This is not just a love letter to Strava. It is also a celebration of good Marketing and Product collaboration… and a warning of what can happen without that collaboration.

Warning: marketing without personalization

As a longtime Strava subscriber, I was surprised to get a marketing email pushing me to subscribe. I immediately took a screenshot to send to coworkers. I assumed this was a classic case of Marketing and Product teams miscommunicating. Marketing must have sent an email to everyone! How frustrating!

Marketing blasts like this have been on my mind recently. When an email comes with something you want, it feels like magic. But when an email comes and you don’t want it, it can sour you on the whole company. I’m not even getting into the psychological “why” (Why do we get emotionally attached to companies?). I’m asking myself: how do we set up the right personalization, so that as many people as possible get the emails that feel like magic?

I get annoyed when I get an email that asks me to become a subscriber to a product I already pay for. I also feel a little confused, and even worried – did something happen to my subscription? And, perhaps because I work closely with our own Marketing team at Verily, I assume the company could do better.

The good: Strava had a backup plan

Less than 24hrs later, I got another email.

Strava immediately apologized. Not only is this fantastic customer service, but I rethought my initial assumption. Now I think perhaps someone pressed the wrong button. Maybe Strava does have personalization set up, and accidentally sent the last email to the wrong audience segment.

How can your team avoid this mistake?

Here are a few tips to keep Marketing and Product teams connected.

1. Involve the Marketing team in regular share-outs from Product. If Marketing doesn’t know what Product’s doing, they can’t advertise it.
   
2. Include Product content designers as reviewers for Marketing campaigns. Content designers know what the user can do in the product, so they can confirm accuracy of anything Marketing is saying. Plus, since they wrote the actual content, they can confirm that Marketing is using the same language.
   
3. Have a backup plan. Sometimes someone presses the wrong button. Strava did a good job with the follow up email. And honestly, I think they could have done even more. I read “Yikes. That wasn’t supposed to happen” and thought “Phew!” Then I deleted the email. I wouldn’t have read the rest if I wasn’t writing this article! To really sell the “Date Comparison filter”, they could have done more visually.