My Inbox is Overflowing with Offers This Week

Online business is flourishing, but should I contribute?

In 1970, John Lennon sang:

“People say we got it made.

Don’t they know we’re so afraid?

Isolation.

We’re afraid to be alone,

Everybody got to have a home.

Isolation.”

Lennon wrote the melancholy lyrics above, for his song “Isolation,” despite having been celebrated by everyone throughout the decade before. At the end of the 60s decade, he suffered from acute insecurity and self-doubt, partly from drugs, the breakup of the group, personal attacks directed at Yoko and him, and disillusionment with his fame and fortune.

In this song, inspired by his Primal Therapy program, he found a release. The song is regretful, portraying him against the world. Isolated.

Self-isolation

I read the news online this morning and closed it down. I feel for everyone in this grim time of social distancing and self-isolation.

What harsh representations are enfolded in the expressions “social distancing” and “self-isolation.”

Synonyms for isolation are segregation, loneliness, separation, seclusion, and inaccessibility. Very harsh. To me, it equates with punitive or disciplinary measures. It brings to mind thoughts of corrective punishment in solitary confinement.

None of these words describe a way I want to exist. That’s probably true for many of you, too. As social creatures, I believe our mental health wanes when we’re isolated. Although I’m able to be very productive in isolation and enjoy my times of solitude, my preference is always at a time of my choosing.

Isolation is aloneness that feels forced upon you, like a punishment. Solitude is aloneness you choose and embrace. I think great things can come out of solitude, out of going to a place where all is quiet except the beating of your heart — Jeanne Marie Laskas.

My inbox uplifted my spirits

With so much doom and gloom surrounding me, I opened my inbox. I found a plethora of good news, enough to last me all week.

Connections from content marketers, various newsletters, LinkedIn contacts, and discount offers for a girl who likes to shop.

I offered silent and heartfelt congratulations to all the innovative businesses out there, focussing on maintaining interest in their enterprises. Giving credit to them for promoting themselves and maintaining the positive points about how we can all survive this pandemic.

The marketing letters in my inbox are sympathetic, and calmly emotional. This is the correct way for marketers to play the current scene to their advantage with their customers. By focussing on the pain point, they can present a marketable solution to eliminate the problem. As Seth Godin, remarks about selling,

Change is not a threat, it’s an opportunity. Survival is not the goal, transformative success is.

Accepting the lockdown as an opportunity

Survival is my goal, hence the obedience to isolate. However, it’s refreshing to see the entrepreneurial slant to my inbox messages.

I’ve not only received requests for me to provide work but innovative ideas from senders/businesses and friendly groups I haven’t heard from in such a long time.

These vendors are obviously focussed on what they can do for me while I remain in my isolated state. Are they playing to my strengths or my weaknesses? Are they addressing my pain points or my vulnerability?

I do buy multiple products online, as not everything is available where I live. For example, one “why would you shop anywhere else” store where I’ve been buying online for years, is advertising beautiful gourmet hampers to buy for yourself or send to isolated loved ones. I’m a long-term customer, but they’re really turning the emotional key.

The store is also offering great deals on puzzles, board games, cookery books, leather notebooks and journals, expensive and beautifully presented cleaning products, bathroom products to provide luxurious treatments during your lockdown.

As Gary Vaynerchuck says about enterprises:

“If your organization’s intentions transcend the mere act of selling a product or service, and it is brave enough to expose its heart and soul, people will respond. They will connect. They will like you. They will talk. They will buy.”

I was sold. I responded, and I purchased.

Another email offered discounts for me if I buy an extra dozen of wine from my online store. I decided to decline, but the offer’s good until the end of April. I may reconsider.

My grocery rewards company is offering double points if I purchase listed items — unfortunately, no delivery or click and collect processes are available.

Maybe later this week I’ll venture out.

The hardware store is offering me free delivery for additional rolls of turf with delivery before the end of the week. They suggest I keep myself busy in the garden to counter any detrimental effects of isolation.

No thanks, I’m having trouble mowing what grass I have.

A travel booking company I haven’t used for at least two years is offering me great discounts. Of course, they are, however, no destinations were mentioned. I’m thinking about it.

