My new running shoes have been muddy for two days. On your website, they're still waiting in my cart.
I've probably mentioned this before: I have a slightly unusual obsession. At least every two months, I have to buy a new pair of trail running shoes. My wife says I'm a centipede. I own so many models that I could start writing running shoe reviews. It's hard to argue with her.
I buy most of them from Bergfreunde. But my loyalty has a limit of about €50. If I find the same pair that much cheaper somewhere else, I buy it there. This time, a discount lured me to another online store. I found the Asics Trabuco 14 GTX in a colour I didn't have yet. I ordered them, they arrived, and I took them up Jakob hill twice.
All that time, the store kept reminding me on Viber that my shoes were waiting in my cart. By the time the third message arrived, the shoes in that cart were caked in mud. That's when I first wondered what was wrong with these people. Meanwhile, their Instagram ads kept reminding me about my abandoned cart. They had accepted my order, charged me and delivered it. So they knew I'd bought the shoes. That knowledge didn't stop a single reminder.
I don't know whether the cause was a badly configured workflow or disconnected systems. What I do know is that the store had learned the most important thing it could learn about me: I'd bought. And nothing in its communication changed because of it. Most companies keep getting better at collecting data about their customers. Far fewer know how to use that data to stop sending messages.
What exactly did I agree to?
A purchase is actually the easy case. What if I told you something else? That I no longer want offers on Viber. That I'd rather get them by email. Would that reach everyone who talks to me, or would each team keep doing its own thing?
My interest in trail running shoes doesn't tell you how often I want to hear about them, or where. Neither does a “marketing allowed” checkbox.
I might want product offers by email, but only invitations to running events on Viber. Maybe I don't want SMS offers at all. These are three decisions by the same person. You have to respect all three.
So I'd manage consent by purpose and by channel, for each customer, in one register. It shows what the customer agreed to, when and where, and what they later changed or withdrew. You can collect consent on the website, in the app or in a store. But there is only one valid status, and everyone who plans customer communication works from it.
If I unsubscribe from email offers in the app, the email tool has to know immediately. I'd like to believe that respecting my decision doesn't depend on someone coming back from holiday and merging two lists.
Even if I let you use five channels, I expect you to choose between them. Consent to five channels is not an order for five copies of the same offer.
Every campaign has a good reason
Say you set a limit of two marketing messages a week in each of five channels. Each tool respects its limit perfectly. I still get ten messages.
I believe each of these campaigns has a good reason. If you can justify them as well as I justify buying new running shoes, there will soon be more of them. The problem is that your reasons never reach me. Your messages do.
So the frequency cap has to apply to all direct marketing messages a customer receives, across all channels. Someone also has to decide which message takes priority and which one waits. If you send me an offer today that I actually care about, I don't need the weekly roundup of new arrivals. If I've bought in the meantime, I don't need a reminder to buy.
The same goes for channel and timing. I can tell you which channel suits me, or you can work it out from how I respond. That should determine which of the permitted channels you use for an offer, and which ones you don't.
If I respond best in the evening, that's useful to know. But if five tools each decide on their own that 8 pm is the best time to message me, all they'll organise is a very precise traffic jam on my phone.
A purchase should change the ads too. Show me something new. Paying for an ad that reminds me of a purchase I've already made is an odd way to spend a marketing budget.
It all starts with something basic: your systems have to know they're talking to the same person, and see that this person has already bought the shoes. Without that, there's nothing to coordinate.
When I would switch platforms
I wouldn't replace an entire system because of one wrong reminder. First, I'd want to know why it wasn't stopped. I'd think differently if, for every new scenario, the team first needed a meeting about how to connect data from five tools.
You get there through perfectly reasonable decisions. First, you need an email tool. Then you add SMS, push notifications with the app, and later Viber or WhatsApp. Each project solves a real need. For a while, it's all manageable.
Then people start copying unsubscribes from one system to another, comparing lists, checking purchases and stopping campaigns by hand. The automation works as long as employees keep explaining to it what happened in the other system. New scenarios wait because one more integration has to be sorted out before launch.
At FrodX, too, we do this work ourselves, every week, for many of our clients. We sync unsubscribes between systems, because each system keeps its own record of who can be contacted, who can't, and how they unsubscribed. We charge for this work, and from a business point of view we can't complain. But it's the dumbest thing our clients pay us for. We'd much rather bill them for something that helps them sell more.
If this takes just half a day a week in your company, that's 4 hours × 46 working weeks = 184 hours a year. More than a full month of work that you won't find on any software invoice. Except maybe ours.
A tool can look very affordable on the price list. The person who has to make sure, every week, that their “automation” doesn't crash into another one simply sits in a different cost centre.
If you're looking for ways to cut costs and make your team more effective, start by taking this work off their desks.
Hours aren't the only cost. As long as each system keeps its own register, every serious automation triggered by a customer's action needs extra integration, checking and maintenance. Your systems have to respect consent together and keep track of how many messages a customer receives, through which channels and when. These are no longer advanced features. They're basic hygiene, and you can't work efficiently without them.
When every new scenario starts with getting the tools to agree, I'd compare the cost of moving to a single platform with the cost of continuing to connect the existing ones. And I'd be honest about the second figure: it includes these hours and all the extra work that every new automation demands.
Show me what won't be sent
At a vendor demo, I'd want to see one customer's whole story. Let them agree to something, decline something, open an offer and then buy. Then show me how all the other planned messages and ads changed as a result.
Above all, I want to know what won't be sent. Everyone can show me the send button.
A single omnichannel platform has to pass this test within a single demo: recognise the same customer across all channels, respect their consent choices and purchases, and decide on channel, timing and the total number of messages. If someone has to export a list, reconcile unsubscribes and stop a campaign by hand along the way, you've got five tools under one logo.
Before your first demo, write down what the platform has to solve for you. Include a case as concrete as mine: the customer has bought - which messages stop now? Comparing offers is much easier when every vendor answers the same question.
There's plenty of room for better communication with me. In a few weeks, a good discount on an interesting model would probably tempt me again. If they also have a colour I don't own yet, we're close to a deal.
As I write this, I realise I'm basically explaining to retailers how to sell me even more shoes.
I hope my wife skips at least this part of the column.
igor.pauletic@frodx.com
