Bad Email Marketing from Priceline at Tom Markiewicz

Bad Email Marketing from Priceline

CommentsBad+Email+Marketing+from+Priceline2008-10-02+23%3A34%3A23Tom+Markiewicz

This is one of the worst marketing emails I’ve seen in a while:

Priceline.com wants me to fill out a survey for a recent car rental I made through their site. Simple and innocent enough at first glance.

What really bothers me with this email is their reason why I should fill out the survey.

Usually, I hesitate to fill out any survey unless I have had a bad experience. If I’ve had a positive or neutral experience, I usually ignore these unless there is some offer, reward, or benefit for me (i.e. improved customer service in the future).

Priceline.com, on the other hand, says I’ll get “good karma” for filling out their survey. This is a ridiculous marketing message. I’ll give you, a for-profit business, more information to improve and generate more revenue. In return, I get “karma”. Are you kidding me?

Don’t insult me. If they had left this wording off, I might have actually clicked on that brief survey and provided some information. After reading that statement, I was turned off by the approach.

The sad part is that I actually had a great experience renting a car through Priceline and would definitely recommend them to anyone looking to save some money on a car rental.

I know many will read the email and wonder why I’m making an issue of this. It’s simple actually. Effective marketing is about providing benefit to the consumer and not the other way around. I don’t care about the business, I care about myself. Businesses need to remember to use this to their advantage.

There are numerous ways of doing this in Priceline’s case. Lower costs, more options going forward, better shopping experience, or improved customer service would all be relevant to their customers.

As a consumer why should I care whether I’m helping this business?

A more effective approach would have been to distill to a sentence or two why filling out this survey would benefit me and not the business.

Popularity: 13% [?]

Written by Tom Markiewicz

October 2nd, 2008 at 5:34 pm

Posted in Email, Marketing

Tagged with Email, email marketing, Marketing, priceline

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Maybe this is simplistic thinking but this idea seems like it would overall be very effective (for priceline). The majority of people aren't as knowledgeable or educated on marketing at all. Most average consumers see this and say, "hey maybe I'll get lucky, maybe something good just may happen to me." Same mindset as the majority of recreational poker players imo. Maybe this one time something good will happen (never does).

Also, for the reasons stated no one ever fills out surveys because there is basically no value unless you're pissed off about something the business did.