It must be the holidays. My inbox is stuffed like a turkey.

Over the years, my wife and I have signed up to receive e-mails from quite a few retailers. The list includes: Solutions, Ann Taylor, Eddie Bauer, Land’s End, Sephora, Bath & Body Works, Williams-Sonoma, Victoria’s Secret, Wine Library, Crate and Barrel, Gap, Old Navy, Wine.com, Pottery Barn and The Discovery Store.

It wasn’t hard to pull the preceding list of retailers together—all I had to do was open my inbox. It represents just some of the companies that have sent me e-mail pitches in the past 24 hours. The other day I woke up to a record 76 e-mails, fully 90% of which were promotional in nature.

Stacks of gifts under $25, Last Chance for Free Shipping! and 20% off all items read a few of the subject lines. After a while, they all begin to blur together, the electronic equivalent of shouting carnival barkers on the midway or white noise.

Now, I realize the holidays are here, and these stores are desperate to make their numbers for the year. But I wonder about the sheer velocity at which many of these retailers are blasting out e-mails. Virtually every retailer I’ve mentioned is sending out a promotional message a day, some two a day.

My main point of contention with this e-mail deluge though, is the non-personalized nature of the communications. You see, my wife and I have done business with all of the companies I mentioned, some several times over the past year. But judging by the content of the e-mails, you’d never know it. I’m quite certain I’m getting blasted with the same messages as the other 10,000 or 100,000 people on their e-mail lists.

There’s a better way to communicate with me as a customer, especially a customer who has a relationship with you. Here’s what I believe these companies should be doing:

* Send me personalized content.
I should be receiving a least some content based on my purchase history. If the wine merchant knows I have a penchant for red Zinfandel, send me e-mails about red Zin. Look at my past buying behavior so you have some idea of what I’ll be shopping for in the future.

*Ask me how much e-mail I want.
Give me the choice of how frequently I receive e-mails from you. Maybe I want to hear from you every day—or maybe I only want to hear from you once a week or once a month. Engage with me when I want you to, and I may not tune you out.

*Surprise and delight me.
Offer me something different than the other guys. Give me free gift wrapping. Present an old item in a new way. Try less selling, and more telling. For most of us, a good story works better than a hard sell.

The bottom line is if retailers want to prevent me from clicking on the opt out button, they need to do a better job of engaging with me. Remind me why I did business with you in the first place, and why I should do business with you again.

A final note: Happy New Year to all!

This post is by Tom Rapsas and originally appeared on the blog Loyalty Truth, December 21, 2010. You can reach Tom at tomrapsas@gmail.com

Can a little magic help Borders Rewards?

I’m a card-carrying member of Borders Rewards, the program run by book, music and movie seller Borders, who recently announced their rewards program had grown 23 percent over the past year and now totaled 32 million members.

I first discovered Borders via their bricks-and-mortar stores in the early 90’s and still love their open store layout and laid-back vibe. I generally find their salespeople to be well-informed and helpful. I’ve been to their Web site many times and opted in to their e-mail list years ago.

Yet I may be one of Borders’ worst customers.

You see, not long after Amazon.com launched in 1995, I became a regular there. As fans of Amazon know, they have the world’s best selection. Nine times out of 10, they have the lowest prices. And there’s plenty of customer commentary to peruse should I be on the fence about a specific book, CD or other product.

So it’s tough for either the Borders stores or Borders.com to measure up to market leader Amazon. Sure, I still visit my local Borders every now and then—but only after they send me a promotional e-mails with a coupon good for 40% off any purchase. (As I said, I’m not a good customer.)

Still, even with Amazon’s superiority in so many areas, Borders now possesses a potential game changer. If they can figure out what to do with it.

It’s called the “Magic Shelf” and it was launched by Borders just about a year ago, with little fanfare. This nifty feature enables registered customers like me to turn the Borders’ home page into my own virtual bookshelf. Through an attractive wooden shelf interface, I can quickly scan music, book and movie recommendations in several categories.