The company that supplies my printer ink (a subsidiary of the famous Canon company) peddled information on how their medical division created the rapid testing kit for the Covid-19 virus. Well done, guys. Another highly emotional pull.

Hipages, the “find a handyman or worker for all your needs,” company, sent me an email. I used a firm contracted through Hipages last year to make and fit security sliding doors for my home. The company wanted me to know the businesses they represent were operating as usual, and were there any jobs I needed anyone to do?

To keep the enterprises going, I thought I’d have them contract an upholsterer to provide quotes and undertake a job I haven’t had time to do myself.

My dog groomer emailed to let me know they’re open and offering deals. My dog is large, and I usually book a week in advance for clipping. “Please call us,” the email told me, “we can book your dog’s appointment any time that’s convenient for you.”

The dress shop I frequent is an hour away and offered gift cards on any purchases I make by the end of this month.

The online nursery I use for bulk buying plants is targeting an offer of plant seedlings for people interested in planting food for harvesting. Currently, the offer is free delivery for bulk lots.

Okay, I’ll buy it.

Next steps

I’m imagining myself luxuriating in my bath of bubbles with my wine, while I ponder the future of online marketing. Will it become more like the reach of Amazon within a rapid time-frame?

Will it help me to do everything I want from the comfort of my home office?

My current requirements based on today’s inbox, would be to:

• know my housework is done
• see my salad greens growing well
• understand my pantry is well stocked with gourmet items and if I feel the urge to cook, I have all the designer cookery books gracing the coffee table
• update all my office supplies for the influx of work I’m to undertake
• concede my dog is looking good enough to photograph for Pampered Pets
• feel confident the tradies are on the job, and
• know I have the correct seasonal clothes ready for my planned holiday next year.

How will I feel if I never venture out of my home?

How will this online lifeline of enterprises deliver what I need for connection and the promise of community? How will this distancing state I’m currently undertaking, benefit those who don’t favor loneliness and isolation?

I’m used to periods of my own company and never feel lonely because I take steps to alleviate any negative undertones of disconnectedness.

However, the messages in my inbox are not addressing any fears of isolation.

The marketing techniques I’m reading:

• Offer sympathy and understanding about the pandemic
• Congratulate me for obeying the rules
• Encourage me to be comfortable in my solitary confinement
• Appeal to my emotions to support economically challenged enterprises, and
• Finish with a call to action that’s more than appealing.

Will purchasing prevent a depressed state of isolation?

It may alleviate temporarily the emotional isolation.

Unfortunately, we have no way of knowing how long the effects of the virus will continue for all of us. We do know, however, that as humans, we need connection with others beyond inboxes, text messages, teleconferences, and non-essential commodity purchases.

We need each other and the accompanied sense of community. The word commune means to converse, talk together, interchange thoughts or feelings, ideas, or sentiments. And it’s those people with the connection of common interests who give birth to communities.

Johann Hari (Lost Connections: Uncovering the Real Causes of Depression — and the Unexpected Solutions), summarises:

You need to:

Have a community

Have meaningful values, not the junk values you’ve been pumped full of all your life, telling you happiness comes through money and buying objects

Have meaningful work

Be in the natural world

Feel you are respected

Have a secure future, and

Have connections to all these things.

Hari goes on to acknowledge:

“To end loneliness, you need other people…you also need to feel you are sharing something with the other person, or the group that is meaningful to both of you. You have to be in it together…that you both think it has meaning and value.”

Although I understand the rationale behind what’s contained within my inbox, and I may feel sympathy for the unknown effect on these businesses, I need to temper my immediate reaction to respond emotionally to these offers.

The purchase of the products may fulfill my temporary yearning for compromise and convenience, but I need more. I need to envelop the connection and sense of community I gain from others in my world. Like the heart-warming story by Hari about the inhabitants of a housing project in Berlin. Here, the residents banded together and mobilized collectively to “stave off rent increases.”

Meaningful contact is something we are innately designed to crave. Unfortunately, our socio-economic system is becoming more and more predicated on the individual.

And our current circumstances may lead to feeling increased isolation and loneliness, rather than reducing those feelings.

Did Lennon make a prediction in 1970 when he wrote Isolation?

It ends:

“We’re afraid of everyone,

Afraid of the sun.

Isolation.

The sun will never disappear,

But the world may not have many years.

Isolation.”