Have we noticed how busy our inboxes and socials have become? I have this sea of never-ending unopened emails and I thought, now or never to ‘Marie-Kondo” my inbox to see what the brands are telling me these days. 

Out of the 61 emails that I received yesterday (Yes, i subscribe to a lot of brands), only 3 emails are service emails which I consider as relevant information, the rest are purely promotional… that is noise given the current COVID-19 situation.  With retailers slowly re-opening, I’m expecting to see a lot more of these in the coming days and weeks but without further adieu, here are some observations I made from my inbox:

• Promotional Emails. It was 2015 when I was last visited Germany and I signed up to a German Department store subscription list. I haven’t bought from them for over 5 years and I haven’t heard much from them, until this day and now is not a time for you to tell me how I should be washing my hands.
• Luxury Travel. I receive luxury travel promotional emails everyday and open some of them to see what deals were available before COVID-19. But with travel restrictions in place and all the news happening around the world, seeing this email has become a daily annoyance and reminder that i can no longer go anywhere outside of Australia for …a while.
• Birthday Offers. Amongst all the noise, thank you for remembering my birthday which I spent in isolation but how am I going to redeem a room service discount offer from an overseas hotel when I can’t even leave the country? One can wish I suppose.

You’re probably wondering, where am I heading with all these observations? Here some quick wins/tips to prepare your company for post-confinement:

Step 1: Find out what your recent data is telling you

Have a look at your transactional records, contact and response history in the last month – have there been changes to the channels that your customers are responding to? Have there been changes to campaign responses? Who are your customers now? Do your existing customers still want to buy what you sell? Have there been any changes to opt in/out rates Look for any changes and adapt your marketing activities accordingly. 

Step 2: Review all marketing activities

Now is the time to review all your active and scheduled campaigns, all your automated campaigns which are often set and forget; ensure they are still relevant to your customer’s needs right now. Pause all marketing activities that don’t address the current situation. 

Step 3: Differentiate from the rest

Think about if your marketing campaign is telling customers something different from the other brands. Make sure any crisis-related messaging is warranted and not just adding to the noise. Be proactive and address your customers’ questions to reduce confusion. Ensure the ‘what’s in it for me’ is clear upfront and attuned to your customers needs right now. 

All the brands are taking this opportunity to stay front of mind right now, but unless it is addressing the current situation, the concept of ‘less is more’ definitely applies now.  

By Kitty Shui, Strategy Manager of Digital Alchemy.

Data-driven Strategy Specialist with proven track record of delivering solid business results from big data. Kitty is passionate about actionable data-driven strategy that delivers solid business value. As a true believer of the power of data, she is very excited to bring data-driven strategy to the next level.