Everybody in email marketing makes a mistake sooner or later, even people who know better, like EmailLabs. We unintentionally committed four errors in our recent email mini-campaign to encourage clients and friends of EmailLabs and The Intevation Report to nominate us for ClickZ's annual Marketing Excellence Awards. Yes, we goofed.

But, we're also willing to show you exactly what we did wrong so that you don't make the same mistakes in your own campaigns, when revenue and ROI are at stake:

The background: To boost our chances of winning the ClickZ Marketing Excellence Awards in the two categories that EmailLabs and this newsletter (Intevation Report) were nominated in, we sent a special Email Alert to our EmailLabs client mailing list. To save time, we sent basically the same creative in a similar alert to you (our Intevation Report subscribers).

D'oh! We realized we had erred when, among other things, we saw our unsubscribe rate more than double (not many compared to total list membership, but nonetheless more than double the regular unsubscribe rate). Open and click-through rates were also well below normal for the newsletter. Clearly the email didn't sit well with some of our subscribers.

What went wrong:

• We sent basically the same creative to two different audiences. Clients have one set of interests and relationships to the company. Newsletter subscribers have a different set. We tried to talk to two interest groups in the same language. The name in the subject line and email said "EmailLabs," when the core relationship our newsletter readers have is more appropriately with the Intevation Report.
  
• The email alert had no personalization. No reader's name nor indication of his or her relationship to the newsletter.
  
• The creative had no personal touches. We gave readers detailed voting instructions but no personal stories or emotional reasons to encourage them to take this step on our behalf. We didn't make our readers part of the process and connect the feedback we received to the direction of the newsletter.
  
• We didn't give ourselves enough time to think our campaign through thoroughly. Under deadline pressure, we tested the newsletter for deliverability -- HTML, spelling, links -- but not for content. We didn't ask, "Does this email's content provide value to our readers?" If we had run the copy past people who had not seen it before, this flaw would have been obvious.

Regardless of our gaffe, hopefully the story ends happily. We'll find out on June 27 if the Intevation Report will have been voted best B2B Email Newsletter. But, we can guarantee that we have learned from our mistakes. We hope you have, too.

UPDATE: June 30, 2005
EmailLabs Wins 2005 ClickZ.com Marketing Excellence Award
Intevation Report Voted "Best B2B E-Newsletter" by ClickZ.com Readers

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