Bad Marketing: Magazine Subscription Renewals

I am a loyal subscriber of Business Week. I have been reading it since I was a teenager – back in the 80s. (Late eighties). When I moved to Redmond, I extended my subscription via a third party. I started receiving two issues of Business Week in the mail every Monday. Guess their computer system is not smart enough to know if it is the same name and the same address, it is probably a duplicate or a renewal.

I called customer service to try to correct the problem, which did not happen. A few weeks later my old subscription was running out and I started getting calls at home (with telemarketer precision – at dinner time) to ask me to renew. I told them I had already renewed, but they did not listen.

This week I got a letter in the mail with the words “Important Tax information – open immediately” – no logo, plain envelope. I was suspicious, yet intrigued, so I opened it to find a “third notice – please renew your Business Week subscription”.

Now I was mad. Not only they deceiving me into opening their envelopes with cheap tactics, the message I got was “You must renew your subscription, this is the third time we ask you, are you not understanding?” Sure, the fine print read “your subscription may qualify as a tax deduction” – but that is just annoyingly bad marketing.

I have received other deceitful offers – like the subscription requests that look like an invoice, hoping another decision maker in the household (A wife, for example, but I am trying to be politically correct) opens the mail, assumes the other person has already made the commitment, and mails a check for a few dollars. That’s the kind of world we live in, too bad. But that is not the kind of tactics one expects from Business Week

Bad Marketing: Credit Cards and Respecting Your Customers

I am an American Airlines AAdvantage Platinum member, which means I spend way too much time on planes and a considerable amount of money on American Airlines. In the last six months, I have received a few dozen pieces of mail from this company, which tells me I am a valued customer since they call me Platinum. I am also a shareholder. That’s why every time I get one of those pieces in the mail with messages like “Important information for you” or “Time sensitive material” I have an expectation of what will be inside the envelope.

Every time I open it, I have the same experience: they are trying to sell me the Citi Aadvantage credit card. I already have a Citicard, I don’t need another one, even with the promise for 10,000 miles. I have seen the ads in every issue of American Way, I saw the banner ads, I got your promotional emails. STOP! It is getting to the point where AA is destroying the trust in their communications. Soon I will ignore any envelope I get from them, which will be headed straight for the shredder.

 Speaking of the shredder, on which I got a good deal at Target, it is a device that I don’t want. A shredder is a purchase that I was forced to make because of the hundreds of credit card offers we get in the mail every year. Credit card companies should pay for it. Just to point that American Airlines is not the only bad marketer. I sometimes get two credit card offers from the same company on the same day!! (and I don’t think my credit is even that good). Why can’t credit card marketers be more creative??