Verio Is a Huge Web Hosting Company, but They Haven’t Mastered Email Marketing
Let’s say, for the sake of this story, that Verio is a fairly large web hosting company. And let’s agree that they have enough resources to put together a reasonably compelling integrated marketing campaign. If that were the case, wouldn’t you think that Verio’s integrated marketing efforts might cover email marketing? I would hope so. But apparently it doesn’t. Their sales agents are sending one-off emails to their prospects (like me), and I would argue doing more harm to their brand than good. See for yourself in the screenshot below. The take-away here is that your marketing efforts – online and offline – need to be integrated and coordinated so that your touch-points with prospects and clients are all sending the same message.
Verio claims to offer “Industry-Leading Performance. Renowned Global Reliability. Award-Winning Support.” As a previous Verio customer I would actually take issue with any of those claims (I don’t recommend them as a web host – see hosting recommendations), but still they put on a good facade – their website is nice and shiny; it gets a lot of traffic; they have a lot of clients. So, this marketing email I received from them recently didn’t fit the facade. Check it out – it looks like it’s coming from some guy selling hosting from his basement.
It’s hard to say what my favorite part is – the image of the ladies mowing their lawn, the lack of a Verio logo, the fact that he put some poor unassuming prospect’s email address in the “To:” line, but “Bcc:’d” everyone else – but I think the best part is the opening line: “I hope all is going well during these tough economic times.” What an opener. Classic. Click the image below to get the full impact.
