I recently paid to go to a marketing event, a talk by a well-known expert and several others who I believed would also be worth listening to.
I thought it was about time I went to such an event to see what’s working today in the world of internet marketing, and what’s not, as I hadn’t been to one for a while.
So I paid £139 for a ticket to the two-day event.
A couple of weeks later, I was on the phone to the company organising it and asking for my money back.
I’d had several phone calls after I’d bought my ticket during which the company’s sales staff tried to up-sell, down-sell and cross-sell other offers; text messages reminding me of the date and telling me that by going to the thing I was giving them permission to film it (and, possibly, me, which I accepted); and emails telling me how excited they were that the event’s first day was approaching.
The final straw came when I received an email that encouraged me to bring a friend who would get a 50 per cent discount. So, the organisers would get another sale, my friend would get a half-price ticket, and I’d get…the hump (what was in it for me?).
Plus, the email was written in US English rather than British English. Not that I lose sleep over such pedantry but as a professional writer and editor, who writes and edits for multiple audiences around the world, communications that are written ‘for me’ are more likely to be received favourably. This email was impersonal, ignorant and lazy:
So I phoned them up and – amazingly – got through to someone (it was a Sunday morning) and told them I’m no longer interested because “if that’s how you treat someone who just wants to turn up, listen to a few speakers, and go home, when you’d already made the sale”, what sort of treatment could I expect from them at the event itself?
It was too much, so I told them and got my money back.
The lesson, I suggested on the phone, was that they should tailor their marketing appropriately. Those tactics might work for some but they weren’t going to cut any ice with this busy, slightly grumpy Brit.
