How to burn bridges after a survey...

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I purchased a product from a grocery store. They carried a decent food item from a national cataloger. I was encouraged to fill out a direct mail piece, my incentive was 'coupons, recipes, & great information.' I also provided them with my email id. I received an email from them - the first one was informational. Within a week I received their catalog. Over the past three months I have been getting offers from them that compete with each other. The coupon in the mail is encouraging me to order from their national catalog, the coupon via email is offering me dramatic discounts to their online store. When I called up their call center, I was told that (even in this day and age) the two groups compete with each other.

Interestingly, both the catalog and the online store forgot that I had purchased their product through my grocer. To add some fun to the mix, I took all the coupons I received to the local grocery store and they matched some of the pricing. I also learned that I should have ONLY been offered products from their paper catalog that were not offered through grocery stores.

Intrigued, I back tracked all my transactions and made some notes. In a shameless effort to grow their business - both the catalog and the online group forgot how my name entered their database. Then, the 'Queen of eCommerce' just took my name and started hitting me with three emails a week in an effort to lure me in.

Simple lesson for all of us marketers. If you cannot afford a database centric survey tool, please include 'source code' in all your surveys, and leverage that 'source code' in all of your communications. Be sincere and honest in your messaging, a survey is the start of a relationship - you need to build from it, not burn your bridges.