Is Your Marketing Going to the Dogs?

The outside of the envelope said Personal and Confidential. Open immediately!

It was addressed to my dog, Bella.

One of my dogs is named Bella. I know. You probably have a dog named Bella as well. And occasionally, when I need to provide a name and an email to sign up for something, I use my AOL email and my dog’s first name.

This is why I get email and snail mail addressed to my dog.

And I REALLY love it when the senders start by saying something like, “We are so glad you are such a great friend of….” because of course, it shows they are using an automated responder or template, and they do not know me at all.

Now, their process totally works for me, because I know I can ignore the correspondence that is sent to my dog. They do not know me. They have not made an effort to know me. This is to my advantage when I can save precious seconds from my life by ignoring solicitations or information from people who are treating me as a data point.

If you are in sales or marketing, this is not what you want.

I use my Leader’s Blind Spot Assessment in many of my leadership programs. It is a 90-second analysis of strengths and possible blind spots. Because the assessment is personalized, it gets emailed to the participant, and of course, it goes to whatever name and email they give me. That is automatic.

But I also send a personalized email to every single person who takes the assessment. And someone, I see people who do what I do – they provide a name that I do not think is theirs. Do I use the name they give me?

My notes back to them might look like this:

Dear Bugs Bunny,

Dear Marilyn Monroe,

Dear Aquaman,

Or do I do a quick search of their email to see if I can figure out who they are?

I do the search. Yes, it takes me more time, but I cannot really fault them for being cautious and a little suspicious, like me.

What do I use? Sam Richter’s Intelligence Engine. He has a function that allows me to search people by emails, as well as a free way to search for veterans to hire.

I am all about sharing great resources, so check out www.intelngin.com and tell Sam I sent you.

Unless you like sending mail to my dog.