“Let’s Catch Up……”

A couple of times a day, I skim my “Junk Mail” folder checking to see if there are legit messages then emptying it.  The minute it takes me to do this also provides great comic relief on the hundreds of inept prospecting emails I get.

These are legitimate emails from well established companies–not the emails asking me to buy cheap drugs or to help free a fortune held captive in a West African company.

They are emails from well established brands/companies.  Unfortunately, they’ve bought a list from a disreputable list management firm, or they’ve scraped the web, or they’ve “deconstructed” our email format to build their lists.  That’s what lands them in the Junk Mail folder.

But their email messaging tactics are equally misdirected.

I’ve seen a lot of them, from people I don’t know and probably don’t care to know, with the following in the subject line:  Let’s Catch Up.  I also see this title in a lot of the prospecting messages that make it through my SPAM filters.

How stupid do these marketers and sales people think I (we) are?

Why am I going to waste my valuable time “catching up” with someone I have never met, selling something I really don’t care about?

We have no past experience or shared history about which to “catch up.”  We have no remembrances to update.  Since there is no past experience, “catching up” is meaningless.

I wonder why these people feel they can feign familiarity or a past relationship, when we clearly have never had one.  Do they think I’ll immediately trust them?  Do they think the familiar approach will cause me to respond.

If they want to catch my attention, they have–but the lingering impression is ineptness, stupidity, thoughtlessness, and manipulation.  Try selling me something from that starting point!

We, as a profession, are better than this!

We owe it to our prospects and customers to think more highly of them, their intelligence, and their time.

We need to set higher standards for our marketing programs, for how we engage our customers, for how we, as sales people, want to be perceived by our prospects.

Catching the attentions of our prospects and customers is hard enough, why start with a negative impression!