An Accidental Marketing Tactic That Many Companies Can Learn From | Hacker News Reader

An Accidental Marketing Tactic That Many Companies Can Learn From

blogs.wsj.com

57 pointsfraqed61 comments

This is not an "accidental tactic", after the first time. After the first time, when it was done with intention, it was deliberate. It was also a deceptive marketing practice and there's really no argument against that. Deceptive marketing practices are frowned upon in most legal jurisdictions. One may or may not choose to go forward once realizing this, and can not complain if they later feel they were defrauded when the initial contact was so intentionally and deliberately fraudulent. Caveat Emptor.

In any case the article goes on to describe the intentionally deceptive campaign then badgered their mailing list with multiple deceptive follow on mailings designed to get them to initiate a telephone chat with a telemarketer at the company who would be acting under false pretenses. Of course this is all clever, it's very clever. It's very similar in design and method to the Nigerian 419 promotions which intentionally use misspellings and obvious falsehoods in order to filter out any potential marks who are not extremely naive. This is valuable as it increases the chances the mark who does respond will be receptive to the game being offered, and as such doesn't waste the time of the marketing artist promoting the scheme talking to savvy or intelligent targets who ultimately won't be receptive to the promotional offering.

What are the false pretenses? It sounded like they were very upfront about what they were providing--they just found they got a better response rate if they didn't tell people until after they called.

Two thoughts: First, I abhor solicitations and junk mail. I discard them without a second thought, and never open them. So I wonder what the success rate of these mailings are, and their cost effectiveness. Do people really open junk mail? I'm even more annoyed when I am tricked on the rare occasion to open them.

Second, early in my career I worked as a receptionist. I once received thirty envelopes for the thirty partners in the firm. Each contained an old skeleton key. This was maybe 2003, so to send a metal skeleton key in an envelope to thirty individuals was, by no means, an insignificant sum. My director, upon reading the first solicitation, declared them all persona non grata, toss the letters, and the keys. No one ever saw the letters and the keys wound up at the Goodwill on my way home.

The US Direct Marketing Association claims that "direct marketing," which most people call "junk mail" or "spam," results in about 8.7% of US GDP per year. So, I would expect that quite a few people not only read junk mail but also purchase what it advertises.

Same for spam. Most likely people wouldn't send spam if they didn't make money that way.

Unless they’ve been lead to believe that it works, and it doesn’t? Or maybe the way to sell fraudulent pills doesn’t translate to how you sell many other products?

> Unless they’ve been lead to believe that it works, and it doesn’t?

In the long run, it's pretty difficult to convince a business that something makes money if the money doesn't actually show up.

Sure, some businesses might be poorly run, and therefore be misled for a long time. But the industry as a whole would have noticed if spam didn't work.

In the long run, it's pretty difficult to convince a business that something makes money if the money doesn't actually show up.

1. In the long run, everyone involved has moved on to other positions.

2. If the money doesn't show up, that just means you're doing it wrong. Like all the various software methodologies that are supposed to increase productivity or reduce bugs.

3. "Half of money spent on marketing is wasted, it's just impossible to know which half." The real world is rarely simple enough to give the kind of clear results you'd get from a proper well-designed experiment.

My bet it mostly works for third world countries where a few thousand dollars a year is average pay.

Different for spam is how much less it costs. A penny (or tenth of one) is a bargain compared to postal prices, but would cut off most junk email.

In my view, it's worth considering whom spam is sold to. The customer is not the person who receives spam in their in-box. It's the person who pays for their business to conduct a spam campaign. Spam is a money-maker if it can be sold to businesses.

Delivering spam is a money maker too. Remember that USPS is paid to deliver junk mail just like any other mail; however it's cheaper than normal mail and they will make less delivery attempts — just one, I believe.

Junk mail is cheaper per unit than first class mail, but there's so much of it that it significantly subsidizes first class mail (the mail normal people send).

Somebody is handing out real money. I bet they wouldn't be doing this they didn't benefit from it.

The problem is it costs the sender very little, but annoys everyone.

This is not a fair assessment. A big chunk of the direct marketing that results in actual sales comes from catalogs that people order and/or want -- I am not sure I would call that "spam". This type of direct marketing can be very cost efficient -- it's the old idea of selling more to people who are already your customers.

As for the actual junky junk mail, I've seen 1-2% yields from well-designed programs (as others have mentioned). I've seen online campaigns (fb, adwords, amazon, etc.) with comparable yields.

This is why, whenever you get unsolicited marketing calls, you should waste as much of their time as you can, even if it wastes your time. The best option is to tell them that you are interested, or even tell them that you are going to get your credit card, and then leave the phone off the hook.

I couldn’t do that knowing someone is on the other side of the phone just trying to earn a living.

These organizations are annoying and unwelcome, but I’m not sure if they are actively nefarious.

