How to avoid doing a Virgin
There’s one simple lesson that Virgin Media’s latest email fail can teach all of us – and if you ever send mass emails, you need to read this and incorporate the lessons into your marketing strategy. Now.
That lesson is: Check before you send.
I know – it’s simple isn’t it? (Take this from a man who sweats – profusely – at the terror of a slipped apostrophe on a mailing to a couple of hundred people).
But check this bad boy out, sent from Virgin Media at 17:42 on January 13th 2012:
Virgin Media have millions of subscribers. I can’t even begin to imagine how many this went out to.
But it seems right enough, yes? It’s spell checked, looks pretty, has lots of exciting information held within it.
The fact that they haven’t even bothered to personalise it with a first name (which their database would have) is another matter.
So, check out this second email, which arrived at 22:35 on 13th January 2012:
Customer service fail, anyone?
Quite apart from the fact that the second email shows that the company clearly doesn’t know what it’s doing when it comes to email marketing/scheduling, I’m bemused by the fact that the logos are different on the two different emails.
One has a Union Jack flash to it, the other doesn’t.
Now, that flash is nothing new. In fact, it even featured in the image used on this BBC story published on 11th January (two days before these emails arrived).
In fact, the two emails display completely different brand cues.
Who on earth signed that off?
There’s an easy lesson for us all to take away here.
And I’ve already said it.
Check your mass mailings. Then check them again.
Then check the time that they’re due to go out.
Double check that your system isn’t set to US date format when you’re in the UK or vice versa.
Double check your design – do you have the right logo in the template? Is the typeface code correct? Does it look right?
And only when you’re 100% happy, then click send.
Your email marketing campaign isn’t just a collection of bits and bytes winging through the ether. It’s a touchpoint for your brand in the hand of your consumer.
Service failures such as this – mis-sent information, confused branding, lack of personalisation – will send a singular message to your customers: We don’t care.
If that’s what you want to say, fine. Say it.
But if you want to give an entirely different impression, check, check and check again.
One final tip: TEST, TEST, TEST
Schedule a test batch for all large emailing to test accounts, friends, a pilot group – people who will call you about the mistake rather than post the fail to the world.
Wise words indeed!
I always run mass mails around the office group before issue, just to check that all of the functionality etc works…
Can’t overstress this point enough – thanks for raising it, Gary!