Thursday, July 12, 2007

Calling all Direct Marketers -- Please Learn to Target

I have friends with kids. Little kids. Little kids for whom I buy Christmas gifts. And this past holiday season, because I live across the country from the kids to whom I play "Auntie Shari", I ordered a lot of gifts online and had them shipped.

You know where this is going, right?

Yes, exactly. Now, I am INUNDATED with catalogues from all kinds of kids' stores.... everything from Hanna Andersson to Land of Nod to Land's End kids to PB Teen. I am caught in the ugly vortex of list brokering.

But, I mean, COME ON, marketing people! Can't you tell that when I placed my order, I had it shipped to an address other than my own AND I asked for it to be gift-wrapped?? Stop sending the kids' catalogues to ME. I am clearly not the one with a kid. I am the worst kind of customer -- completely unprofitable. You can send me catalogues all year long and I'll never buy a thing.

This is just like the time I kept getting all kinds of "Congratulations, you're a new mom!!" kinds of junk mail simply because one of my friends used my address to get another free sample of some baby widget or other. I had samples of Enflac showing up for months.

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