This morning, on my way to work, I decided to pick up bagels for the office and a cup of coffee for myself. Arriving five minutes before the bagel store opened, I parked and joined the line behind three people waiting at the door. Within ten minutes, the line behind me had grown to about twenty people. With only two staff members behind the counter, the line moved slowly.
When it was my turn to order, the man behind me leaned over my shoulder and asked the counter girl if he could sample a cinnamon raisin bagel. The store had samples behind the counter for customers to try before buying. The counter girl politely asked him to wait his turn and then asked me what I needed. Before I could respond, the man interrupted again, insisting he just wanted to try a piece of the bagel. The girl reiterated she would help him as soon as she finished with me. As I attempted to order once more, you guessed it, he interrupted again, demanding a piece of the bagel.
At this point, I turned to him and explained that I was next and as soon as I get my order he could try as many different bagels as he would like. He looked at me with a blank, somewhat dumbfounded look on his face and went silent. While I thought that was it and began to place my order, you guessed it, he interrupted me again and in a pissed off tone said he wanted to just try a piece of that cinnamon raisin bagel.
As you can imagine, by this point I was getting twisted and somewhat aggravated at this clown, for his continual interruptions and I figured I better put an end to his ongoing obstruction in my attempt to get my bagels and the cup of coffee I came for, so I could make it to work without a pit stop at the police station for assault. Without taking another breath, I asked the girl behind the counter how much it would cost for all of the bagels they had. After a few seconds of her comprehending my question, she turned around, looked at the rack of bagels, turned back around and said, “I’m not sure…. Maybe $400”. I then said, “OK, I’ll take them all. Give me a black cup of coffee and bag up 2 dozen bagels for me. Then give everyone else in line, except this guy standing behind me, all of the bagels they want for free – my treat.”
As the ear-to-ear smile slowly appeared on the counter girls face and the guy behind me started bitching and saying “you can’t do that”, I simply turned to him and said, “Yes I can – and – I just did”. After I finally got my cup of coffee and bagels and walked out of the store, a few people in line behind me thanked me and the ‘cinnamon raisin, impatient, bagel taster guy stormed out bitching about something and mumbling under his breath.
Patience is not simply the ability to wait – it’s how we behave while we’re waiting. Besides the moral of the story being, “Don’t be an interrupting asshole and wait your turn”, I started thinking about people being over-aggressive, not being patient and waiting their turn. Since I am involved in the email marketing space, this brought me to think about why companies are over-aggressive and send their email campaigns non-stop and how their overzealous campaign strategy can alienate their customers, piss people off and lead to unsubscribes. Calculating the correct number of deployments per month takes time to figure out.
Don’t Annoy Your Customers with Your Email Marketing Strategy
Many people believe that the more emails they send to their customer list, the higher their chances of converting a new booking or sale. In reality, increased email frequency often leads to lower engagement per campaign. Over-sending can annoy subscribers, causing them to see your emails as spam and leading to quick unsubscribes. There is no magic number for how often to send email campaigns or newsletters. It’s crucial to send relevant information and not just send emails for the sake of it. Keep your subscribers loyal by making your messages relevant and concise. Find a comfortable middle ground for frequency and adjust based on campaign engagement.
We have found that sending emails twice per month works well for us, but this is flexible. If we have more to share, we’ll send more frequently, and if we have less, we’ll send less often.
Update:
For Shawn (last name omitted on purpose) from Newsweek and the 2 other emails I received questioning the validity of the events in the bagel store, I’ve posted the receipt below.
