Advertising to your own customers
So, recently I got a ad by sprint telling me they are the fastest LTE network. This isn’t surprising – sprint does a lot of reselling their network and I think also has the biggest chunk of spectrum allocated to them, thanks to their nextel merger many years ago.
But more than not being surprising, it’s annoying. As a sprint customer since 2002, why bother to advertise to me? I’m clearly not planning on going anywhere any time soon, and as far as I can tell, I paid for that ad – or rather, revenues from selling me service did. Not only that, that ad wasted a few seconds of my time – more than that by the time you figure me writing blog posts about it.
I think most customers would rather have a penny discount, silently applied, than a ad talking about how good the service they’re already paying to receive is.
Even more annoying, and has largely been fatal to me donating to most causes, are the people who use my donation money to send me requests for more money. I’ve sent like $35, $50 to various causes and gotten several years worth of begging letters asking for more money. This makes me very skeptical that my money went to do anything useful, and very disinclined to donate to you again.
I do repeatedly see companies advertising to their already existing customers, and it does not make a lot of sense to me. We’re not stupid, you know. We know we’re paying for that ad – as well as having it burn time we could better have spent doing something else. Rein in your marketing departments.