Importantly, it shows me selections based on my preferences, per an online survey I filled out, so the titles on my virtual shelf are personalized just for me. It’s a different approach than Amazon whose less attractive home page shows me items based on my past purchases, not my preferences.

So will the Magic Shelf make me more likely to shop at Borders or Borders.com?

Well, not yet. Old habits die hard and Borders needs to find a way to compel me to become a regular customer by better leveraging the benefits of the Magic Shelf. For starters, it would help if Borders both told and reminded customers about this very cool feature.

It also means Borders will have to move away from their current e-mail strategy, where it’s all about the discounts and latest money-saving offer. Currently, fully 75% of the e-mails Borders sends out are offer or price-based while most of the balance are for perks unrelated to their core business.

The solution seems simple: start sending personal, relevant e-mails, using information culled from each customer’s Magic Shelf selections. By filling e-mails with content that has real value—like info on new products I might be interested in—Borders stands a better chance of building a real (and profitable) relationship with me, because it will be based on my love of music, movies and books, and not my love of saving money.

With the proper use of the data gained from the Magic Shelf, it feels like there may be a small opening for Borders. Will they follow through on it? Or will they continue to beat their heads against the wall by trying to out-discount Amazon? Time will tell. But surely a personalized communications approach is a better way to go than continuing a price war against the mighty Amazon.

This blog entry was previously published May 29, 2009 on Loyalty Truth.

The rise and stumble of e-mail.

I can recall 6 or 7 years ago, a former loyalty client at Frequency Marketing telling us about their grand plan. They were going to do away with paper mail and move all their customer communications to e-mail. The savings, by eliminating the costs of print production and postage, were going to be tremendous.

To the best of my knowledge, it never happened. Because, as a lot of companies have discovered, a funny thing happened on the way to the all-electronic communications plan. E-mail, after reaching a zenith as the communications medium of choice, has seen its popularity slip.

E-mail click-through and open rates are down. Spam is up. So are enhanced security firewalls that block even legitimate e-mail. And on top of that, many in the younger demographic are now more likely to communicate via social networking devices like Facebook wall postings and ignore e-mail altogether.

So what’s a savvy marketer to do? According to a recent survey in DMNews, 52% of consumers 18-39 say they receive greater enjoyment receiving mail through the US postal service as compared to e-mail. And it’s no surprise, really. These days the relatively empty mailbox has a distinct advantage over the crowded inbox.

So, whenever possible, let your most valuable customers have the choice of communications channels—paper or digital. Or let them choose both. But if, due to a tightening budget, you can only send e-mail, make sure your messaging is as personal and relevant to the person receiving it as possible.

Treat your loyal customers with the same recognition, tonality and respect, as if they had just walked through the front door of your business. Because when you treat a loyal customer just like everybody else, with sales pitches that are impersonal or irrelevant, you risk being ignored—or worse.

CRM (Crummy Relationship Marketing).

You would think the marketers at CRM magazine would have a clue as to how they should manage relationships with their subscribers. But several times a week, and sometimes as frequently as 3-4 times a day, I receive e-mails that read something like this:

Dear CRM eWeekly Subscriber,

As a subscriber of our newsletter we thought you may be interested in…(insert advertiser’s product, service or upcoming event here)…

You’ll see by the salutation I signed up for the CRM eWeekly newsletter, not the CRM e4xDaily newsletter. And I don’t recall signing up for promotional e-mails. While it’s possible I didn’t click-off on a negative option box, you would think someone there would realize this kind of promotional e-mail bombardment is not going to win CRM, or its advertisers, any fans. Especially since CRM never inquired about the types of products or events I might be interested in.

How often should you send e-mail? As often as you can make the information contained within the e-mail relevant to the reader, whether that’s twice a week, twice a month or twice a year. Or else you risk the recipient taking the same action I’m about to take against CRM—opting-out of receiving e-mail messages altogether.

Tom Rapsas, Creative Director-Writer-Strategist, tomrapsas@gmail.com