An end to the Black Friday shouting?

I am a proud survivor of Black Friday 2013. It was the most impersonal, poorly thought through and aggressive Black Friday I’ve experienced yet.

When I say survived, I’m not referring to the competition for parking spaces, the crush of shoppers or the tough decisions of which bargain would be worth fighting for. I’m not a survivor of the long register lines. No, instead I survived the onslaught of impersonal Black Friday emails that filled every inbox of each email account I maintain.

Black Friday Specials End Tonight!

Sending an email is considered a relatively cheap form of marketing, which is why so many brands blast indiscriminately in an ever-louder effort to get our attention, killing their own effectiveness in the process. As the noise gets louder, what will be the plan for Black Friday 2014? Even more of the same?

I have a crazy idea: What if instead of spamming every email in their database, they chose to put a focus on segmentation of the audience? What if they used that segmentation to define the playing field for interaction with customers like me? They could then look at each homogeneous segment’s propensity to respond to interaction at different times, for different reasons, and across differing channels. What if, to cap it off, they created a culture of testing and learning what a sample of each segment actually does when they interact? What if they used those lessons to constantly improve upon interaction with me?

Analytics and Actionable Models

Why, then they would have an analytics platform with actionable models that a smart marketer could use to steadily increase the effectiveness of offers and build brand loyalty. They could distinguish themselves from the crowd through more than spamming and build a base of loyal customers that know the retailer respects their time and attention.

They could stop shouting and start engaging. I might actually enjoy the interaction…

This post was first published on the Loyalty Lab Blog and has been lightly edited.