Though if it’s disguised to get through filters then I have much less sympathy for a person knowingly participating.

Earning a living by bothering people in their homes and wasting their time is not something I'm sympathetic to.

I feel a little sorry for the employee themselves. I'm sure most of them know that what they do is annoying, and would choose another option for work if they could.

On the other hand, my phones are all on the do-not-call list, and if they don't immediately hang up when I tell them, then I might decide to waste some of their time.

Or you could automate it and not waste your own time!

https://youtu.be/EzedMdx6QG4

This only works if you consider their time more valuable than your own.

If you're working in Silicon Valley and/or a software developer, chances are the time you waste is worth a lot more than the time they waste, even if they waste more

Nah. Advertising mostly moves spending around. It doesn't create more spending. The US savings rate is so low below the top 10% that essentially all income is spent.

This is one argument for taxing advertising heavily.

> I wonder what the success rate of these mailings are

Some quick searching came back with a 1-2% response rate, and $50-100 acquisition cost per customer. I'm not sure if those numbers are accurate across all industries or not, but I am sure that people who do this for a living would do the research to get those numbers right. So it is no different than any other marketing in that if you know how much a customer is worth, you just do the math to know if this type of marketing is worth your time.

Our personal feelings about it don't factor into those equations. Personally, I agree with you, but the companies who do these mailings won't cry themselves to sleep over our feelings, or if they do, it will be on pillows stuffed with cash made from their direct mailings...

In my experience, people that understand databases and personalization tech (mail merge and more) are jaded and harder to sell to. But we in IT are a minority , so I don’t doubt it works well for many demographics.

I know plenty of people from other walks of life... none of them have time or interest in junk mail or unsolicited calls.

Well yeah, if you ask someone if they like spam, they're gonna say no. But that doesn't mean they don't still respond to it.

I don't like the Great Deals "magazine" that get shipped to me every month with no way of opting out of it, but that doesn't stop me from clipping a coupon for 50% off at a local restaurant. In this sample of 1, you now have a 100% disapproval rating but also a 100% effectiveness rating.

I didn’t say that I polled them, but rather that this is my continued and consistent observation over long periods.

This is really on WSJ? There are a million little tricks and tactics out there like this and this is no more interesting than the next one.

It’s a one time thing, it’s pretty unsavory, and like many other shady growth tactics, the mileage one business will get out of this will vary dramatically vs. another business.

Segmentation, personalization and differentiation are the appropriate tactics to use if marketing response rates are a problem for your business.

Companies that separate Sales and Marketing roles split introduce a gap where none should exist. The personalization and differentiations should be driven by salespeople's insights and data. Marketing should preface the sales call and carry the deal forward to closure.

Most companies are very, very far from an interwoven sales and marketing model that efficiently uses resources and that delivers results.

I agree with your first points about segmentation, personalization, and differentiation, but sales and marketing are fundamentally different disciplines. The ideal is an organization where there is trust, communication, and accountability between the two roles. It’s hard, but it’s absolutely possible.

I don't care if you're trying to gift me a gold bar. If I get even a slight whiff that you're using psychological tricks to sell me something, I'm blacklisting your company.

Nothing turns me off faster than sales tehniques. Don't call me a partner, don't waste my time.

I've paid a premium to reward an internet company and a furniture store who are simply dead honest and to the point with me. I need a way to find more of these in my life.

I agree and would hope I’m the same way.

The problem of course is that statistically these “tricks” still work on the population as a whole.

I wonder if it’s possible to make “honest” companies the default expectation and for consumers to punish less honest ones. Seems more common in Japan, where there are somewhat high expectations of service quality and honesty. Though obviously there are many pretty scummy companies too.

a bit off topic, but I think Bed Bath and Beyond should make their slogan "Don't bother coming in here if you forgot to carry around that trash we sent you"

I wish the post office would allow me to block anything that said "or current resident"

Problem is, while you call it "spam", the post office calls those mailers "job security". Some weeks if I didn't get spam I wouldn't get any mail at all and the USPS would be in worse financial shape than it already is.

The USPS’ “problems” are Congressionally-inflicted. In 2006, the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act required the Post Office to have a 75 year reserve for retirement and medical benefits. Yes, that means they have to cover benefits for postal workers yet to be born.

The USPS is the only agency in the Government that has such a burdensome requirement. Even the Armed Forces, which arguably has a much higher liability for medical coverage and has to pay retirement benefits to soldier’s families, is only required to have a 20 year reserve.

Reasons for treating public services as public goods and subsidising them without creating negative externalities.

It's actually the federal government who put the USPS in that situation by demanding they fund the retirement of employees who weren't even born at the time. Without that ridiculous requirement, the USPS would be perfectly fine, financially.

Straight from the horse's mouth: https://www.uspsoig.gov/blog/be-careful-what-you-assume

Well, the Federal government as utilised by both competing and ideological interests, yes.

