Do you have unopened e-mail newsletters in your inbox?
"Well, errrr, yeah dave, I do."
And those are the ones that you allow into your inbox, aren't they?
"Yeah man, I just don't have time to read them. But you know, I do pick one or two off every so often."
Do you use Google's GMail?
"daaaaave, I see where you're going with this...."
I let approximately ten e-mail newsletters through my front gate each week and a half dozen more per month. I read one. I need to prune two or three from this list. For the balance though, I lean on Google's search capability in my GMail account.
"dave, that sounds good on paper dude, but how often do you really bring up old e-mail newsletters?"
Not often. But let me tell you about how a person at a company that sends these newsletters broke through the din of white noise marketing and helped me out. Michell Zappa, a trend analyst at Trendwatching.com, sent me an e-mail. Her company noticed that I hadn't opened up their Trend Briefing monthly newsletter for quite a while. Her concern was two-fold. One, perhaps my junk mail folder was scarfing up the briefings and I wasn't getting any, and two, perhaps I really didn't want to receive them anymore. In that case I could opt out and they wouldn't bother me anymore.
Now, of course Michell didn't personally send me this e-mail. But the thought and gesture pegged out the dave "that's different" meter. It was so Amazonian. It meant enough for me to reply back and thank them for their concern. Janna van Hasselt, from client services did personally reply back to me and thanked me for my note.
Guess what. A few days later I opened the latest briefing and read it. Man am I glad that I did! If you appreciate knowing what makes consumers do what they do, the pulse of business today, the various economy-related cultures and design (because their briefing is of most excellent design), then sign up for a Trend Briefing of your own today!
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