498: Marketing During the COVID-19 Crisis

In today’s episode of The Startup Chat, Steli and Hiten talk about marketing during the COVID-19 crisis.

Due to the current coronavirus crisis, a lot of companies are sending out a bunch of emails to their customers, updating them about how they are handling the situation amongst other things. However, while it may be necessary to do so for some companies, it may not be the case for yours, and if so sending an email out might not be the best thing to do right now.

In this week’s episode, Steli and Hiten talk about how some brands are reacting to the situations, how some brands are using the opportunity to send emails to their customers, what type of marketing is working at the moment and much more.

Time Stamped Show Notes:

00:00 About today’s topic.

00:15 Why this topic was chosen.

00:59 How some brands are reacting to the situations.

02:12 How some brands are using the opportunity to send emails to their customers.

03:16 Brands that should be contacting their customers.

04:20 How FYI is handling the situation.

05:57 What to say to customers during this period.

07:09 Why you have to think about the audience.

07:52 What kinds of messages companies are sending.

09:26 What type of marketing is working at the moment.

3 Key Points:

There are a lot of brands that are using this opportunity to send emails to their customers.None of the essential companies that I’m a customer of have sent an email.Part of it is reminding people that you exist.

[0:00:01]

Steli Efti: Hey everybody, this is Steli Efti.

[0:00:02]

Hiten Shah: And this is Hiten Shah. And today on The Startup Chat, we’re going to talk about marketing during a crisis. Actually, marketing during a pandemic, as everyone’s working from home while everyone’s checking information about the pandemic all day long.

[0:00:24]

Steli Efti: All right, well-

[0:00:25]

Hiten Shah: This is… Go ahead, go ahead.

[0:00:28]

Steli Efti: No, go ahead. Go ahead.

[0:00:31]

Hiten Shah: I mean, seriously, I was just going to say that it seems like there are a lot of brands out there that are taking this, and I want to hear your reaction, taking this opportunity as a reason to send email to their customers. Are you noticing that?

[0:00:58]

Steli Efti: Oh, no. No, just about 20 to 30 emails every day. Who was it? I saw a bunch of people funny tweeting about this like, “Thank god, every company I’ve ever given my email is telling me how they’re managing the COVID-19 situation.” Yeah, there’s a lot of emails about COVID-19 from brands. And the funny thing is, I would say that almost all of them, with a few exceptions, are from companies I don’t even know. Or I’m not even like, “Am I a customer of this? Why use this? Why am I getting an email from this particular brand?” It’s not very relevant. It’s not, I don’t know, if AWS sends me an email, or [inaudible 00:01:40], or some software product I use every day, Zoom, is sending emails. Zoom hasn’t sent an email and if they sent an email-

[0:01:48]

Hiten Shah: They have not sent a single email. That’s right. Let’s think about that for a second.

[0:01:55]

Steli Efti: But if they sent an email, it’d be like, “At least I’m curious to know because I really fucking need this service right now.” But it’s none of these essential infrastructure type software products and services I’m a customer of that have sent me an email, none of them. It’s all this other bullshit that I don’t even know why they have my email that’s sending emails about COVID.

[0:02:15]

Hiten Shah: That’s right.

[0:02:18]

Steli Efti: So I assume your recommendation is not necessarily, first thing you have to do is send an email to everybody in your email list telling them how you feel and what you do about COVID-19.