Know your target audience

The fact that some organisation who legitimately has my contact details has clearly recently sold my details to a third party is worse than annoying, but that's another story.

However, what truly boggles my mind is how the organisations (or individuals) who have been trying to communicate with me have got it so horribly wrong, because they clearly didn't research their target audience.

Spray and pray approach

I am not interested in the nitty gritty of changes to the Tax Act because I am a marketer, not a tax consultant. I am not overly religious, and while I agree that humans need to get along, why send an email that doesn't explain what you do or ask me to do something specific to help humans get along better? What a wasted opportunity.

None of these organisations bothered to take the time to understand who was on their newly acquired database and what their interests were. Instead they were lazy and opted for the classic "spray and pray" approach.

Not only am I not interested in your message, but I am irritated that you have interrupted my train of thought and forced me to waste a few precious work seconds by making me at least read your subject line before I press delete. So you are also damaging your organisation's reputation.

(On the plus side, it gave me content for this article).

Research, research, research

Most of us receive hundreds of emails a day. Please do us a favour - and in return, yourself one too. Research your target audiences before spending money and time on sending out emails and texts that will be deleted within milliseconds. Here are some pointers for how to achieve this:

• It's not always a good idea to buy a marketing database - often the information on it is out of date.
  
• Think about what you want to share, why and how it will add value to the reader.
  
• Have a "quality not quantity" mindset. Get some colleagues around the table and think of people or companies whom you want as clients or associates who can be included on your marketing database.
  
• Unless you're starting your business from scratch and genuinely don't have a single customer, you should be able to come up with a decent-sized list of people who will be interested in what you have to say.
  
• Send out a (very) mini-survey asking these people if they want to be included on your mailing list and offer them a choice of topics if possible (remember to tell them what they will be receiving and why).
  
• If you deliver concise, interesting and engaging content, in a professional, easy-to-read format, you will be surprised at how your database grows organically (people asking to be included) because your content will be shared.
  
• Segment your database. Not everyone on it will want to receive all your communication. Some products, services and messages will only be relevant to some of the people on your list.
  
• And finally, less is more. Don't bombard people will loads of emails and texts because the more you send them in the hope of converting them, the quicker you'll alienate them.

Please take the time to find out who may be interested in what you have to say, because otherwise you may as well not bother.