This is already the third podcast of Badsender. And we decided to tell you stories this time... And not just any stories: our biggest email marketing mistakes. Don't they say that you learn by making mistakes? One thing is sure, we learn from it. For this occasion, we invited Aurélie, one of the most faithful readers of our Blog. We thought it would be interesting to have an outside viewpoint to discuss this subject.
Fabien
"This story takes place in one of my previous professional experiences: It all starts on a Friday afternoon... It usually starts on a Friday afternoon, in fact, a bit like the horror films with the four youngsters who turn up in a deserted house... A campaign has to be routed on Saturday for a customer, and therefore has to be fully prepared on Friday. The campaign preparation has already dragged on a bit, and it's getting late on this Friday. I don't know why, but I've duplicated an email on Neolane, an email that has nothing to do with our aforementioned customer's campaign. I delete the email I made the copy of, which is of no interest, but I'm actually at the root of my client's campaign folder. And so, at 5:30 p.m. on Friday evening: I delete the entire client folder and its history... So, instead of routing a campaign for a client, I delete his entire folder. Fortunately, on Neolane, it's possible to restore and retrieve backup versions. Well, I still need to find someone on a Friday evening to help me out. But the person in charge of restoration was able to recover everything I had deleted on Saturday morning, so that everything was still shot on time! Thank you Gabriel, special dedication!
It also happened to me to send twice the campaign in a row, a few seconds apart, in a period of sales... Fortunately for me, the next day, we realized that the stats were super good! Lucky guess!"
Marion M.
"For one of our trade show customers, we had to send out a thank-you e-mail to the customers and prospects he'd met at a trade show, i.e. approximately 200 people. When preparing the targeting, I import the e-mail address base, but when preparing the segmentation, I click on the import date, and not on the modification date: 1st mistake. As a result, I make a mistake in the segmentation and target not 200 people as agreed, but 6000. Second blunder (because I could stop there and realize my mistake): instead of programming the campaign, I press the "Send" button... As a result, I send a campaign to people who, for the most part, don't understand why they're receiving a thank-you e-mail... A big appeal to all platforms: DON'T PROVIDE A "Send" BUTTON! Just a "Schedule" button will do just fine".
Aurélie
Quick introduction: Aurélie has been an HTML/CSS and Javascript integrator for 11 years. Originally intended for journalism and communication, Aurélie finally got passionate about the web and emails. She is very active in the emailing community.
"In a previous experience, I received a mockup of an email that needed to be integrated. So I start the HTML integration of the email, and read the text in the email. But I realize that the text is very sexist... You have to know that the target of the campaign is mainly female. So I say to myself that there is a mistake and that it cannot be sent like that. I spoke to the market manager who made some enquiries: it turned out that the writer had "indulged himself", that the text had not been proofread... We went back just in time to modify the text! The initial text was full of prejudices about women, even though it was an email for Mother's Day. It's something like "For that day, you will not be behind the stove or doing the dishes. Something WTF?
One of the mistakes I can also make is to propose innovations in emailing code in the brief, without having tested them first... As a result, I end up testing the innovation in question two days before sending, which can be a bit tense! Now, making mistakes in the code is becoming a little rarer thanks to tools like Litmus or EmailonAcid."
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Thomas
"I agree with Aurélie about proposing innovation in an email. It happened to me again recently, it's a big mistake: you propose something to the client without testing the code behind it. You just say to yourself that "This will do it, I will be able to get the code of an innovation that I liked easily"... But once the layout has been validated, and you've only thought of asking the customer what the consultation statistics are, and the customer tells you that it's mainly Gmail, you realize that what you've proposed won't necessarily work on Gmail... As a result, the innovation in question may work on several mail clients, but not on the main consultation mail client. So you look like an amateur. You should always take the time to test and anticipate the results of a code before proposing it. But in a way, if you never take the risk of testing technical innovations whose support is fairly limited, then the market will never rise to try and get a little more interactivity in email, and the support will always remain poor.
Another mistake is not taking the time to explain the constraints of the code for the email to the client, and not knowing the email client on which the client will test/receive the campaign. As a result, I've been told "Yeah but I'm on Lotus Notes, and at home everything is broken!!!" If the customer is very fussy... It's better to take the time to explain that certain mail customers must be "abandoned" from the outset, as must certain requirements. (for example: pixel perfect rendering). "
Marion D.
"I don't make mistakes because I don't have my hands in the routing tools myself! It's often at the moment of sending that you realize you've made a mistake, and there's nothing you can do about it... But a nice mistake was made in my old company, which enabled us to add extra functions to the tool: it was an SMS sending, not an email. A colleague sends a test with an sms filled with " test test test test... " to the entire customer base rather than to the internally shot list of proofs. This generates, in addition to the cold sweat of the mistake, the call from the client saying that he will be charged a fortune because sending SMS is expensive ... In addition, we had to start another campaign to apologize to shoot again on the entire base obviously ... Being Product Owner in this box there, we decided to implement several steps of validation to avoid this type of error recurs. "
Jonathan
"One thing is for sure: in email marketing, whoever is at the end of the chain will always be responsible for the bullshit... First thing. And second, unlike other channels (and sms is comparable to email for that) it is impossible to make up for it afterwards. If you publish a web page or a banner with a mistake on it, you can modify it directly on the server... An email or a sms, as soon as it's gone, you can't touch it anymore! I've seen images in an email corrected on the fly: it's the only thing you can catch.
My mistake dates back to 10 years ago: we were doing campaigns at Bisnode in Brussels for the National Lottery (the Belgian equivalent of the Française des Jeux). In Belgium, there are three national languages: French, Dutch and German. We only ran the campaign in French and Dutch, using Selligent to route the campaign. On the proofs everything looks ok. I program the campaign. I link the segments to my emails, but I switch the French segment to the Dutch email and vice-versa. First mistake. It also happens at the end of the week, as it did for Fab'. Knowing the political situation in Belgium, sending a message in the wrong language can cause friction. A few days later, when we realize the mistake, we make an erratum. Erratum with great results, like a 10-point increase in open rate compared to what we're used to! This time, not on the segmentation, but on a link in the email, or something like that... For the only time in my career, I'm making an erratum of an erratum! When I sent this one, my hands were a little sweaty and my fingers were shaking... "
