The Pontiflex Blog

When My Car and Sears’ Email Strategy Ran Out of Charge

August 4, 2010 at 3:59 pm eadlman Leave a comment

The weekend that went by was my son’s second birthday, for which I threw a party. We all know how much kids can eat – and so to stock up on the plenty, I made a trip to the market.

Needless to say, Murphy was at work. As I prepared to drive away from the market, the battery on my car died prematurely – health insurance or not, batteries should live longer than two years. The battery seemed irresistible to all charms and persuasion, and  jumper cables to outright threats.

If you are stuck in the suburbs on a Sunday without a battery you end up going to Sears. It’s just what you do. And Sears was on the money. The mechanic put a new battery in the car and before you could say, “Megastore”, the car started.

But before I could get into the car and drive away, there was the small matter of payment. At the pay counter, the mechanic begins to ask me questions (billing address, etc) to create an account with Sears to generate an invoice so I can pay and make it in time to blow out candles.

He got my name and address. But when it came to getting my email address, he preferred to skip the screen and proceed to the next step. When I asked him as to why he had omitted to take my email, he shrugged nonchalantly.

This didn’t go down well with me. After all, I work for a company that helps advertisers capture the email addresses and social networking handles of consumers interested in hearing more from advertisers. And here was an employee passing up the chance to acquire the email address of a consumer for no charge at all.

It was surprising that Sears hadn’t incentivized its employees to capture an email address, especially when you consider that the ROI on an email address is in excess of forty dollars, and that email is the gateway to other social mechanisms like Facebook and Twitter,

I was disappointed to see Sears’ lackluster approach to list growth, especially given that I love receiving relevant deals and information by email.

Hopefully, things will change. Another day, another birthday.

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