inluminent

I got this email today from a professional marketing group (emphasis mine):

Dear Marketer,

Please accept our invitation to participate in a short web survey for the American Marketing Association. As a valued member of the industry, we would like your opinions about ways to reach more marketers and increase our membership. Your answers will be kept confidential and will only be used to help guide our strategic planning and assist us in developing a member acquisition offer that is compelling and meaningful.

The survey should only take 5 minutes to complete, and should be fun. Simply click on the link below to visit our survey. If you can’t click on the text below, you can cut and paste it into your URL window.

Here is a link to our survey: https://www.surveymonkey.com/s.asp?A=40825383E1760

Thank you for your participation,
The American Marketing Association
www.marketingpower.com

The problem I have with this email is that they committed the big sin in marketing. They told me:

1. I’m important to them (good)
2. Their goal is to increase their membership (bad)
… all while …
3. Asking me to complete a survey (why should I do this again?)

Why didn’t they instead:

Ask me to complete a survey and tell me what the benefits to completing that survey are to me? I’d probably have answered the survey had they told me what the benefits to me were, but instead, they told me what the benefits to them would be. I could care less about them… and I reckon the rest of you are just like me…

What’s in it for me?

Gotta love it when a professional organization can’t get it right.