I received an email today from a man, (the disclaimer at the bottom of the email clearly states that I was not allowed to discuss the content by the way) So, I won’t mention either his name or the company. I will however take my chances and tell you what his point was. Let’s just call him Mr. T. Rex

He sells mass email lists, and was fairly upset at what I said about direct marketing approaches in the “Extinction of Dinosaur Marketers ” Series.

I quote…

"If my services make more money than it costs, where do you get off claiming that it’s a bad idea! I sell exceptionally well targeted lists, with superior quality prospects that are handpicked for every customer, We have a higher conversion rate on our lists than our competition. Who the (expletive deleted) are you to say that we’re dinosaurs?” You’re nothing but a…
(I’m cutting it here because I want to keep this blog at least PG-13)

—

Well Mr. Rex, it’s easy… It’s the other conversion rate I’m really interested in. You see, I consider potential customers as being on a fence; you have to pay equal attention to how many you push down the other side as you do to the ones that jump down your side. The ones that don’t buy aren’t completely unaffected; they might be turned away too.

What I want to hear about is – How many of the ones that didn’t buy did you turn off in the process?
I’d be better inclined to like it if the list wasn’t targeted at all. Then at least you wouldn’t be turning away your exact target segment by giving them a negative connotation to your company.

If you convert X%, but give as many a bad taste, you just lost out in the long run. Your target segment isn’t going to grow fast enough for you to pick a marketing approach which potentially damages future sales.

Now tell me how drying up your potential customer pool is a risk worth taking?

I do however thank Mr. Rex for taking the time out to email me his thoughts; it’s always interesting to see what the other side of the coin looks like.