I don't believe you actually care about my Christmas

As the holidays wound up to their fluttering anticlimax, you and I, in those tumultuous weeks leading up to endless disingenuous cheer, received no less than 5466 emails wishing us a Happy/Merry Christmas and Belated Secular Solstice New Year-ish holiday. Emails from various companies, most of which we don’t remember.

I can understand the marketing logic of “staying in touch” and promoting your brand at every and any available opportunity. Desperate times and all that. I can even understand exploiting lame excuses to send me an email in the interest of of your company’s email marketing programme. I can especially understand it this year as that person is desperate to do anything to keep their job. Its not really appreciated though.

I don’t believe you. No one does. You don’t care. You’re a company and just because I signed up for your app two years ago doesn’t mean I’m going to feel all warm and fuzzy inside now that you’ve crept back into my life and think, “Man, wow, thanks for reminding me, despite not having logged in for years I can’t possibly carry in in this cruel, cold world without your app.”

What will make me think better of you is not thinking of you. What would make me think the highest of your app or service is something along the lines of, “Here’s our thing, use it and we’ll leave you alone. Forget about us. We’ll just make the thing work and stay out of your life which we’ve intruded in on enough by even having your email.” That to me is amazing brand value. Invisibility. The, “It just works,” bit. What works is leaving people alone.