This morning I received my ‘invitation’ for Customer First 2007, the second edition of this “gathering of more than 2000 professionals in interactive marketing, mobile marketing, online media, SEM, …’. Well actually, I received the invite 4 times this morning, maybe I get some more tomorrow.
Although this is a free event for everyone, this invites you to pre-register to the event which should enable faster entry. It’s a personalized invitation and I always like that, because in the best cases it gives you the feeling you’re getting more than just a standard treatment, it’s like the sender knows you and acts upon it…. unless you get the invitation 4 times of course. In that case the so called personalization makes it actually worse.
Don’t get me wrong, I think Customer First is going to be an interesting event and I’ll be attending probably both days (and doing a presentation on Friday) but the invitation is a missed opportunity. My guess is that it should haven gone out earlier already (invite came in today and the event is on Thursday), there were probably a few partners (sponsors) involved to make it happen, addresses were gathered from different sources, etc etc… But how hard can it be to filter out multiple records of the same person, same address, … in a database? Funny enough, there is a personalized URL to register and even these start at http://…../kris.hoet to http://…./kris.hoet.3. The system even knew it was me every time again and again ;) My colleague Geert received it 3 times, anyone doing better?
It’s all in the details.
'Cross The Breeze 
I’ve received this invitation twice, one at my home address, once at the company address. I also received about 6 mails from the organisation and about 6 other mails from organisations that will be present at the event. Do they fear that people will flake on them? Or are they just a bit too enthousiastic? Anyway, I’ll be there!
I enrolled months back. In mean time I received tons of e-mails inviting me to enroll and indeed an (expensive probably) DM a week back.
Today (!), again 2 e-mails stressing me to enroll and little later … finally my confirmation e-mail of my enrollment months ago. I hope it’s over now :)
Maybe e-CRM would be a good topic …
I received it once, but the URL said robin.wauters3 – go figure … and I’m not going to go into the hassle I went through to get myself and 2 speakers I arranged for them in the afternoon sessions registered.
I totally forgot about all the emails we received about Customer First indeed, received another today. And yes, e-CRM is one of the topics we’ll be hearing about.
@Robin: I would keep an eye on your mail and expect more invitations to come ;)
Anyway, see you all there.
Hey Kris,
Well… at my great disappointment I didn’t receive any Customer First 07 invite today. BUT, I did recently get 3 free CD players offers from BRUNEAU (one under my personal name, one under my company name and one at the office), one free DVD player offer from reader digest, a coffee machine offer from VIKING, a free test drive of a MAZDA 2 and a chance to win a trip to Paris from EUROVOYAGE.be. Seems we’re not “there” yet (and I don’t mean Paris, of course!) ; )
Just wondering about this : the design of the invite puzzles me. A person obviously aggressively “shouting”. Is the man pictured a communication person? (allow me to say… not quite “listening”). Or is it a Customer (allow me to say… shouting at all the terms pointed on the cover)?
So, I like to read that you think this is going to be an interesting event and I’m sure it will be… but I definitely agree with you. DETAILS DO MATTER !
One at my previous home and one at work…
I’m a bit offended by the question: Jesse, Do you speak digital? :p
I did receive it twice last week: once with the house number, once without. Data cleaning sure isn’t their thing ;-)