If it smells like Spam

The first thing I notice about an inside-out company is when I experience their CRM practices. The first time I meet them (as a consultant), I’m suddenly getting newsletters every month and one-off pieces telling me why this or that product is great. I’ve gotten so used to deleting emails that it’s hard to stop and read them — even though I have a great deal of interest in just how internally focused the thought is that drives these communications.

But you don’t have to get spammed by a company for them to be inside out. There are some companies out there that still haven’t discovered how easy it is to drive customers away with spam. They still do it the hard way :)

Marketing started as a more sophisticated endeavor — well, maybe just smarter. When you have to physically send catalogs to potential buyers, you really need to segment and target a lot better. The cost of sending out catalogs to everyone in the known Universe is simply prohibitive. So, these guys learned, early on, methods …