Deer Busters
I am sure that we all get more unwanted emails than we used to. They and spam texts and calls are the annoying marketing realities of our times the way TV ads were in our youth. In the old days some people relished TiVoing all their favorite TV shows just so they could remove the ads and watch them straight through. That always seemed like more work than just putting up with them. And of course, advertisers started getting more creative and many ads were more fun than the underlying shows. That was always certainly the case when it came to Super Bowl ads, right? Well, I know there are people out there with ways to avoid spam texts and calls and who are particularly good at unsubscribing from junk emails, but I am not one of them. Don’t get me wrong, I do unsubscribe in my more patient moments, its just that they come back so fast that I never know whether I have properly put a nail through the heart of these immortal email lists. I think we all suspect that they all just take a breather and then start up again on the pretense that something we did online restarted the whole game. Who has the time or the inclination to track our online usage enough to eliminate all of these annoying junk emails?
I do expect a certain amount of rationality in the marketing I get inundated with. I understand why political and charity purveyors use the monthly repeating donation approach because everyone loves the gift that keeps on giving and giving and giving. God help you if you start down that path, because I am sure that is a path that is almost impossible to ever shake off. But what really amazes me are the marketers that assume that just because you have made one purchase or donation, that you are a sucker for life. There is one marketer that has landed on a $50 donation I made to some law enforcement fundraising call three years ago and decided that I am in the sucker for life club. I get perhaps one or two calls per week from obscure upstate New York numbers soliciting me for every patriotic and needy group you can imagine. Usually I can recognize the deep-toned voice of the man seeking my donation and just hang up. I’ve stopped bothering to block the numbers because they never call back on the same line and they must have a million of them. They even seem to have a woman who has a similarly commodious voice, but who switches gears and calls for breast cancer research donations. I have gotten into the habit of hanging up on her as well regardless of her cause of the moment. I have not bothered to figure out whether they really are retained third party marketers who merely strip away large amounts of the donation for their expenses or whether they are just all fraud through and through. I’m not sure it matters.
Other legitimate product markets are also into repeat sales tactics and I understand only some of them. Kim gets a number of things on a repeat order basis and I get a few. I now buy Harry’s razors and razor blades, not to mention shaving cream. At least shaving is a repetitive bodily function and it seems to make sense to use a repeat ordering service to fill that need, though their pacing of utilization is such that they clearly and obviously favor a much faster cycling of product than I can keep up with. I have stockpiled razor blades and shave cream to the point where I’m sure I feel compelled to change blades far more often than I might otherwise. We all shave less than we used to but that hasn’t slowed old Harry down. I know Kim is on a repeat order train for our AG-1 green drink and that seems OK because I certainly do want someone reminding me to take my vitamins and probiotics every day. If I start to stockpile at least I get the benefit of realizing that I am not keeping up with my program.
But there are other products that want to put me on repetitive purchase programs that I simply don’t find any logic to. One of them involves a gardening product that I have bought twice now. I find that rebar J-hooks are particularly useful for securing metal sculpture around the garden and things like the redwood steps I have imbedded in the back hillside paths. Those J-hooks are about a foot long and have what I think is a #3 or #4 rebar. If you go to Home Depot or Lowe’s you can find straight rebar in many lengths including one footers, but I have yet to find any at those stores that have J-hook rebar stakes. For that I had to go online to a store called Deer Busters. They seem to carry a very specialized array of products designed to keep deer out of people’s gardens. Now I have a great appreciation for niche businesses, but I must admit that I am unclear that there are enough people with a deer problem or enough products oriented towards deer prevention to require a specialized deer busters store. But then again, as is often said, the market speaks loudest and Deer Busters exists so there must be both supply and demand. It seems that rebar J-hooks are an important component in the fight against deer invasion. I am presuming that it has something to do with fencing that gets used and for which a rebar j-hook comes in handy.
For whatever reason, Deer Busters has the rebar J-hooks that I need and I have purchased them twice now in lots of 20 stakes. I believe the second order was made when I needed two of the stakes, meaning I have 18 of them sitting in a drawer. I have no idea when or if I will ever need another rebar J-hook, but none of that deters the folks at Deer Busters from sending me emails about twice a week on the off chance that I my need to reorder more of them. I’ve actually looked through the offering from Deer Busters to see if they have other products that I might need in my garden. These people define their products on two dimensions. On the materials side they have metal and plastic fencing, and then they define themselves based on the critters their clients are troubled by. In addition to deer, there are categories for coyotes, rodents (including bunnies), birds, cats and dogs. With all the talk about the rampant growth of feral pigs in places like Texas, I’m surprised that Deer Busters hasn’t expanded its offering to include pigs. Maybe there’s a site called Pig Busters or some such thing.
I have unsubscribed perhaps three or four times from the Deer Busters email lists, but they still persist. I have always been a believer in the value of persistence in business, so perhaps I shouldn’t be so critical of Deer Busters’ marketing’s strategy. I assume their experience tells them than that persistence pays off and that blast emails are simply cheap enough to be a good cost/benefit play. I imagine the only real cost associated with these emails is the annoyance factor, and it wouldn’t surprise me if there is marketing research out there that suggests that people are less annoyed by niche marketers rather than more mainstream marketers. I feel for the Deer Busters folks, who I imagine are earnest and trying to help people with a pest problem. That means I will continue to cut them a break…unless they do something like add a donation or tip button on their site.