Fool me once... shame on me. Fool me twice, and I write a blog to tell you about it.
There's a lot of discussion lately about shady marketing practices and the smarmy marketers behind them. I was recently shown this article, "Is Marketing a Dirty Word?" and didn't really have too much to say about it because there are some people out there that do give Marketing a bad name, but I couldn't think of any personal examples. And then today happened, where I realized that not only is "Marketing" being dragged through the mud, but that people are playing fast and loose with the term "Social" as well.
Over the summer I signed up for a Savored.com account and really loved the service. I actually did tell people online and in person about it when it came up in conversation. For those that don't know, Savored allows you to spend $10 on a reservation to the city's best restaurants, and then once you are there you get 30% off of your entire bill, including alcohol. I went with a few coworkers to a place and it was all taken care of by our servers, and the service was flawless. As I'm usually lacking in time, I don't believe I even filled out the "How was your dining experience?" type survey that Savored sends after your evening. Overall, it WAS great. It was the weeks afterwards that I've been having trouble with.
I was made aware by a good friend that he received an email from Savored with the headline "Jenn Pedde has tried X Restaurant and suggests you do too." I thought "Oh, maybe I just didn't look closely enough at the settings, let me go in and change that." Once I looked over my account, there was no way to turn off this feature and I was more than a little upset and sent a letter off to their customer service.
Why was I Upset?
And then today...
They did it again!!! I only showed you two emails where they said they were discontinuing this practice and then sure enough, 2 weeks later, they continue! Asking my friends for me to sign up for a service I use is NOT a best practice of social media marketing. Especially without my consent.
I immediately emailed savored and told them to cancel my account. I was willing to forgo this slip up the first time, but I refuse to participate in this the second time -- the company has lost all of my trust. They did everything right except for follow through on the one thing I requested.
The point of social media is for your customers or community to spread the word for you. NOT for you to spread it on their behalf as a marketer.
I leave you with this, a quote from Fred Wilson in the above linked article that couldn't be more true.
And I urge you to read the fine print of any service you sign up for in the future, and not use Savored.com until they have a better marketing plan in place.
There's a lot of discussion lately about shady marketing practices and the smarmy marketers behind them. I was recently shown this article, "Is Marketing a Dirty Word?" and didn't really have too much to say about it because there are some people out there that do give Marketing a bad name, but I couldn't think of any personal examples. And then today happened, where I realized that not only is "Marketing" being dragged through the mud, but that people are playing fast and loose with the term "Social" as well.
Over the summer I signed up for a Savored.com account and really loved the service. I actually did tell people online and in person about it when it came up in conversation. For those that don't know, Savored allows you to spend $10 on a reservation to the city's best restaurants, and then once you are there you get 30% off of your entire bill, including alcohol. I went with a few coworkers to a place and it was all taken care of by our servers, and the service was flawless. As I'm usually lacking in time, I don't believe I even filled out the "How was your dining experience?" type survey that Savored sends after your evening. Overall, it WAS great. It was the weeks afterwards that I've been having trouble with.
I was made aware by a good friend that he received an email from Savored with the headline "Jenn Pedde has tried X Restaurant and suggests you do too." I thought "Oh, maybe I just didn't look closely enough at the settings, let me go in and change that." Once I looked over my account, there was no way to turn off this feature and I was more than a little upset and sent a letter off to their customer service.
Why was I Upset?
- I did not give permission for my name to be used in email campaigns.
- I did not participate in the follow up survey -- what if I had disliked that restaurant?
- What if I did not want that contact to know I was at said restaurant?
- What if that contact and I were no longer on speaking terms?
- How did they even get said contact's information?
- Who else were they sending it to?
- If ANY of my contacts did receive this, and did sign up because I "recommended" it, would I see any rewards/loyalty points/compensation?
I received the following email in response, and it was very well said:
Maureen, Sep-21 02:52 pm (EDT):Hi Jenn,
Hope all is well, I'm writing to you from the marketing team at Savored. I read your email to Support and I'd first like to thank you for your insightful feedback. It's really important that our members communicate with us like you have, and we sincerely appreciate the time you took to let us know how you felt about the email you received.
The thought behind that email followed the idea that if your friend invited you to join Savored (and you indeed signed up), then maybe referring to that friend's loyalty would prompt a user to try Savored for themselves. Unfortunately, it seems like we missed the point and only upset members like yourself. Needless to say, we won't be experimenting with this again due to feedback like you have provided.
Please let me know if there's anything we can do from our end, aside from my assurance to you that there's no need to worry about your private information being distributed to anybody else.
Thanks again,
Michael
It was a pretty great response. I understood why they did what they did when they did it, because I too am a marketer who operates in the social space. I didn't want anything except confirmation that this wouldn't happen again. We emailed a few times back and forth, discussing the importance of opting in and opting out of such things, and the last correspondence was:
Maureen, Sep-26 09:26 am (EDT):Hi Jenn,
Thank you for reaching out, and thanks for your thoughtful feedback. We have discontinued marketing of this nature, and apologize for not allowing you to opt out earlier.
Best,
Maureen
And then today...
They did it again!!! I only showed you two emails where they said they were discontinuing this practice and then sure enough, 2 weeks later, they continue! Asking my friends for me to sign up for a service I use is NOT a best practice of social media marketing. Especially without my consent.
I immediately emailed savored and told them to cancel my account. I was willing to forgo this slip up the first time, but I refuse to participate in this the second time -- the company has lost all of my trust. They did everything right except for follow through on the one thing I requested.
The point of social media is for your customers or community to spread the word for you. NOT for you to spread it on their behalf as a marketer.
I leave you with this, a quote from Fred Wilson in the above linked article that couldn't be more true.
“I believe that marketing is what you do when your product or service sucks or when you make so much profit on every marginal customer that it would be crazy to not spend a bit of that profit acquiring more of them (coke, zynga, bud, viagra).” – Fred Wilson
And I urge you to read the fine print of any service you sign up for in the future, and not use Savored.com until they have a better marketing plan in place.