The Email Wars

Yes Virginia there is no Santa Claus… and while we are at it there is not an email marketing fairy sitting over your shoulder at work either. Am I sure you ask? Well if anyone had a magic fairy it would be the marketing machine of IKEA. I have seen free boats in NYC to Brooklyn, Cars, Ads, Online and everything else they do rock and actually be creative in many places. But what bit them the other week… email personalization. 

I am fairly confident that I have covered this quite a few times as it is one of the trickiest beasts out there. Many of you might think… “Why is this so tricky? It is just a variable you associate with a subscriber data point that exists in your system that dynamically loads that HTML, offer, copy, image, subject line, link, etc into the email one at a time at a rapid rate of speed.” I hear you there but do you truly feel that is is an easy event? What have you forget when loading the coal aboard the express train to Hades? 

Have you Remembered: 

1. To cleanse you List? Do you have the right segments for your data targets? 

2. Have you taken the time to audit some of your subscribers to make sure you have data fields? 

3. Have you run your data points through a system to check for possible missing data wit some subscribers? 

4. IF you have the possibility of missing data or no data, Do you have a no DATA if/then rule written or configured so that any chance of a failed personalization attempt will be thwarted by the rule.

5. Have you tested to your inhouse test controlled list? Test it again

6. Will you do a controlled drop to small burst of subscribers to make sure that data handlers are inserting the attributes of your personalization goals every time and in real time? 

7. Will you PLEASE not drop to everyone at once and throttle your volumes to rates that will not cause people to have any dropped data. I use 10% of list size controls when I do it. Also if it is a killer campaign you also can keep your bandwidth of your servers in check for the pages that you are directing people to. 

I used IKEA as a target as if you see the subject line… they failed. But as long as tey learned from it and find what went wrong for the next time, then they succeeded.

Go fail, but learn.