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AT&T Fails A Social Media Marketing Test – The Terry Stenzel Letter Response

If you were the VP and GM of AT&T what sort of letter would you send your customers and why? As an ex-VP Marketing I would not have sent out the letter many received from Terry Stenzel at AT&T today. For me it makes a number of mistakes serving to highlight the gap between old school thinking and marketing and where I am, as a customer, today. I don’t know Terry, I do know he put his name and title on this. His letter is a jpg in full below. It was received as an HTML email with the subject “A Special Message from AT&T”. I don’t think it has a reply to address. So my open response follows.

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Dear Terry Stenzel,

I wanted to share my thoughts on your marketing letter today. I’ll be blunt and throw in a few suggestions at the end. I’m writing because you don’t know me very well and it’s apparent that you have made no attempt to find out more about me before spamming my inbox with what I feel are facts which are irrelevant relative to my needs and the service I expect.

These were my initial thoughts:

Hmmm why am I getting this letter. Oh yes I guess I renewed a contract with AT&T on 3 iPhones a few months ago. Although I wasn’t choosing AT&T again. I simply chose Apple iPhone4. Still you should know I’ve been a customer for a much longer time period and your reference to “choosing” is one that is thanking me for “choosing not to leave”. I’ve let it be known via my Tweets and even other blog posts that I’m not altogether happy. In fact the first line almost seems like an excuse line to send this “news” to me. .

Now I read exciting plans in paragraph two. I’m sorry I don’t buy the 97% of Americans – it means that every AT&T customer is in that 3% some of the time. Leave the main city and go into the country. Visit a rural town. Nada! Nada! Nada! All the facts quoted don’t fit with my experience. In fact my personal experience is that GPRS in India in rural areas is better than in the US. In fact as a global traveler almost any country I go to has better service than what I receive at home. (Your own data should tell you that this customer is “exposed” to the world and may not be happy with the parochial approach provided in the USA).

In para three I see meaningless facts. You are the Northern California and Reno manager and my account is in your region in the Bay Area. You can’t even tell me what the implications are for me locally or the names or a URL to names of rural towns that I may frequent on a weekend motorbike ride. You fail to understand that I can name all sorts of coffee stops between here and Eureka or Reno, Clear Lake, Mendacino, Pinecrest, Bridgeport etc where I’ll be in the 3% and there is no way I’ll see 3G or data.

Your fourth paragraph may be the truth and yet quite meaningless given that my own experience as a user and frequent traveler shows that the service is getting worse not better.  As for “where it matters most” that is a huge matter of opinion. My mobile would be useless in an emergency in many of the places I ride on a weekend (and I’m not off road). Frankly that may be when it matters most to me. Will all the billions you are squandering I’m sure a small country could be totally mobilized.

Finally in the last para before signing off you suggest I stop in at Facebook. I did. It instantly confirmed to me that others had a similar response to your email letter. It also poses a problem. I refuse to “like” AT&T so I can comment there. Facebook needs a “hate” button or some other intermediate solution.

Then finally I get to the corporate signature and the VP stuff and I realize there is no email to respond directly to you. I scroll back to the top. I see this is “from the office of” to confirm you are a bigshot. I have a personal message from a bigshot that you probably didn’t write, or even vett very well.

A few questions:

  1. Was it really smart to send this out in the first place? Who’s advising you?
  2. Is it really on message? What purpose did it serve? Other PR examples you have put your name to are more specific.
  3. You tried to personalize it  (Dear Name) and yet you don’t expect to get a personal response. Why no reply to email address? Why no TwitterID, or Facebook ID?
  4. Why send me to a Facebook page? I instantly see I am not alone and I become more incensed. Why aren’t you on that Facebook page? Why can’t I find you? In fact you aren’t on Facebook are you?

A few suggestions:

  • In a direct mail / email campaign never send people off to a site you are not familiar with. As you apparently don’t have a Facebook account I can almost certainly presume you didn’t either write this letter or take the time to understand how customers will respond. Be present.
  • I think this is the first time you are sharing with me. I searched my gmail and indeed it seems to be. The info you shared is not relevant to Northern California it is nationwide. You aren’t telling me why we are doing better here than in other states, or how I will be safer. You haven’t said how much of the investment is coming our way. Fact is this could have been sent by the CEO or someone else and there was no need to personalize it. You could have wrapped this message in some promo item left it as AT&T and I’d never have responded the same way.
  • You have so much information on me and so many ways you could customize messages to me that I’m simply appalled that you can’t send me one in context. I wonder what sort of market research and internal statistics you generate. Even some basic segmentation would help you.
  • Rethink the direct marketing you are doing. Hire some new people. Send me an @message on Twitter with a thank you for my feedback. Find a way to start managing the complaints that will come. There’s a huge problem. You letter doesn’t communicate one personal fact about your job or your region and how you are making it better for me. Yet you signed it.
  • If you want to talk to people personally and build relationships then get on facebook, get on twitter and make sure your name is on the AT&T Facebook page. The current AT&T Facebook page should be a case study for Social Media Marketing that sucks, because the organization clearly doesn’t understand it.
  • When I travel around India I see buildings painted with Reliance, or Vodaphone everywhere. Coverage is there too. When I ran beer marketing we had appropriate hoarding strategies too. Consider starting by painting walls, hanging signs and making a noise as you roll out your infrastructure into the rural areas – we are here! You will get a better bang for you buck and I’ll know that service is actually available. The locals may cheer too.
  • I don’t particularly like being a customer of AT&T. I think the service is overpriced. I considered moving all our accounts out of contract iPhones to ??? but that really wasn’t a choice. The problem as I see it is bigger than your billions or AT&T coverage. The number one problem is… you are not working for me; to radically cut costs, to provide better more appropriate plans, to make Apple services more open, (eg FaceTime), or even enable other options like a “desktop client” that rings. Even GoogleVoice can do that and they aren’t a telecom company. If you have ever read my blog you would also know I have deep thoughts on how “communication” can be improved. Oh and I haven’t even told you about my data billing complaints and issues over the last 8 months.
  • Lastly, the webworld is full of noise, suggestions, and people willing to help. It starts with listening, thinking about communities, relationships, and being human. You’re very successful, and it took strength and smarts to get to where you are today.  This email is disappointing from someone in your position, and doesn’t really reveal any of your plans to take AT&T forward or add value for me.

So readers if you are still with me.
Visit the AT&T Facebook Page. or A conversation with AT&T executive Terry Stenzel – East Bay Business Times – He responds that he hates giving “competitors” a mention or find Terry Stenzel – LinkedIn.  Then AT&T- News Room -AT&T Investment Delivers Improved Wireless Network Experience in Modesto which actually quotes data that is more locally meaningful. AT&T: We spent $65 million improving 3G coverage across the Bay area – Cell Phones & Mobile Device Technology News & Updates Stenzel is quoted again and yet the numbers are meaningless. Are new cell sites all the same or do they have different capacities? Did Northern California get its fair share?

What do you think? Am I off base and just picking on someone or is this really a failure of a DM message that would have worked 10+ years ago and simply doesn’t work today? How does AT&T begin to address this problem?


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