Strange Japanese in Junk E-Mail
I assume that those who read this blog have received junk mail at least once, but most junk mail sentences are usually in “strange Japanese”. From a Japanese person’s point of view, “You would never make such a mistake! I am sure you have seen such sentences written in such a way.
For example, “You have been blacklisted. If you want to get off the blacklist, please hurry up.” These are sentences that clearly do not sound Japanese.
I wonder if anyone would be fooled by such an e-mail. I would like to think so. If you were a normal person, you would read this and think, “This is obviously not right. You immediately think, “There is no way a large company would send an e-mail with such a sentence.
They dare to use the wrong Japanese.
However, it is said that the Japanese in these unsolicited e-mails is deliberately made to look “strange. This is because scam groups want people to fall for their scams. They are looking for people who are so emotionally involved that they “don’t think it’s funny,” and who would never discuss “I received such an e-mail,” and who have such low literacy that they cannot even think of a way to find out if it is a scam or not. This is because only such people would not fall for the final scam.
Finding people who are susceptible to this kind of scam is not only efficient for the scam group, it is also necessary for them to conduct the scam safely and at low cost. It is easy to imagine that if you were to send an e-mail in perfect Japanese, many people would respond to it. You might think, “That would be better,” but it is not.
If not only those who are susceptible to the above-mentioned scams, but also those who are calm and can consult with others, or those who can investigate, they will eventually recognize it as a scam and the risk of being reported to the police will be very high. If this happens, the cost for the scam group to continue the scam, such as changing servers in a short span of time, will become very high. This means that the scam group will have to spend more man-hours on the scam and the risk of being arrested will increase, which is not a good thing.
Therefore, in order to be able to continue the scam with minimum cost and man-hours, they dare to use strange Japanese words to screen people who are unlikely to fall for the scam. In this way, we minimize the risk of being reported to the police, reduce man-hours, and efficiently aim for CVs. Probably, they have learned through years of experience that they will never get a CV even if they make meaningless people respond to them.
(Side note: This is the kind of screening that goes on in any scam.
These days, this kind of screening is done not only by sending emails, but also by phone. For example, a postcard is mailed to an elderly person in the name of a government agency, urging them to call immediately. If a man calls, he ends up getting the response, “That’s a scam, please destroy the postcard. However, when an elderly woman calls, the attitude changes and she is told to call a lawyer’s office. The target is obviously elderly women. The caller then says that if she calls the lawyer’s office, she will go to explain the details at a later date and the call will end.
This is a technique to screen people who are likely to fall for the scam and sell them as a list. The woman then receives phone calls and mail from various scam groups.
Are you getting any extra leads?
Now that I have talked at length about scams, I would like to return to the topic at hand, since this blog is about marketing.
Many companies have a variety of ideas and measures in place to acquire leads. Advertising is the best example of this. Then, in order to get email addresses from those who respond to the ads, they try to get them to download various materials or sign up for email newsletters. Then, you hope that one of them will attend a seminar or contact you.
More Important Metrics than the Number of Leads Acquired
However, many companies are not efficiently implementing these measures. If anything, it could be said that they are inefficiently implemented. We understand the feeling of being proud of having acquired 10,000 leads over the course of a year. But it is amazing how many of those 10,000 leads lead marketers will mention. But surprisingly few marketers mention how many of those 10,000 leads resulted in a deal. Maybe you got 10,000 leads, but only a few out of those 10,000 leads. There is no reason to praise someone who spent tens of millions of dollars on advertising to collect garbage, is there?
The more ads you place and the more clicks you get, the more your costs increase. So, essentially, the measure of how many responses you received is not very meaningful. Rather, the most important indicator is how many contracts were obtained from those who responded to the ad. In other words, as a marketer, the most important thing is how to narrow down the target and eliminate those who do not respond to CVs.
Narrowing down the target makes it clear what needs to be done.
Targeting in this way will affect the efficiency of subsequent nurturing measures and the efficiency of the nurturing process by IS.
By narrowing down the target audience, what needs to be done in nurturing becomes clear, and it is no longer necessary to think about creating contents for various people. There is nothing more boring than content that targets a large number of people, as is generally the case. However, by narrowing the target audience, it is possible to mass produce more effective content. Content creators will be able to focus on creating more effective and efficient content.
ISs will also no longer need to call on a variety of people. By narrowing down the target audience, ISs have a clear idea of what they need to do and can focus their efforts on that. When an IS tries to reach a wide range of people, the cost of human resources inevitably increases. This leads to a vicious cycle of increased costs and decreased efficiency.
The Essential Task of the Marketer
The essential job of a marketer is to plan who to target and what measures to implement in advertising, nurturing, and IS. They think about how to eliminate waste and how to utilize current resources to get the maximum effect. Remember that marketing is optimization of the whole.
The scam group mentioned above does just that. I am not saying that scam groups are good, but this concept itself is something that marketers need to think about today. It is because of this overall optimization that, unfortunately, scam groups have been able to continue to profit forever.
If you call yourself a marketer, I hope you are not satisfied with partial optimization, but think about overall optimization.