CustomeRules – A Marketing Blog from BI|Digital Marketing

Okay, I get that Google has changed the world and the way business is done, and their leading-edge apps are leveling the playing field for smaller companies; but, if they’re going to employ traditional media to market those apps, they might want to bring in someone who knows what they’re doing. It’s an embarrassment, or it should be. Either they don’t realize this, or they’ve become too arrogant to care.

The case in point would be the direct mail I keep getting trying to sell me the company’s Google Apps Premier Edition, which provides low-cost messaging and collaboration tools, including email, voice and video chat. Most recently I received a mass mail form letter from Matt Glotzbach, Director of Global Products, Google Enterprise, telling me about the power of business-class email and the money I can save with their hosted services. Included is a savings calculator wheel that is randomly stuck to the back of the letter with booger glue. I have no problem with the calculator tool, in fact it’s pretty cool that I can select the number of employees in my company, from 10 to 2,500, and view the annual savings I can expect to realize. One would think that were the data available they should already know how many employees I have and could just tell me up front what the savings might be — it’s a far more effective way to capture my attention than Matt telling me traditional email and collaboration tools can be costly to set up and maintain.

It’s interesting that Google would be using direct mail to market its email services, but good for them as they’re demonstrating responsible use of the media they are promoting. Blasting out spam would be far more intrusive and even less effective, at least for me. But let’s at least try to do a decent job of it, guys.

I have no problem with the offer of a 30-day free trial, but the engagement strategy is incredibly weak and the creative… well there is no attempt to be creative or innovative. The mail piece itself plain vanilla and poorly done — representative of the 98 percent of mass mail solicitation that doesn’t work. Maybe they figure the power of the colorful logo atop the letterhead is enough, but to me it says they really don’t care and are just mailing it in. For an innovative company like Google I would expect a better effort, even if this app is outside (and no doubt beneath) their domain.