Sex & Email: A Guide For Marketers

Sarah Gray   ·   2017-02-27

Would you prefer to:

a.  Eat live cockroaches
b.  Break both your thumbs
c.  Walk in on your parents having sex

There's no good option. No matter what you pick, you don't like it. It's just a choice of the lesser of presented evils.

If you were a marketer (or a research analyst), you'd look at the responses and say, "wow, 47% of consumers chose walking in on their parents having sex!"

Then, you'd write overly enthusiastic articles titled, "Millennials Want Their Parents To Have More Sex."

You'd eagerly present insights like "most consumers like to walk in on their parents having sex" - and that 47%  gets even HIGHER for millennials and those wacky Gen Zers.

Finally, you'd advise parents everywhere to heed this clear preference not only by having more sex, but also by doing so at opportune times and locations - like in the kitchen 30 minutes before family dinner, or just before Timmy is due to arrive home from college for the weekend.

Learn to Accurately Represent Surveys (and, while we're at it, to write decent survey questions)

Yes, it's a bunch of fun to misrepresent survey results - and so convenient when those misrepresented results happen to support whatever idea you're pushing.

It wouldn't be a problem ... if your job as a marketer didn't depend on accurately understanding and delivering what consumers want.

But your job does depend on correctly understanding and delivering what  consumers want.

When you misrepresent consumer survey results, you're making it harder for yourself to do your job well.

It doesn't matter how many surveys you misrepresent or how sensational your click-bait articles are.

In fact, it doesn't matter if you convince yourself and all of your friends that what you're spouting is true:
no amount of hype or denial will change the reality that most consumers would strongly dislike walking in on their parents having sex.

Now, read this article again - and replace "walking in on your parents having sex" with "getting emails from advertisers."

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