Wellness Letter has the opposite effect on me

Dear Wellness Letter,

I not only use to like you, I felt that by subscribing to your university-run newsletter I was supporting a worthy venture. Your straightforward nutritional and fitness information seemed so grounded and even honest--hardly like the swindler you now seem to me.

As the holidays kicked into gear, you sent me a hard-bound Wellness Calendar, the kind of letter-size datebook that sits on your desk. First, who still uses those? Seriously.

Second, I understand it's the end of the year, but sending objects and requiring someone to return it if they don't want it, especially as we head into Thanksgiving and Christmas, seems like a real burden. It was for me. It ended up getting lost in a pile of things to do.

Third, asking someone to opt out of something that costs money seems like a swindle to me and goes against what I thought you stood for. Now I see you as cutting through false marketing claims about supplements on one hand, then doing your own sleight of hand on the other. It's more than a contradiction; it compromises your reputation.

I can't separate the newsletter from the calendar. I don't think: I like the newsletter even though I hate the calendar. Honestly, I can't even look at the world "Wellness" without feeling stressed out and angry at you.

So here's my wellness plan for the new year: stop subscribing to your newsletter. That way I won't end up with a wasteful product that will never get used this time next year, let alone the snarky past due invoice that says:

Good intentions are terrific. But they're not going to keep you healthy. And they're not going to pay the bill. Both take follow-through. You demonstrated your good intentions when you made your original commitment to keep The Wellness Engagement Calendar. Now won't you please demonstrate your ability to follow through -- by paying the modest invoice enclosed? You'll feel a whole lot better.

For some reason, you think talking down to me is going to make me feel better. Instead, it's the final straw. I was dry kindling, and you just threw a match at me.

So here's some follow-through: when I say I will stop subscribing to your newsletter, I mean stop cold turkey. Right now. Even though my subscription ends in August, I want you to stop sending me your newsletter. I don't want anything more to do with you. You now have some of the worst brand associations to me, and it's emotional--even personal.

Like with my bad experience with eBay, it strikes me how easily a product/brand/service can lose goodwill. It takes repetition and good encounters to build a brand over time, but it doesn't take much to destroy it. Strangely, I find some of the worst actors in the marketing and customer care roles, and I'm not sure if it's because they are going by industry convention rather than common sense.

Invoices are touchpoints. They are forms of communication. Yet just like the invoice I got from Real Simple, they seem to be written without the brand experience in mind.

-joanie


UPDATE: I just called and canceled my subscription. The phone rep was all business, which was good for the task at hand, but I found it striking that she didn't even bother to ask me why I was canceling my service.

Real Simple puts me on notice

Dear Real Simple,

What's up with the threatening mail? It seems neither productive nor fitting of your brand personality.

But let's talk about this "Final Notice" that I recently received from the collection department of your parent company, Time Inc. I guess it manages our relationship, which isn't good because...well, it screwed it up. It's tough talk, including the use of ALL CAPS, only left me with a bad impression of you.

The correspondence began rather coldly with "Your account has been in arrears for months" and built up to the rather agitated demand "THIS IS THE FINAL NOTICE YOU WILL RECEIVE. REMIT YOUR DELINQUENT PAYMENT IMMEDIATELY." If your goal was to get me to renew my subscription, then you were going about it all the wrong way. 

Strong-arm tactics are no way to develop a customer relationship and certainly not good at deepening one, which is really what your goal should have be. How about being clear when my subscription ended? How about reminding me to renew my subscription and reiterating the benefits in a tone that recognizes that my life is clearly busy? (Surely you know I'm busy or I wouldn't need a magazine with the tag line "life made easier.") What if you simply stopped sending me magazines and used nice language to encourage to me to return?

Why are you talking to me through invoices, anyway? They're a pretty poor way to communicate. They don't even pretend to be interested in me. Rather, they remind me that you only ever talk to me when you think I owe you money, and I don't recall you even saying "thank you" when I pay up. I am starting to question if our relationship is important or meaningful to you. 

In fact, this Final Notice of yours makes me wonder if I want to support such abusive business tactics. To be honest, I like you. I have kept every issue of your magazine since I started subscribing in 2004. I prefer reading you over Martha Stewart, which never really spoke to my lifestyle. But I really don't like how you treat your subscribers. 

Please take a second to consider my perspective: I subscribe to quite a few magazines. I get a lot of invoices, sometimes right after I renew with a special offer to extend my renewal. I get seasonal offers to give a free friend subscription. I get limited time offers to renew months before the expiration date. In most cases, I can't easily tell when my subscriptions actually expire. I have become desensitized to invoices. If other subscribers are like me, which I suspect is true, then I surmise that magazines have responded by sending even more invoices even earlier in the cycle.

Today I called your Customer Service department. The terse conversation that followed made me realize that I am, first and foremost, an account number to you. When asked if I wanted to renew my subscription, I decided to say no. She simply replied okay, processed my request, and was done with me. It was literally "real simple" to cancel my subscription.

Surprisingly, she didn't even ask me why. She actually seemed a little mad at me. This brief interaction was especially odd since you, Real Simple, are paying an actual person to interact with me, and yet you're getting little (if any) benefit of a human interaction. I'm not sure how much you spend to acquire subscribers, but you certainly let them go rather easily.

In the end, I decided not to renew my subscription because I just don't want to give my money to a company that appears to take me for granted and uses words like "DELINQUENT" as a way to earn my repeat business. I just can't condone those tactics, even if you are hardly alone.

Your industry needs to wake up and see that magazine subscribers like me are ambivalent. There's a lot good and free content available, and we have less time to read magazines. But we also see them as necessary indulgences. So while it may take very little to lose our business, it doesn't have to take a whole lot to keep it. But to do so, you need to ditch the angry invoices and start communicating with us like customers that you truly respect and appreciate. 

I'm going to miss your magazine–I really am–but it certainly seems like my life is "made easier" without this stress, even if your tips are great.

-joanie