)

Books, Books, Books

Yesterday, the titles of the books I have to read for the Rita were listed on my contest page on the RWA website. There are six. I'm only getting one novella, the rest are all full stories. Gah! I was hoping for mostly novellas. Only one is an author I've read before. It's an interesting mix. Now if the books would only arrive so I could figure out how I'm going to manage to read them all before the deadline.

I've been listening to a book on tape while I've been at the day job (EDJ). It actually made me remember how much I liked to do that and that I should probably do it more since it makes the day go faster. Of course, I can only do it on projects where it doesn't matter if my attention is split like that. Right now, I have two things I'm working on. I can listen to the tape while I work on one, but not on the other.

The book is called The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell. It's abridged and read by the author, but I'm finding the information he's presenting fascinating. It's non-fiction, BTW, and deals with marketing. While the stories presented are holding my attention, (I might go into more depth this weekend when I don't have to get ready for the EDJ), so far there's been no way to really put it into use in the real world. The examples of products/things that reached a tipping point have all seemed to happen either accidentally or with massive advertising budgets. (Massive at least compared to my advertising budget.) I don't think this will help me much marketing my own work, but at least it's keeping me entertained while I'm stuck in my cube.

Now I'm thinking it might be time to see what else the library has on tape/CD. Usually, I chose unabridged novels when I used to do this all the time, but I returned too many of them unfinished--which is why I stopped checking them out. But if I can find non-fiction subjects that are shorter, that might work. I'm actually going to finish The Tipping Point today--nearly a full week before its due back.

Of course, I also have all these RWA workshops on my MP3 player that I could listen to. Two years worth from Reno and Atlanta. :-) But that doesn't seem appealing right now. I'd rather find something more removed from writing. I feel like exposing myself to more diverse subjects--at least for right now.