5 Reasons Your Awesome Engagement is Creeping People Out

The locksmith and the burglar use the same tools in the same way. They both pick your locks and gain entry to your home or office. 

What's the difference?

Context is key

Context has close relatives, Permission and Intent. Together, they make the difference between the locksmith and the burglar.

Without Context, you can’t get our Permission. Without Context, we can't assess your Intent. 

Bottom line? You are creeping us out. 

That’s the best case scenario. 

Worst case, you alienated us enough to make us somebody else’s customer.

Let’s look at it another way 

Let’s say you are at a cocktail party and someone walks up to you. After a few pleasantries, they pile on these questions:

• What do you do?
• What’s your marital status?
• Any alimony or child support? How much?
• Any dependants, if so, what’s the balance on the college fund?
• What’s your annual family income?
• What are your monthly expenses?
• How much do you have in the bank?
• What’s the current value of your investments?
• How much is your home worth?

How would you react?

Not well, I would imagine.

Now, read the questions again. This time, you are not at a cocktail party. You’re at your Investment Advisor’s office discussing retirement planning.

Context! Permission! Intent!

Your customers want to engage on a personal, pertinent level. Study after study proves that 

How can we establish what is pertinent to each person? The short answer is, “We can’t.” 

What we can do is see what is not pertinent and avoid those things.

Problem 1: You engage too early

You have your “Free Wi-Fi” signs everywhere. Maybe, you even have QR codes so people can just scan them to join your Wi-Fi. 

A soon as they connect, they get a splash screen saying hello and/or offering something.  

What’s wrong with that?

It screams, "Git in here and gimme money!"

Look at it from this side. As soon your customer has connected to your Wi-Fi once, he/she will connect every time they are in range. So what happens if, on some other day, they are just walking by? 

The Wi-Fi will see them and send the splash screen. Is that connecting on a personal level? 

Hell no. That’s saying, “I don’t give a rat’s ass about what you want. Git in here and give me money!”

Delay the push

Solve the problem by delaying the push. Give the customer time to walk by if that’s what they’re doing. 

Some may argue that if we had pushed an offer they may have entered. True enough, but remember that you only need to annoy them once to lose them. 

What are the odds of converting a walk-by 100% of the time? A better use of the data would be to keep track of walk-by's. 

Someone who walks by often, but doesn't shop often, may be someone you want to convince.

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Problem 2: You engage with perceived nonsense

I’m not saying that your content is nonsense. I 'm sure your content is great. 

I’m just saying that it won’t be pertinent to all people at all times. 

If it isn’t pertinent at this particular time, it’s nonsense to the person receiving it. Don’t push your award-winning “Fashion Tips for Expectant Mothers” article on me. 

I'm just passing though Maternity on the way to Hardware.

How can you tell where I’m going?

You can link my web profile with my Wi-Fi profile to get an idea of recent searches.

You can use the push delay tactic. Check if I`m sticking around the maternity section or just passing through.

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Problem 3: You’re helpful in a creepy way

It’s safe to say that the majority of your customers are not savvy about retail tech. Don’t show that you know stuff about them that they don’t understand how you could know.

One thing everybody is trying to do is to have a single profile online and in-store. 

Let’s say you have that in place. I went online yesterday and researched table saws (I actually did, BTW). 

I spent some time checking available models, reading reviews, clicking on manufacturers’ links, etc.  

Of course, your site kept track of all that activity.

Today, I enter your store. The Wi-Fi recognizes me and logs me on. Your back end notes yesterday’s table saw interest. It pushes a note telling me where the saw is. 

Then it offers an upsell.

Then a down-sell.

What the heck, it offers a few accessories for good measure. 

That wouldn't bother me. But, the average customer may feel uncomfortable. 

Uncomfortable customers are not happy customers.

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Do you do have web/mortar integration? How about just an app with a decent acceptance rate?

Why not offer an in-store shopping cart on your website? Plenty of retailers already use a product watch feature online. 

This feature would not be much different. 

At least then, I would expect you to know that I have an interest in table saws, and wouldn’t get creeped out.

Here's an even better approach.

You know I was looking at table saws. Let your splash screen list departments with promos. Make “woodworking tools” the first one. 

Chances are, I would just think it’s my lucky day! 

Lookee there! You would have a promo on exactly what I was looking for.

Watching a product? Give 'em a promo.

"Watching" a product online usually means waiting for a promo on that product. 

So give them one.

The "promo" could be a limited-time coupon only for me. 

You can subscribe to an SMS-based coupon distribution and tracking service.

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Problem 4: You engage too often

Always err on the side of caution. If you think you can get away with five touches, go with three.

One of my biggest fears when it comes to SMS Marketing, iBeacon and Eddystone is having stuff pushed at me with every step I take. 

On your website, you can open pop-ups or browser tabs as often as you want. You can open several tabs per second if you wanted to.

But, you don’t. 

You wouldn’t online. Why do it in-store?

Sound obvious? Well, I recently saw a corporate video from a company touting yet another “Store of the Future.” 

It showed a woman walking through the aisles of a store. As she passed displays, cartoon bubbles popped up describing the stuff she was passing. 

Seriously? 

I don't need to have coupons thrust on me just because I walked by a display.

Again, the solution is a simple timer. If I’m in men’s shoes for five minutes, engage, otherwise, leave me the Hell alone.

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Problem 5: You ignore the big numbers.

Many people focus their effort on their app. Their entire in-store platform is beacon-based which dovetails into the app. It's supported by Wi-Fi.

It  makes sense to engage heavily with those who have chosen to engage with you. They are but a tiny fraction of your market.

Even Facebook’s app only has 30% of user acceptance.

What’s your app acceptance rate? No, I don't care about how many downloads. How many active users are there?

It’s probably somewhere between one and five percent. That’s biased towards favor and not enough to be actionable.

You are not alone

Another facet to the big numbers issue is forgetting that you are not alone. You are not the only retailer in your mall with an engagement platform. 

You are thinking about a single implementation. The other 200 tenants in the mall are thinking the same. 

They may not have read this post. They may be pissing customers off willy-nilly. 

Your soft sell approach may just be the straw that breaks the camel’s back. 

Tread lightly.

Tread very lightly, indeed.

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