I’m living a very real challenge for two marketers who already serve me. They have a hard time selling me anything else.

I’m thinking in particular of my health club and my email marketer.

First, a focus on (my) fitness: Don’t you dare try and woo me away from my health club, the local JCC in Newton, MA. A member for over 15 years, I’ve developed close friendships with other members and rate the J’s fitness classes as the best to be found anywhere (and I mean anywhere). That’s how loyal I am. I’m there daily. The J is absolutely my second home.

The club does a great job of keeping in touch by email to announce upcoming events. And the web site is truly excellent – but to be honest, I don’t spend any time there except to look up the group fitness classes when my memory fails me. For all I know, the rest of the site could be in Greek.

Similarly, I’ve been a client for 10+ years. They send out my weekly newsletter on Mondays. I have zero complaints about their service. I get all the reporting I need. Maintaining and exporting my databases from CC are easy functions. They’ve truly never let me down.

I get lots of emails from Constant Contact. I think they’re promoting seminars – but to me, I get what I need from them for email management. So I ignore and delete other communications that I deem unrelated to my email service.

In fact, in both cases, I feel I’m getting what I need from them – what I signed up for, what I purchased, what I enrolled in.

Surely, this can’t be unique to me. Does it happen to you? Do you dismiss attempts from current service providers to promote other things to you?

I suppose it depends on the particulars. For example, if I were a regular at a restaurant and on their email list, I’d expect they’d contact me about new menus, special events and maybe guest chefs. I’d absolutely pay attention to those emails.

But in the examples of my health club and email marketing firm, I’ve turned a deaf ear to their repeated contacts with me, for the most part, unless the subject line speaks directly to me.

It has to be one of marketers’ biggest challenges. Something to keep in mind, that’s for sure.