O2 sacrifices relevancy in its latest marketing

With any email or SMS marketing, I don't need to explain that it's important to remain relevant. The trouble is, many companies get this very wrong; or they let business decisions override sound marketing plans. I'll have numerous examples to share, but let's start with O2 today.

I was subscribed to both their SMS and email marketing. Their SMS marketing I was barely tolerating as it was, but I stuck with them; I don't recall them ever sending me a marketing email.

Two days ago I get an SMS touting a Cash Manager card – one of these products where you pre-load cash and use it in lieu of a credit or debit card. Oh, and of course they're very lucrative as the company offering the service deducts a fee every time one tops up.

Companies falling over themselves to offer financial products is nothing new. But why is O2 doing this? It has nothing to do with their standard products, so there's an immediate disconnect when sending this sort of marketing. They even announce that it's "Powered by Natwest", as if to further underscore that they're effectively just marketing to their database on behalf of NatWest. Kaching.

So I unsubscribed from their SMS marketing. Today I got an email about the card (their first marketing email since I joined, I believe). So I unsubscribed from that too.

This is where O2 has failed. They have lost two ways to communicate with me, because the were clearly trying to push a product that had nothing to do with their core business. In doing so, they now can't communicate to me when they want to about things that are relevant: about getting a new mobile phone, about upgrading my tariff etc.

They could have made this a better offering if there was some synergy between the Cash Manager and their core business. Like what about being able to pay with my phone? That I would find an interesting concept. But the most they could muster is a picture of the card and a phone in the same email. A very shaky blurry phone at that, much like the connection between the two themes.

So what's the cost of marketing like this? Do we as marketers have to support short term decisions made for business reasons, sacrificing long term communications with customers?

O2 made their choice this week, and I opted out.

First name in subject? Delete!

There is statistical evidence that I saw once that backed up the opinion that if you put the recipient's name in the subject of your email when marketing, then open rates are higher.

I have one question: why oh why would people respond to this? It's unfathomable to me.

I think my initial hatred stems from the fact that it's an old spammer tactic (which even they don't seem to do that often now). They'd just take the part of your email address before the @ symbol, hope it's your name and whack it into the subject. So a legitimate company doing it doesn't come across as suddenly more legitimate by just having my name in the subject.

I particularly don't like the jaunty familiarity of it all. Compare The Market is a good offender. I get frequent emails for myself and my father from them, and they're always of a similar ilk with every email using our first names in the subject. "Gilbert, compare insurance today and you could save hundreds" and "Insurance renewal reminder for Gilbert" are just two of their subjects. But thanks, I know who the email is for – it's my email address.

And if they are going to resort to this name-in-subject style, what happened to good old Mr Smith? I wasn't even aware we were on a first name basis. It's just too pally for my liking.

It seems Compare the Market's friends are very much in agreement with this marketing principle though. I set up my email address for my father and used Compare the Market to get an insurance quote. Since that day, the address has been infested with emails about insurance, loans and other financial products -- all addressed, you guessed it, with his first name in the subject.

Perhaps Compare the Market helps prove that it really is just a tactic used by spammers after all. But at least it gives me a pattern to delete the emails more easily.

First name in subject? Delete!