Apple, Inc. : Lousy Email Marketers

An example this month that bigger doesn't necessarily lead to being better. I'm an apple fan, it's what I'm using as I write this post. I purchased a shiny new MacBook Pro about a year ago with all the bells and whistles. And I love it.

Apple does many things very well. And they do marketing (the interruption type) very, very well.

Apple is lousy at email marketing
At least they send lousy marketing emails to me.

Lets start with this email (screenshot below) they sent me no more than 3 months after I spent $3,000 on my new MacBook. Notice that:

• The email looks beautiful. Perfect actually.
• They are advertising a new MacBook
  

And what I mean by new, is the MacBook that is newer than the one I purchased. And they're even marketing that the price is lower than before.

That's right. They're marketing to me. Ineptly, but marketing it is, and what they're marketing is a replacement to the laptop I had purchased less than 3 months before.



Let me say that again. They sent me an email basically saying "Hey Phil, look at the new, new MacBook. It's faster than the one you bought a couple of months ago and costs less!!"

I was dumbfounded. Why would they do that? If they hoped to make me feel special, well of course that didn't happen. To Apple, it is clear that I'm just an email address.

My Imaginary iPod
The last email they sent me was titled "The perfect speakers for your iPod."

The problem is that I don't own an iPod. Oh sure, I suppose Apple knows that most people who own a MacBook also own an iPod and so the number of people like me is rather small - and they're obviously ok with not making me feel special (see above.)

So they sent me this. Again, the email looks perfect. The message is garbage. This is interruption marketing at it's worse.




What these examples show is that whoever is running the email marketing at Apple is still stuck in the interruption marketing mindset. This is probably to be expected. Apple is very good and has had incredible success with their interruption marketing efforts.

But email is about people. And conversations. And engagement.

And Apple is not doing that. They're being lazy and simply sending a monthly email of what they want to tell me.

Just think of the data and the programmers Apple has that could be utilized to send me relevant emails. They've never once asked how my MacBook was performing (I've sent it in for repairs twice.) Apple has never asked me a question or looked for feedback from me. Ever.

My main point with this post is that small marketers can do better than the billion dollar companies. All you need to do is care, really. Just take a few minutes to engage your subscribers and you'd be doing better than Apple, one of the best marketers on the planet.