I received a couple of emails recently from the owner of a traffic exchange that I had signed up to, surfed a few times but then had quietly forgotten about.
Neither of the emails, sent to the site’s entire list, were particularly pleasant and, in fact, were rather rude and hectoring.
The first began:
“While browsing through the member’s list it has come to my attention that some members have had no activity for a very long time.
“This does not seem very fair to those members who are paying for their memberships, or at least are fairly active.
“I will begin to put the websites of inactive members on pause, if this does not work I will begin to delete the websites of those who continue to be inactive, further inactivity may result in the member being removed from the membership list.
“Any member who does not log in and contribute some way to this website at least once every 30 days may be subject to the above considerations.”
Now while it is up the owner of any traffic exchange how they administer their own program and how they interact with their own members this email struck me as rather heavy-handed.
It was like being called to see the headmaster for a dressing down for failing to hand in your homework on time, running in the corridors or forgetting your gym kit.
Something like:
“It has come to my attention, young man, that you virtually pushed past Mrs Timmins on your way to double biology this morning.
“You were also twenty-six seconds late for class which does not seem very fair to those pupils who managed to get to their desks on time.
“Unless you mend your ways and contribute in some way to the fabric of this school you may be removed from this establishment.
“Further transgressions will be punished in the most harsh, unreasonable, overbearing and dictatorial manner available to me. Do I make myself clear? Now get out of my sight you horrible little brat.”
Meanwhile back in the real world, the next email from the traffic exchange owner in question followed up on the original theme.
It began:
“The pruning has begun, several members who have not logged in for several months have been deleted…
“I’m only asking you to log in and surf at least once a month. I know making money on the internet is a lot of time and effort, but you should be able to surf once a month.”
So, suitably chastised for my inactivity to date, I decided to take action.
I logged onto the site, hung around long enough to find the ‘delete account’ button and pruned myself.
Hi Patrick,
Thanks for bringing attention to this not so pleasant practice of certain TE’s! As a marketer, I don’t have enough time in the day to surf as much as I would like to and I belong to many TE’s. But, I do like to take advantage of buying credit deals that I assign to my Websites. I would think that should be enough activity to have my sites in rotation and remain a member of any TE. Sadly, though, as you have pointed out, this is just not enough at certain TE’s.
Diane
Twitter: chattopatrick
Hi Diane,
I agree with you.
Imagine in the offline world if you advertise in a newspaper or magazine.
The publisher would hardly tell people to advertise every month or take a hike!
Patrick
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Twitter: jakenjoc
Good Monday Morning and let the moaning begin! LOL Yes, sad state of affairs indeed. Oh my, I just love your analogy. Can’t we all just get along? It is most unfortunate, that the person running that Traffic Exchange will most likely end up having to shut down anyway, because they will either delete everyone, or people will delete themselves.
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Twitter: chattopatrick
Very true Jocelyn. Sad but true.
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How about… “Dear ____, it has come to our attention you have not surfed in awhile. Since your last visit, we have tweeked our (name benefit), which has really increased conversions. Plus, we have a really awesome new (name bonus) to active surfers. Check it out – you won’t be disappointed!”
Kent
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Twitter: chattopatrick
Hi Kent,
Spot on with your comment.
Your version of the email would interest me enough to log in and take a look at what I was missing…then if I liked what I saw I would come back for some more.
The email I got made me cancel my account.
And you have said everything I would need to know in one paragraph – an excellent email template.
P.
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Hey Patrick! Great points sir. Personally I feel that if you “forgot” about the exchanges… there is no one to blame but the owners. If they want to stay competitive in the market they Need (capital N) to be out in front of their members and being the active ones in memorable ways.
“You get what you put in.” comes to mind in this instance.
Keep up the good work Patrick, and even though I am “retired”, lol, I still enjoy reading your posts and mails!
Twitter: chattopatrick
Hey John,
Nice to see that you still stop by here from time to time.
And you are totally correct. The TE owners need to make the members want to come and surf and not to blame them for not surfing.
When you owned ThumbVu you were always in and out of the site and the members felt valued and welcome because they knew the owner was taking an active interest in the business.
