Close, But no Cyber-Cigar

Oh, Samsung, I had such high hopes for your email campaign this Holiday season.  But you let me down.  If I enjoyed making lame Holiday similes (disclosure: Holiday quickly makes me ill), I’d compare you to the surfboard-shaped present under the tree that turns out to be an ironing board.

However, let us learn from Sammy’s mistake.

They started out very well.  I receive periodic updates from Samsung ever since I registered the phone I bought earlier this year.  Updates come monthly or so, just enough to keep me interested without ever feeling overbearing.  Two Sundays before Black Friday, I received this email:

I always advocate asking customers to provide preferences and this email takes a novel and useful approach for doing so.  People love Black Friday emails and certainly want the offers that matter to them without, say, $2 waffle irons.  Those of you who know my proclivities know that I clicked on “cameras and camcorders.”  

Sure enough, Samsung proved as good as their word, sending me this email on Thanksgiving:

Easy peasy, lemon squeezy.  Sammy clearly listened to me and, for their part, they now know that I like cameras.

Unfortunately, the Cyber Monday team apparently missed a meeting with the Black Friday team, because here’s what I got the Monday after Thanksgiving:

Oh, Samsung.  You had me, then you lost me.  You knew that I liked cameras.  Indeed, your analytics could have told you that I clicked through on the Black Friday email and viewed the camera deals, but didn’t buy anything.  Yet you forgot me on Monday morning as if I were just another Holiday weekend hookup.  I feel so...used.

Samsung had an opportunity to fine-tune their email to me as either a) someone interested in cameras, b) someone who clicked but didn’t buy or perhaps c) both.  Would it have been that hard for Samsung to have featured a camera in the email?  Or to notify that Cyber Monday brought new and/or better deals than Black Friday?  Most certainly not.

Remember, folks: Holiday comes but once each year.  If someone tells you what he or she wants under the tree/menorah/African menorah, do pay attention.