Yet another naval-gazing award ceremony took place last week where BSkyB were claimed Britain’s Most Admired Company from Management Today.

Clearly, MT’s judges didn’t base the trophy on Sky’s email campaigns. If they had, MT wouldn’t discover personal, relevant and timed messages – their emails are more like blanket mini-billboards.

Every week or so Sky point me to sport I don’t watch and movies I have no interest in. Considering they have the digital knowledge of everything my household has watched for a couple of years, they display zero wherewithal in their emails.

A few ideas for Sky’s marketing team to increase email PR (personal and relevancy):
Croudsourcing – people who liked X and Y (stuff my house has seen) also watch Z on Wednesday at 10pm
Follow on – if you liked The Apprentice you’ll love our top three business programs (some you may need to pay for)
Bundles – we’ve prepared three bundles of viewing which we think you’ll like. Please pick and amend them. These can be uploaded to my box and amending them lets Sky’s brain know and next week’s bundles will be even more relevant.
DVD iLike – Sky should ask me about my DVD collection to better profile my tastes. You could even take into account my book collection as well (I always think Amazon miss a trick here by only tracking purchases).

I am infinitely more likely to engage with, and probably upgrade, because of the relevancy of the above. So why do they torture my inbox with High School Musical and the Ashes?

Thorough email PR like this is way beyond the data mining systems at SMEs but surely Britain’s Most Admired could up the ante?