2/18/2020

MGM Resorts: What Happens in Vegas Is Late for Valentine’s Day

In New York City, you know Valentine’s Day is coming when your favorite restaurant sends emails one to two weeks in advance touting their “Lover’s Duet Meal” or something similarly hokey. These meals usually involve a prix fixe menu at about 20% more than the usual price, with an implicit promise that you wrap up quickly so you can get on to the, um, next thing with your significant other and the restaurant can get on to their next paying couple.

“Reservations are a must,” they tout. “Book early!”  💋😘😍

Around February 10-12, the local grocery chains advertise chocolates and stuffed animals at a discount price. Places that wouldn’t have fresh flowers on any other day suddenly have red roses by the register. Even the neighborhood bodega somehow gets in on the act, placing red balloons for sale next to the lollipops or Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream.

Then February 14 rolls around. You’ve made your plans, bought your flowers, written a card with a silly message, torn up the card, and written a new card with a loving, memorable message. On the way home, you check your email.

“Love is in the air at MGM Resorts,” the subject line reads. The subhead: “Let us help make Valentine’s Day unforgettable with some delectable restaurant choices, spa specials and creative experiences.”


MGM Resorts Valentine's Day email
Sent afternoon of February 14

This is a Fail for Timing. The email was sent on February 14, 1:27 pm Pacific Time. (On the East Coast, that’s 4:27 pm.) By that time, it’s a bit late to plan an event in Las Vegas to reconnect over a couple’s massage or pet the captive dolphins at Mirage. And it would be nearly impossible to land a reservation at a Vegas Strip restaurant with dining options that are sure to impress. 

Valentine’s Day is a holiday where expensive splurges need to be advance planned. Ideally, an email of this type should be sent 1-2 weeks prior to the holiday with a follow-up reminder email sent 3-4 days after the first email. That offers at least an adequate amount of time to book a flight to Vegas and a helicopter excursion to the Grand Canyon. (Even then, though, you’ll need Vegas-level luck to get a dining reservation confirmed.)

Here is an example of a Valentine's Day email I received, well timed a week prior to the holiday.

Dee's Restaurant, Queens, NY
Local restaurant email
smartly sent February 7

Lesson:
Consumers make holiday plans prior to the holiday. Time your marketing communications accordingly.

2/04/2020

Spectrum Cable & Discover Bank: Know Thy Customer

Preparing an acquisitions direct mail acquisitions campaign mailing list takes time -- sometimes, a lot of it. Typically, a preliminary list needs to be pulled from an external database, checked against one (or several) internal databases, and sent to a lettershop. Depending on the state of your business’s files and how antiquated your systems are, this process can easily take a month. After receiving your mailing list, the lettershop typically needs three to five business days to personalize your mailing, prepare it for mailing per postal service guidelines, and get it in the mail. Once a large-scale Standard Rate mailing is in the mail, it can take the USPS about a week to deliver it.

That’s about six weeks to execute an acquisitions direct mail campaign -- not including creatively developing and printing the mail, which can hopefully be a concurrent step. Nor does it include planning the mailing, determining costs, getting cost approval from management (or, if you run the business, ensuring you have the money to spend), training people at the inbound call center and customer service to react to customer responses, preparing the website for online responses, and setting up the business’s internal procedures to process sales to new customers. Whew! 

While you are soliciting new customers, you might take efforts to make existing customers more profitable. This means differentiating your prospective customers from your existing customers. Understanding who your own customers are, from your own internal database, is something I call “Small Data.” This is where Spectrum and Discover merit a Fail for Targeting.

In December, I was already a Spectrum customer for high-speed internet when I received a self-mailer offering a cable TV package. That was a valid attempt at upsell. However, on the same day, I received a nearly identical-looking self-mailer offering a high-speed internet and cable TV bundle. The upsell mailer was addressed to me, while the acquisitions mailer was addressed to “Current Resident” with a salutation of “Dear Neighbor.”

Given that I received both self-mailers on the same day, I presume they both had been mailed from the same lettershop with separate mailing list files released to the lettershop on the same day. Spectrum could have (during their weeks of preparing the mailing lists) deduped actual customers from the prospect file; however, they obviously did not. Perhaps this was a timing issue -- but I’d signed up for Spectrum Cable in early October. Even a company as large as Spectrum should be able to run a customer check given that much lead time.

Spectrum Cable Self-Mailers
Address Panels


Spectrum self-mailers envelope back

Upsell roll-out panel & letter

Acquisitions roll-out panel & letter
Also in December, I received a pair of solo mail packages with similar offers -- one designed for upsell and one for acquisitions. 
Spectrum Solo Mail
Outer Envelopes

Spectrum Cable Front of Upsell Letter

Spectrum Cable Back of Upsell Letter
Upsell Letter

These two packages demonstrate non-optimized list hygiene.    

With Spectrum, there could have been an internal issue related to timing of removing new customers from prospect lists; however, the same can’t be said for Discover Online Savings Bank. I recently received a self-mailer addressed to me, inviting me to open a new online savings account. Nice creative, but I opened the type of account with Discover Bank in 2018.

Discover Online Savings Bank
Discover Bank
Address panel
Discover Online Savings Bank
Back panel
Discover Online Savings Bank

Discover Online Savings Bank
Inside panels
A business needs to value its customers by not confusing them with prospective customers. Or to paraphrase Hamlet, “To thine own customer be true.”

Lesson: 
Remove customers from your prospect mailing lists on a timely basis.