The package contained a small bottle of champagne, and it was delivered to my office during mid-April, accompanied by a letter. Its sender was a Troy MI firm that sells “business process outsourcing;” it handles financial documents, medical claims, and bad-debt collection letters on behalf of other companies for a fee. Apparently, business is good in business process outsourcing. The company was celebrating, and it wanted me to join the party.

“We’re Number 19” on a Top-100 list of business process outsourcers, its letter proclaimed. The list “defines (the firm’s) standard of excellence,” “validates … its growth and expansion,” and highlights its many attributes, the letter added. The champagne gift, with enough bubbly to half-fill two glasses, was intended to get me to notice the company’s achievements.

It did, but probably not the way the firm hoped.

As my wife and I drank the bottle’s contents over dinner that night, we talked about how this company’s grand gesture struck us as an expensive and futile advertising gimmick. Until the package arrived, I had never heard of the sender. I haven’t done business with it in the past. I’m not a likely prospect for its services in the future. And, perhaps most importantly, it didn’t ask me to take any action … except to savor the champagne.

A different and unrelated letter arrived May 5, this time from a member of Congress who represents the district where my office is located. He wrote to boast how he had secured $25,000 in federal grant money to fund a police program in a township a few miles away; not my township, mind you, but another in which I have no residence, no property ownership, and no financial, business or electoral interest.

Like the champagne that preceded it, the congressman’s letter was meant to positively capture my attention. Instead it had the opposite effect. Because the grant announcement held no relevance for me, the politician’s letter seemed simply to be a waste of my tax dollars.

The Michigan firm and the congressman both miscalculated in the marketing material they sent. Their promotions did not carry news of value for their target audience – in this case, me – and so were mostly ignored. Too many real estate agents commit the same type of mistakes in marketing to their farms or spheres of influence. Sadly, they too are ignored.

To be cost-efficient and measurably effective, any marketing or promotional campaign must be relevant to, and contain information of value for, intended recipients. No real estate agent worth his or her salt should send a flyer advertising a $500,000 property to a family whose annual income is only $30,000, or mail a solicitation for buyers to listing prospects. It happens, though, with alarming frequency.

And when it happens, those agents waste more than marketing dollars. They waste their credibility with clients, too. They essentially say, to each recipient, “I don’t care enough about you to send something you will consider interesting or important or significant.”

Wrong message, to be sure.