When Marketing Goes Awry

The marketing folks at LinkedIn have apparently rolled out more than one update.

Earlier in the week I showed how uninspiring I found their plea to use the profile-skills feature.

They did it again before the ink was dry on that article – you’ll love this.

Everybody’s finding connections…

So, if users haven’t been on the site in a while, you might want to tell them about all the fun their friends are having – here’s the email I received:

Image of marketing Email from LinkedIn

It’s clearly identified, and offers an unsubscribe, but it still galls me. (I’ve taken the opportunity to cloak the names and images of my friends…)

I visit the site a whole lot!

Don’t they know that about me?

That’s like offering an incentive to come into the store to your best and most frequent customer!

I haven’t found any connections recently

Yes, I haven’t added any recently because I happen to have already found quite a few of the people I’ve worked with over the years – I have 435!

Bad logic

My estimation of the logic behind this:

  • Find all users who have not invited someone they say they already know in the last 30 days.
  • Send them an “occasional LinkedIn Marketing email” if they have not unchecked that box in their setup.
  • Write the email as if they hardly ever use LinkedIn and entice them to use the site more.
  • Ignore any information about how often they use the site.
  • Ignore any information about how many connections they have.
  • If they don’t like it, they can unsubscribe.

And that’s a shame…

I’m ok with marketing that “gets” it

I leave the box checked so that I can see what sort of material the company sends out, and I really would like to get some useful marketing.

Marketing that reveals the company doesn’t have a clue – not so much…

There’s not much to “do” about it. If the LinkedIn developers watch this blog, they might add a bit of logic to the process to keep from insulting their frequent users in the name of getting more visits out of their infrequent users.

To your continued success,

steve

Steven Tylock
http://www.linkedinpersonaltrainer.com
http://www.linkedin.com/in/stevetylock