Think Customers: The 1to1 Blog

I got a card in the mail last week from my local Nationwide agent. On the front it said “Sharing life…and other sweet things” and had a picture of two coffee cups with hearts made out of the foam on top. On the inside, it said “Getting married is amazing – new life, new stuff, new family…” and I stopped reading there. I called my girlfriend to make sure I hadn’t proposed, married her, and then suffered amnesia. Well, I didn’t actually do that, but I might have if I wasn’t so familiar with life-stage marketing.

I did recently change my coverage with Nationwide. Until last month they provided just my car insurance, but when I moved into an apartment I added renter’s insurance to my policy. My best guess is that in this case the wires got crossed somewhere and they sent the “congratulations on the new wife” card instead of the “congratulations on the new place” one. We’ve written about these kinds of mix-ups before and this once again shows how easily life-stage marketing can go awry. Fortunately in this case it was an innocent mistake that I can laugh about, but triggering these messages can have negative consequences.

There are many horror stories out there. New baby cards timed for expected deliveries that didn’t go as planned, new home cards sent to customers whose closing was delayed or never happened, and marriage cards sent post-annulment or divorce. That’s not to say life-stage marketing should be avoided like the plague. There are also success stories that show building a more personal relationship with customers by recognizing major events in their life increases loyalty and satisfaction.

It may be easy to automatically send messages to customers when certain criteria are met, but treat life-stage data with the same scrutiny and care you would any other customer information. Don’t assume it’s accurate, and consider how the messages will be interpreted by customers. All this shows me is that to Nationwide Insurance I’m just customer #123-456 who triggered marketing message #4B. I don’t know why or how, I just know that what the company thought was a great way to upsell me is now a cautionary tale. Don’t let your attempt to connect with customers backfire in the same way.