Talking about marketing and digital integration best practices is a dangerous exercise because it is always easier to criticize or judge a work done by others.
But we understand that even the best of us makes mistakes. Sometimes we are unable to implement what we preach due to various issues like budget, timing, technical constraints, etc. Simply put, bad things happens…
I guess this what happened today when I received an offer from Amazon US and sony through the sonymovie cash summer promotion with Amazon
Amazon is one of my all time favorite study cases as they have a great customer service; personalized offer and they are regularly leading with new marketing initiatives. They were the first to offer a proper rating, comments, wish list and recommendations for example.
However, a slight accident happened this time round.
I was on my regular blu-ray discs purchase from Amazon USA when I received a cross sales offer with a discount to watch a movie in a theater. Great offer, great idea, great concept! The only tiny problem is that I am unable to benefit from as I lived in Singapore. I am not debating here that the offer should be available across countries but the fact I should not be targeted with that dedicated offer.
So what went wrong? Obviously Amazon has my name, my delivery address and my shipping address. With these data, despite the fact that I might be eligible to the promotion because of my purchase basket, I am not because of my location. Therefore, I should not even receive the offer.
My speculation is that Amazon team outsourced the work to an external team. As I did not receive a proper html eDM with my name but a simple generic static email. Most probably one trigger (country location) was not integrated in the selected criteria to send the eDM,
This is not a big deal, of course and as a customer/marketer in that case will not hold grudges against Amazon….
BUT…..
This incident does reflect a couple of things that matters.
First, this shows that marketing and data are becoming even more dynamic and challenging to handle. The usual approach “you buy this so you receive this offer” is not sufficient anymore. Complexities of data, along with globalization of consumer force us to do things at multiple levels and prepare offers that take multiple variables at the same time.
Why should we even bother? Well, just because this is the best way to increase your ROI (this is actually my second point). Amazon and Sony will most probably analyze the campaign ROMI at the end of the promotion and I suspect the result will be lower than the reality because the targeted audience is not the appropriate or relevant in a sense.
In this case, the simple fact you send the eDM to people who are not eligible (because of their country) will artificially lower the number of redeemed coupons.
The numbers determining the success of this campaign will be skewed, hence leading to wrong conclusion.
Everyone make mistakes, but even the slightest mistake can result in larger consequences.
Tags: amazon, edM, sonycash summer promotion
Contagious Fanatic