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Email Marketing to Cats

Your customers aren’t always who you think they are. And they don’t automatically love you and approve of everything you do. In fact, they are much more like cats than dogs in the way they regard you…and me. I wrote on this some time ago in the ClickMail blog, and it was such a hit, I thought it worth reiterating here.

Whether you’re a dog person or a cat person, you know the difference between these species and the way they regard humans. As the saying goes, “Dogs have owners; cats have staff.”

Dogs love you no matter what. Dogs never hold a grudge. They forgive everything you do, even when you forget to feed them or let them out. Whether you’re gone for an hour or a week, they are miserable when you leave and ecstatic when you return. Dogs believe their owners can walk on water and control the heavens. A dog believes its human to be the greatest creature to ever live.

Oh, not so cats! Cats could not care less about you. They not only ignore you, they disdain you. They don’t care when you leave. They don’t care when you return. They don’t care. Period.

Every business wants their customers to adore them the way a dog adores its owner. We want all those people who get our email marketing messages to think we’re amazing. We want them waiting for our emails the way a dog waits for its owner’s return. We want to be viewed with such respect and admiration that we can do no wrong in their eyes.

But the truth is, the people we email are a lot more like cats in the way they regard us. They really don’t care. We are an annoyance when we show up in the inbox. They don’t miss us or pine for us.

If they don’t like what they’re seeing, they will tune us out faster than you can open a can of tuna. They will report an email marketer as spam only to stop getting the emails.

What does this mean? It means we work harder. The first step is recognizing that we’re dealing with cats, not dogs. As any cat owner knows, they can be won over…slowly and persistently, yet carefully. With treats and toys, affection and adoration, we can convince cats that we as human beings might just serve a purpose and have some value.

If we can convince cats, we can convince the prospects and customers getting our emails too. How? By wooing them with targeted, relevant, timely, appropriate, customer-centric email marketing. By giving them what they want, when they want it.

Make the happiness of the cats—er, customers—the focus of your email marketing program, and you will have them purring eventually.

Marco Marini
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2 Comments

  • by Claudiu
    Posted June 27, 2011 10:50 am 0Likes

    Love your analogy :)
    The secret is not to convert cats to dogs as cats will always be cats. However, if there is something in it for a cat, she will do everything in its powers to get it. And it doesn’t even need much to be all over you but it does need dedicated attention.

    • by admin
      Posted June 27, 2011 11:28 am 0Likes

      Hi Claudiu – Great points you’ve made; thanks for adding to the discussion!

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