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Good Intentions Gone Bad

On the front line of email, sometimes the best intentions go awry.

That recently happened to me so I wanted to share it with all of you. Hopefully you can all use this as a best practices learning, or story to share internally about crossing i’s and dotting t’s, and what to do when something goes wrong.

So in celebration of Earth Day the eec thought it would be nice to give something free to our subscribers (just like we did when we gave away free dice from SubscriberMail during the holidays 2 years ago). We decided to go with one free issue of VIV magazine. We chose this because it both demonstrated how email can extend into the digital world even further and because it is an all “green” publication.

Sadly, when the service message was set to send, notifying people their eec gift was ready for review, a few things went awry:
1. People received two or more emails with this notification
2. The context of the eec Earth Day gift was left off the copy

While no one’s information was rented or sold to any other company, admittedly, the perceived recipient experience looked pretty poor. This is a great learning experience for us all.

While I have received emails both praising our thoughtfulness and attempt to share with the industry, I have also received emails questioning the execution of this campaign.

I would like to invite anyone who has questions, concerns or comments to give me a call at 973-204-0023.

I am posting this not to invite complainers to bash this effort (although I am sure we will have those), but to continue to share. The eec’s mission is to pursue a community-based approach to making email better. If this is something you applaud us trying, thank you, if it’s something you can learn from so the same thing doesn’t happen to you, we are happy with that as well.

—Jeanniey Mullen of the eec

Posted on May 2, 2008 12:09 PM |

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Comments (1)

james:

lol i wonder how many calls viv got. i know i called :)

Posted by james | May 2, 2008 2:56 PM

Posted on May 2, 2008 14:56

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The Email Experience Council's membership includes many of the brightest and most committed email marketing experts. We're pleased to have some of them share their insights here on these pages. Our blog contributors include:

Elie Ashery is the president and CEO of Gold Lasso, and is responsible for the company’s vision and strategy execution. Before joining Gold Lasso, he co-founded Newsletters.com in 1997, selling it to The Tribune Cos. in 2000. He then worked for IncenSoft, focusing on email marketing while there. Read more.

Amy Bills is the senior manager of field marketing at lead optimization company Bulldog Solutions. She is responsible for lead generation and the go-to-market execution of Bulldog's new products and initiatives. Amy was previously the editorial team leader of Freescale Semiconductor’s internal creative agency and a senior editor at Hoover’s Online. Read more.

Nicholas Einstein is director of strategic and analytic services at Datran Media. Specializing in email and CRM strategy, he helps some of America’s top brands leverage online channels to communicate more effectively with their customers and prospects.

Lisa Harmon is a principal at Smith-Harmon, a creative services consultancy dedicated to email marketing strategy and production. She works with marketers to increase clickthrough, maximize revenue, and infuse delight into their email creative. Lisa is also the blogger behind edm.smith-harmon.com, an ongoing commentary on the best (and worst!) in email marketing creative. Read more.

Chip House is ExactTarget's VP of marketing services, leading the teams responsible for client success. He was named to BtoB Magazine’s 2005 “Who’s Who in B-To-B,” for being a vocal proponent of legitimate commercial email and an active lobbyist regarding spam and privacy issues. Read more.

Stephanie Miller is VP of strategic services for Return Path, the leading email performance company. She works with marketers to earn a higher ROI and response from their acquisition and retention email programs—developing content, contact and segmentation strategies, along with testing, measurement and production programs. Read more.

Jeanniey Mullen is the eec’s founder and the global EVP and CMO of global online publishing company Zinio. She is a thought leader and visionary in the email and digital marketing field. A columnist for ClickZ, she has published numerous papers and is a frequent speaker. Read more.

Charles Stiles is the VP of worldwide business development at Goodmail Systems. In his role, Charles is focused on helping generate a better understanding of the email environment and potential solutions for a better consumer experience. He currently serves as the chairman for the Messaging Anti-Abuse Work Group. Read more.

DJ Waldow is an account manager at Bronto Software. He works with Bronto’s largest clients to help them achieve and surpass their marketing goals. An active member of the email marketing community, DJ posts regularly on the Email Marketer’s Club, publishes a bi-weekly email marketing best practices newsletter, and films BrontoFire. Read more.

Chad White is the EEC’s director of retail insights and editor-at-large. He founded and is the author of RetailEmail.Blogspot, a blog dedicated to tracking the email marketing practices of the largest online retailers. Chad regularly writes major research reports on email marketing and is an Email Insider columnist for MediaPost. Read more.

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