A Short Story on B2B Marketing personalisation gone wrong

So, it's the week before valentines day and this little box of stuff was waiting for me when I arrived in the office this morning.

Decent enough box you may think. Bit of packing material, card (that’s a bit cringe but aren’t all valentines cards?), personalised chocolate, hand-written heart-shaped post it note.

You may think “what’s wrong with all that? Looks decent enough to me?”

We’ll here’s the context that makes this all far from decent:

If this had arrived cold then I probably would have done a little lol and set up a call. HOWEVER…

This is from a contact that I’ve recently had to disconnect from on LinkedIn due to the persistent messages.

Like, 5 unanswered messages in the space of 2 weeks.

And then when I did disconnect from them (I wouldn't block as they're not doing anything wrong or offensive, just going OTT) I receive another connection request!

And what's worse is they work for a company - who I won’t name and shame, but it rhymes with Feed Lorensics - who I’ve had to flag to senior people there TWICE ALREADY about their sales reps taking over the top outreach approaches in the past.

The Big B2B Marketing Ick

Never has anything given me a bigger ick (or made we wonder how poorly a CRM system can be maintained) before.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m all for well personalised campaigns. I’m a big fan of seasonal activity. And I love a good DM too.

But this has definitely crossed the “chasm of creepiness” and we’re now in a realm where I’m worrried my pet rabbit might be taking an unexpected bath very soon.

And once the "chasm of creepiness" has been crossed it's very, very hard (some would say impossible) to go back.

So what went so wrong here and what can we all learn from another's mistakes to help our own B2B marketing?

1. Personalisation needs to actually be personalised

Personalisation doesn't mean just stealing someones LinkedIn profile pic - without permission - and sticking their name on a broad brush, "spray and pray" approach.

You're "loving my work" are you? How specific and perfectly tailored to me as individual. How understanding of my needs, wants, and challenges...

Just using some autofills and generic messaging with a bit of tweaking is NOT personalisation. It's using autofills and slightly tweaked generic messaging. 

Doing that to an individual doesn't make them feel valued or understood. It just makes them feel like they're being marketed to. Which is the last thing you actually want people to feel when you're marketing to them.

Ensure you actually do some research on the contacts you're targeting and can approach them in a meaningful way. Yes, it takes time and effort but it will - and I promise you this - increase the effectiveness of your marketing. Shocking, I know. 

2. Cold can be better than "weirdly warm"

As I said above if I had received this little box of goodies completely cold I probably would have engaged with it and at the very least dropped the sender an email to say thank you.

However I was far from cold in this scenario. I was "warm" as a contact but in all the wrong ways.

Surely someone must have twigged that I'd not responded to any LinkedIn outreach? Surely it must have been noticed that I hadn't answered any of the calls to my mobile from a number with the area code of the organisations HQ (which I'm assuming was also them)? And it MUST have been flagged somewhere that I've raised concerns about the company's outreach approaches before?

Surely... 

So make sure you're gathering and managing intelligence effectively on the contacts you're approaching. Are they REALLY cold or are they weirdly warm?

3. Sense the Tone

Valentines day is meant to be a celebration of romance, love, and all that mushy stuff. Or it's a heartless ploy to guilt people into spending money on tacky stuff they don't really need. Depends how cynical you are. 

But think of it what you may there is only one person in whole world that I love in a Valentines way. (My wife, BTW. Don't get any ideas anyone).

Business contacts, suppliers, solutions providers et al I get on with and like you guys. But we're way, way off dropping the L bomb to each other.

And that's what makes this all the weirder and just plain odd in this scenario.  

Seasonal campaign can be great if they're pitched right. There's loads of brilliant angles you take with campaigns around easter, summer, halloween, christmas, etc. (Trust me, we've delivered loads for clients before with great success).

But sending someone you've never met - who is also someone who's actively tried to avoid you - a love themed campaign is just creepy, right?

So make sure you're sensitive to the tone of campaigns you run and how they fit the audience you're targeting and the wider context of what's going on in the world. It'll just demonstrate you understand them and everything else a bit better.

So there we go some top tips for you that we can all take onboard around how to avoid crossing the "chasm of creepiness" with your B2B marketing.

But to answer your most pressing question: Yes, the chocolate was delicious!