P.
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Good post here Patrick, My first port of call, would have been to delete my account aswell, then maybe send a nice e-mail back thanking the owner for a not so wonderful Traffic Exchange.
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Twitter: chattopatrick
Right David!
P.
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Twitter: aislesoffiles
Hi Patrick,
I agree that the emails you received were heavy-handed and, considering that the objective is to get members active again, instead should be filled with a little more “honey” than vinegar!
I am a member of MANY TEs, the majority free but some upgraded. There’s just not enough hours in the day/week/month for me to sit and surf all these exchanges, especially when I worked a full-time job and have other things going on in my life. That’s why I’m always on the lookout for a good credit deal if there’s no money in the budget to upgrade. There are also quite a few exchanges where, through tracking, I found I was just not getting a response to a particular ad campaign; this didn’t necessarily mean I wasn’t going to use the TE ever again, but it was placed on the back burner.
Now I understand the TE owners’ argument…in order for the TE to be a viable, and valuable, service, the members have to USE it. If the majority of the membership is inactive or just buying credits and not surfing, the TE is not going to serve its purpose. But there’s a right way and a wrong way to ENTICE the members back into activity. And most likely, it would be with an incentive as Kent suggests. In this case, I believe the TE owner has to think about why so many of his/her members went inactive in the first place!
And don’t think that if you’re upgraded, you’re off the hook! I am an upgraded member at a particular TE, but there was a stretch of time when I wasn’t actively surfing. I didn’t want to give up my upgrade by cancelling because I had purchased the upgrade at a discount. I STILL received an email (mind you, it was a personal email and very nice!) that I was inactive and that I had to login and surf in order to reactivate my account. It wasn’t that big of a deal, but I was still a little surprised since I was still sending them money! But again, the surfing itself is the big deal…
Ellyn
Twitter: chattopatrick
Hi Ellyn,
I can’t disagree with a single point you have made here.
I especially like the idea about owners thinking of new ways to give the customers a better experience.
And given that many people belong to many traffic exchanges you are quite right that there are not enough hours in the day to surf each one.
Thanks for such a comprehensive and well-argued comment.
P.
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Twitter: ITSergioFelix
Hey Patrick,
I don’t know if this is common practice between TE owners but I do constantly receive the ‘Account Inactive’ e-mail from several TEs.
The reason this happens is that I’m signed to around 100+ different Traffic Exchanges and I have sites that I really LIKE to surf and there are other sites that simply suck and I don’t like to surf on them.
However my problem with this is the following…
I was an upgraded member at a few of these TEs, I even participated in teams and we scored first place many times, in other words, I have a LOT of credits.
These TEs STILL e-mail me to tell me I’m going to get my account cancelled and obviously, I’m going to lose any credits I have there if I don’t keep myself logging and using the site.
So now, instead of actively surfing those sites, I just log in from time to time in order to keep myself ‘active’ and not lose my credits that I DO plan to use very soon and not get my account cancelled.
I think this is a royal pain in the butt if you ask me.
As is it unfair? I think so as I PAID for the service.
But is this a smart strategy from them? Most likely not.
Their big achievement on this stupid practice is that they will keep encouraging reactions like yours.
Pissing people off so much, they will start deleting their accounts themselves, I wonder where is the positive point in this?
There are MANY sites that offer surfing promotions, have on site giveaways, prizes, etc, can’t these sites just do this instead?
Rewards instead of attacks?
Forcing people to log on in order to not get their accounts cancelled is just beyond my business logic, common sense and general reasoning.
Sergio
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Twitter: chattopatrick
Hey Sergio,
You are the second person to comment here that even upgraded members are being deleted from some of the traffic exchanges they have joined and I think this wholly unacceptable.
My thought is this. As an upgraded member you have paid for a service and you should be given access to the service that you paid for.
If you choose not to use that service then that should be your choice but to be told your account, credits and downline is being axed is just not on.
Should an owner actually do this then I think the policy should be explained in large red letters right at the beginning of the sign up process and not buried somewhere in the terms and conditions.
