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What do my spammers know about me?

  • My neighbor could be a child predator.
  • My car could use an oil change in the next 3 days.
  • My gut could use some probiotics (hey, how’d they know?).
  • My skin could use some acne cream (or Photoshop).
  • My surgical mesh problem could let me join a class action suit and get some money (hmm).
  • I could use an attorney (so I can get in on other class action suits).
  • They want to give me another credit card, and throw in a free home alarm (so burglars can’t steal the rest of the stuff I bought on credit).
  • I can get an installment loan to pay it off – even with bad credit! (whew)
  • It’s my lucky day! Here’s a letter from Nigeria that wants to send me US$20M.
  • I should date 50+ year old singles of a certain ethnic persuasion.
  • But first I’d better get a dental implant, and check for toenail fungus and ED.
  • Maybe buy funeral insurance so I can finally R.I.P.

Over the years, spam has bounced between passing fads and time-honored appeals that are consistently alluring. It’s always amazed me how quick and innovative spammers are in devising new and ingenious ways to make you look and engage. They tap basic emotions — fear, worry, vanity, greed, insecurity — and evoke a gnawing feeling that I should really try to do something about it, whatever it is. Of course, the promise far exceeds the reality (if the reality even exists). But maybe innovators and entrepreneurs can learn a few things.

1. Get attention. Notice how the title of the email screams out, “You need to read this!”? The title walks a fine line. It’s carefully worded (or misspelled) to skirt your spam filter while delivering a compelling invitation in a split second. That’s how long a glance takes. This is the equivalent of the entrepreneur’s elevator pitch, except the entrepreneur gets a whole 30 seconds. As an exercise, try condensing your pitch into the length of an email title. Hint: use simple words.

2. Know thy customer. Spammers generally know little about the individual recipients of their emails. This will change in the future as data facilitates more granular market segmentation. How do you approach potential customers that you don’t know? A spammer first guesses at some fundamental need, perhaps offering a freebie. (Remember, if everything is free, then YOU are the product.) If you engage, the spammer puts you into a branching sales funnel that tries to identify new areas that could be profitable.

What might that look like in health care? One incontrovertible need is cost savings. You pitch your new analytics solution to a hospital COO by claiming you can reduce costs through utilization and supply chain analysis. The COO bites, because cost is a top-of-mind concern. Later, you find that the hospital has little visibility into patient outcomes per clinician. This new analytics opportunity was not a problem in the customer’s mind, and would not have opened the door for you.

3. Rinse and repeat. I’ve noticed that spam comes in waves, sometimes arriving as duplicate emails within the same hour. They also seem to reappear on a regular basis. In health care, each customer is best served by an individualized sales cycle that balances maintaining mindshare vs. becoming an annoyance. However, as an entrepreneur, one of your most important resources is time. Try to spend it with those who want to work with you. In contrast, spammers have nearly unlimited resources and no compunction about irritating people, so the frequency of annoyance is set purely by whoever’s willing to pay for it. You’re not their customer, their sponsors are.

4. Believe. There is neither shame nor embarrassment in spam. A big part of how it ropes you in — OK, maybe not you, but your less discerning cousin — is its exorbitant, wildly over-the-top promises and claims. Mr. Spammer SEEMS to believe it, so you WANT to believe it too. Your skepticism is suspended. Similarly, you need to suspend your customer’s disbelief. Your customer can sense when you’re authentic, so you and your team need to believe in what you’re pitching. Unlike passion (also needed), belief has an element of commitment.

5. Keep digging until you find gold. With the minimal cost of email campaigns and teasers like free e-books with impressive titles, spammers can afford to try multiple channels and approaches and use sophisticated software to track responses and build individual customer profiles. Instead of depending on theoretical models or business strategies, they just iterate in an intentional way, learning directly from the customers themselves. It reminds me of The Lean Startup.

Healthcare innovators should plan for trial-and-error in figuring out what their customers really value and will pay for. One objection from idealists might be the Steve Jobs argument: customers don’t know what they want. This may be true if you have Steve’s marketing mind, but even flashes of brilliance can use customer validation.

A customer is a great teacher — and so is an annoyance.