That's actually not what I was referring to, see follow-up comment to my parent above.

USPS takes zero tax dollars and zero funding from the federal government.

That's the present situation, largely. It's not always been the case, however, and the USPS was originally and very deliberately structured as a subsidised service, and a cabinet-level office.

You're may be right, but I know for a fact that the federal government just gives them a huge line a credit to borrow from.

You know that for a fact? I've never heard that. I'm not disputing it since I've never heard this argument before, but it does fly in the face of the fact that the federal government also demands absolutely massive amounts of money from them: https://www.uspsoig.gov/blog/be-careful-what-you-assume

Thank you for that absolutely enlightening link.

People like to assume all parts of our gov are absolutely worthless. USPS does a good job.

My (admittedly brief) comment concerned the original formation of the U.S. Post Office and its long-time role in subsidised communications. Robert McChesney is among those who've addressed this:

In the first generations of the republic, newspapers accounted for between 70 percent and 95 percent of post-office traffic, and newspapers depended upon the post office for the distribution of much of their circulation. A key question facing Congress was what to charge newspapers to be mailed. No one at the time was arguing that newspapers should pay full freight, that the market should rule; the range of debate was between those who argued for a large public subsidy and those who argued that all postage for newspapers should be free, to encourage the production and distribution of a wide range of ideas. The former position won, and it contributed to a massive flowering of print media in the United States throughout the early 19th century. What is most striking about this period, as Paul Starr argues in his new book, The Creation of the Media, is that there wasn't rhetoric about free markets in the media, nor about the sacrosanct rights of commercial interests. That came later.

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/McChesney/Waging_Media_Bat...

In his books, McChesney puts strong weight on the role of the post office in the development of early journalism and media, largely in the form of newspapers and magazines.

Related: the USPS subsidised the operation of both railroads and air travel through postal services on both. Trains, through the 1960s, had "post office cars", which not only carried postal mail, but which were mobile sorting offices in which mail was organised, in transit, for its final destination. The development of postal codes, "Zone Instant Postal Codes", better known as "ZIP Codes", in the 1960s, helped phase those out.

Airmail played a role in the establishment of early regularly scheduled air flights.

And if you've ever wondered what the "RMS" in "RMS Titanic" stood for, it's "Royal Mail Ship".

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railway_post_office

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZIP_Code

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airmail

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Mail_Ship

That's got me thinking... I wonder if you could use that as the name (current resident) in the USPS forwarding services found online? You would only need a throwaway email address to create an account and set it up. This might merit a test.

Why would you want to do that?

The poster is saying to route that mail elsewhere.

For me, I'd route it to my old address.

I dislike the current resident there anyway.

Exploiting the online tools to re-route unwanted spam would only work for mail that has paid postage and been processed through the system. If you're using Informed Delivery you'll see that most of the "current resident" spam doesn't appear in your digest because it hasn't actually been mailed (it's placed in your box by the postal carrier directly). Would a named re-route hack work on the processed spam? I say 60/40 in favor of yes, until they catch on. Lots of magazines and catalogues tack on "or current resident" after the name and if the USPS routing regex is not too strict you'll either be able send all your Sears catalogues to Abu Dhabi or you'll discover an un-handled edge case and break your mail. Either way, sounds fun.

Wow, that's incredibly informative. Thank you.

I don't understand the part where you mention the carrier directly placing mail without it being processed.

Why does that happen? How does that work? The carrier gives that to all mailboxes?

USPS sells their own direct mail service [0]. The carrier has a stack of fliers or cards or whatever it is you ordered and they just put one in each box. Pretty sure you can target down certain neighborhoods. I think they also offer printing for complete full service.

[0] https://www.usps.com/business/every-door-direct-mail.htm

Forward them away from your address, thus removing the need to throw them away yourself.

Are those services free in the US? In Canada forwarding costs quite a bit.

USPS has put almost all of their available services online for free and made them very easy to use (and they have also placed self-service smart kiosks in most post offices which are just great too).

Yes. Free via USPS.

A friend who sold insurance used to use this “trick” but via telephone. He would call, let it ring twice then hang up. People would see the number on caller ID and often call back.

Its getting even sleazier. They're doing the "double tap" now. Programming their VOIP systems to quickly call my number twice (and rapidly hang up the first call) so that my phone never really rings but the second call drops right to voicemail.

They'll then play in a rather urgent sounding voicemail pretending to be a government agency etc, with a number to call back as soon as I'm able "to settle this important matter".

www.nomorobo.com FTW

Curiosity gets people to open mail. Postcards work too. Large ones like Chewy (works like "dialing for new customers" champion).

Not too many UPS flats go through the US mail, but they look important and curious.

My experience with direct mailers from several ends makes me never to really trust numbers.

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