Archive for: October 2011

EA goofs up big: sends Battlefield 3 email to unsuspecting people

Oct. 26 Email Marketing, Spam 3 comments

Imagine being a big company, let’s say Electronic Arts (revenue: $3,8 billion last year). Imagine launching Battlefield 3, and wanting to inform the correct audience about the game. Surely you have a marvellous email campaign set up to do just that, right?

Wrong, apparently. According to Loren Norman (and a few others) he received an email with the cryptic subject line “System requirements for PC players” which contained the message below:

Loren pointed out two things, besides never having asked for this:

The subject line really is marvellous – even though the sender name is Battlefield 3, the actual email does not contain PC system requirements! Next to that is the transactional part: this would only be possible had Loren been a member of the EA-network and/or a customer. Here comes the biggest goof: Loren notes that he hasn’t done anything with EA in 5 years…oh dear. Talk about bad list management.

Just recently I posted ‘It is not ok to start mailing an old list…ever‘ but it seems it was a wishful post – EA has gone the other way. There are more complaints too, so it doesn’t seem to be a minor glitch. Even worse, some people considered it a scam email, so it will not have been very helpful in the reputation department either.

Clearly EA needs to get its act together. The subject line is not acted upon in the email, the sender name (Battlefield 3) does not go with the information in the footer (sent to you by EA) and worst of all: they should have no idea of his existence anymore. Last they had business with him was over 5 years ago: that’s forever in fast-moving times these days.

Let’s hope there won’t be more of this from either big or small names in the business.

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Less is more – part 2

Oct. 25 Email Marketing Insight 1 comment

Remember Email insight: Less is more from over half a year ago? Here’s part two. If you haven’t read that one, read it first, after that come back here. I will be reusing the graphic I used back then, but focus on one part: valuable.

I like it being in the middle of all the other facets – simply because without value, all other facets would be quite useless. You can be a very credible source for information on subject X, but when someone is looking for Y, you won’t provide much value, no matter how accessible it is.

Relating this to email marketing and the ‘less is more’ principal, it’s all about knowing what content to deliver through the email channel to the end user. You might be talking about the same product, but depending on the audience you could talk about it in three or more ways, making it desirable for all audiences.

Is it worth sending three separate messages about a single product, yet in different forms/sizes? If it will pay out in results, then yes! Don’t forget that knowing who you deal with will boost all results – simply because it will be easier to be relevant. Being relevant however is not the whole story.

Delivering the right story (relevance) doesn’t mean it will provide value straight away. Timing is everything in this case: when there is no option to select email frequency, an email should be delivered at prime time and without doubt about its purpose. If the call to action is unclear to the receiver, then you’ve already lost.

People are often paralyzed these days by choices and options. 40 types of spaghetti, 80 types of coffee. Choice was offered as a luxury and diversity thing in the beginning, but now it’s more of a burden than something useful or helpful. Narrowing down choices and making that one thing (your product or service) easily findable will mean the world to the subscribers.

Finally an email that will not eat up precious time but will make its point just like that. Yes, you can provide something valuable with less. Try it once, you will be pleasantly surprised with the outcome.

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GMail accidentally posts interface redesign (video)

Oct. 21 Email Clients 1 comment

Yesterday GMail showed it’s new interface redesign. All content was quickly pulled offline, but screenshots and a video have been saved. New features include contact avatars, an even cleaner interface design and advanced search functionality. The new conversation-part resembles Facebook Messages in a way, but is still true to the new UI design introduced with Google+.

The video (if it still works):

Screenshots:

The interface is getting even closer to the Google+ interface now, which is a good thing for giving end users a consistent experience throughout all Google products. As TechCrunch notes though, no cool features like Hotmail’s recently introduced ‘Scheduled Cleanup’ option.

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It is not ok to start mailing an old list…ever

Oct. 11 Email Marketing Insight, Spam 1 comment

We’re back after about a month of much needed time off! Full of new ideas, experiences and more it i’s now time to return to the writing board. First up I’d like to talk about sending mailings to old lists. I was inspired (or better said, ‘sparked’) for this because of a mailing I received from a company which hasn’t sent me anything in well over a year. There’s a good reason for that: I’ve opted out back in september 2010. Great!

However, using a different name as a new title for their business this company is sending me this new mailing as a newsletter. No asking for my optin, no describing why I’m actually receiving this. From their point of view of course, it is because they have my email address on the list (even though I’ve opted out last year). From my point of view however it’s totally unwanted.

There was a good reason why I opted out last year: the newsletter was a disastrous, all graphic email which didn’t help me at all. If all an email does is fill my inbox, count me out.

Now that they’re back in a new style, they’re not doing any good – actually more damage than good. But that’s something for me to handle myself.

Let’s take a step back and define what an old list is, regardless of the unsubscribes: they should never be mailed again (getting a fresh optin is something for another post…). My take: a list that hasn’t been used for a year or more is old. Even one that you haven’t sent something between six months and one year is on the edge. Why? Here’s why.

People’s attention span is getting hammered (which is bad), while we are getting so many more impressions everyday by electronic devices (smartphones, notebooks, info boards on the streets, iPads, iPods, you name it) which our brain has to digest. If I’m subscribed to about 40 newsletters and receive about 200 emails per month (which is not that many for personal email, actually), I will not remember who you are after 6 months of silence, and totally not after 12 months. Mailing an old list is not ok, seriously.

How to handle an old list then? Throw it away. It will hurt at first, but after that, you won’t remember you ever had it. Got to love that short attention span!

Afterwards, start thinking out a strategy to win people back, and win new people too in the process. It’s a great exercise in your email marketing skills.

PS: bonus points for those who recognize the picture.

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