With smartphones becoming personal tracking devices that monitor and record not only our location but also certain behaviors, data mining of consumer profiles is big business.
There’s scant evidence yet that the data mining results in higher sales for companies that employ the tools. But sooner or later, the inventive minds of marketers will figure out how to turn the tracking and real-time analytics into predictive modeling of consumer decisions. In the meantime, efforts to target customers are enduring an awkward adolescence. The clumsiness is both endearing and hilarious.
Before I explain my recent personal experience with targeted marketing, I must describe my customer profile to you: 60 years old, two kids out of the nest for nearly a decade, reasonable disposable income, married, in decent health. Somewhere in the server farms that collect my information are these and other demographic data that describe me in ways that marketers assess in terms of which purveyors might want to approach me.
Apparently my profile tripped a cyber lever that selected me for a particular company. This week’s mail included a letter addressed specifically to me. After the salutation was this introductory sentence: “Cremation just makes sense because…”
The letter cited the economic and logistical advantages of being crisped at life’s end. Ecological considerations were noted (they must have checked my voting record on environmental protection legislation). The letter continued that setting up cremation services early on would relieve my family of the burden of arranging my internment.
The sales pitch also noted that more of my remaining assets could be divided among my heirs if I spent less of it on my final resting place. Now I’m wondering if the cremation company contacted my family to see if they would lobby for a memorial barbecue instead of a much more expensive traditional burial.
The letter ended with assurances of no obligation to responding to the offer to meet. It even gave me a special code for a discount. How customizing of them.
The president of the company himself signed the letter. Or rather his scanned signature was pasted into the document which was mass-produced by a direct mailing service firm.
Then in a postscript, the final pitch: “Sometimes death happens before you have had a chance to put your plans in place. We stand ready to assist you at a moment’s notice should you need immediate help.”
I thought, wait a minute. If death happens to me before I’ve put my plans in place, how exactly will this company help me at a moment’s notice? Wow. If they can communicate with me after I’ve passed on, these guys are really good. Maybe I should sign up.
The only explanation I have for why anyone from the cremation company would think this letter would result in leads is that their marketing vice president is under 40. The marketing team got together and someone said, “Hey, if we buy that database of old people who still make a good living, aren’t religiously tied to burial rituals and are concerned about the environment, our response rate for direct mail should be double the random sample method at least!”
“Sure,” some other whippersnapper said, “and we want to reach them before they get senile. We’d better limit it to people under 65.” (If readers need to know what a whippersnapper is, please drop me a note.)
With a little more experience, marketers will get all this figured out, I’m sure. They’ll learn that offering prompt services to people who have just experienced dying may not be as enticing as the focus groups told them it would.
Sewitch is an entrepreneur and business psychologist. He serves as the vice president of global organization development for WD-40 Company. Sewitch can be reached at sewitch1@cox.net
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