And, once again you can rest assured that there is nothing flawed in your business logic, common sense and general reasoning.
Patrick.
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Twitter: hotflashhits
January 23, 2012 at 7:29 pm
Hmmm, it all boils down to customer service.
I like Kent and Ellyn’s idea of using Honey instead of Vinegar to lure your customers back. The only problem I see with this is the majority of the members do not read their members emails unless there is the BOLD or OUTRAGEOUS subject line.
I, too, have received those wonderful YOU ARE INACTIVE emails. I usually log in to the site to see what is going on. There have been several occasions, after looking around, I realize I am never going to surf there so I do Delete my account.
So, as an owner, Make Your Site Better! Make your members want to surf with you daily not monthly. As Sergio said, he has his favorites- it should be an owners goal to make their site a members favorite.
There are only so many ways to Stand Out from a crowd delivering traffic via a traffic exchange. But, there are thousands of ways to deliver BETTER CUSTOMER SERVICE.
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Twitter: chattopatrick
Hi Catherine,
Isn’t it funny that I should post about poor online customer service on the same day as you post poor offline customer service on your own blog (where I shall be leaving a comment once I am through here.)
I think one of the problems you have touched on is that, in general, TE owners, send out far too many emails to their members so that when they do have something important to say the message is lost.
I think a lot of information sent out by general email would be more usefully communicated to members on the TE site itself.
A good example of this is information on prize winners but I have covered that topic recently before so I won’t go into it all over again now.
P.
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Twitter: clutchtool
I know a while back some people were complaining about the amount of emails they were getting from TE’s about this or that promotion which i don’t seem to mind from the TE’s i use, because to be truthful if i didn’t get an email once in a while i would completely forget to assign credits and or surf there.
Most the TE’s i surf send an email with a promotion like for example: Come surf 25 sites today and be in the draw for 500 surf credits, etc.,etc.
Some want you to surf sometimes 100 to 500 sites in order to qualify which personally i think is too much. I think TE’s would get a much better response by requiring lower surf requirements like 25 to 50 sites for their prize drawings. But just my opinion.
Some of my more favorite TE’s have a login link in their daily email which gives me surf credits just for clicking it. Some TE’s may think that this is counter productive but i find i’m more loyal and surf more at these sites than others.
My pet peeve with some TE’s is that they send a reminder email sating that i need to come by and surf but then they will not bother to put a login link to their site within the body of the email. If you are too lazy to provide a link to your site then you can imagine i’m going to be too lazy to surf at your TE.
As competition stiffens with more and more TE’s flooding the market, TE owners need to get more and more creative and service minded to keep customers coming back to surf. I don’t think owners can expect people to come back day after day just to mindlessly click for surf credits without something to keep them from going into a credit clicking induced coma.
Chatrooms are okay but i even see these becoming boring and lifeless at not all but at a lot of TE’s.
JPB
Twitter: chattopatrick
Hey John,
You make lots of great points here.
I especially like this point you make:
“My pet peeve with some TE’s is that they send a reminder email sating that i need to come by and surf but then they will not bother to put a login link to their site within the body of the email.”
Love it.
P.
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These are all great comments and posts… I learned this lesson the hard way with my Traffic Exchange. I had an Admin sending out similar e-mails… it really ticked my members off… well it even ticked me off… LOL One of the unfortunate issues is that many TE’s have the setting of automatically setting a member to inactive after X period of time. If the issue is with Credits being balanced then suspending an account makes it even a bigger issue… now those credits will never be used. If there is not enough traffic to use the credits then why should a person go in to surf. If they are being used up then ask them to surf and take advantage of the activity. But to simply suspend an account loaded with credits and then send a hate letter will lead to cancelled memberships.
Thank you for another great post Patrick!
Paul
Twitter: chattopatrick
Hi Paul,
Thanks for the comment – it all makes perfect sense to me.
I guess the “obvious” really is not all that obvious to some people.
P.
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How fortunate I am that I was able to read this post. I got a lot of knowledge I’ve been looking for. Thanks a lot for posting this.
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