SPAM SUBJECT
Subject line was "Apology." They actually got me to read most of it and then I felt like I'd been had.
INTCfan
I have been in Australia for the last 2 weeks speaking on Internet marketing and when I got back, I found a mess here at the office, so this letter has two
purposes:
1) An apology to you
2) An explanation, so you can increase your marketing knowledge, and benefit from our mistakes. So consider this an unscheduled newsletter!
We are humble and can admit our mistakes. We always know what we are really here to help you, we are here to test new ideas and pass on the ones
that are successful to you. And when we make a mistake, we want to be humble enough to show you so you can learn from our mistakes to
apply them to your business.
First, on behalf of myself and the staff at the Internet Marketing Center, I would like to offer a most sincere apology to anyone who was offended by
our recent Hawaiian Sweepstakes promotion (the one that was titled "Win $10,000 of my time and a trip to Hawaii!"). We want to thank everyone who
contacted us. We always want to hear your feedback - we learn from knowing what you are thinking.
I would like to take a moment to explain so you can learn what offended people so you can avoid the same mistakes we ran into.
When you are traveling down the road of success on the leading edge, you're bound to hit a bump or two along the way, and hit a bump, we did. Our
promotion generated more compliments and, to our great surprise, more complaints than any other mail-out we have done. People either loved it or hated
it! There was little middle ground. It was a most interesting marketing lesson to say the least.
My job, as an on-line marketing expert, is to stay on the leading edge of marketing techniques and ideas because Internet marketing is changing at a
lightning fast pace and is in continuous evolution. One of the things that keeps us ahead of the competition is that we are pro-active rather than re-active.
I am in the trenches every day, and I have staff who do nothing but keep us on the leading edge of the ever-changing Internet marketing landscape. In
fact, I have two full-time employees who do nothing but test new ideas and techniques every single day to see what works and what
doesn’t.
When Advertain approached me about this new viral marketing technique, I thought it was a good idea… and hilariously funny at the time, as did my
entire staff. So naturally it was my duty to test it out. We did three separate tests of 10,000 people each and it was a huge success… and to top it all
off, we did not receive ONE SINGLE complaint from those 30,000 people – just compliments on it.
Because the test went well, to promote the idea, gain new subscribers, and introduce people to the concept, we, in collaboration with Advertain decided
to launch it to the rest of our subscribers.
We received "thank you" letters and many compliments saying it was a great viral technique and hilarious, but then we also got others that were
absolutely furious, using language and profanity that I have never seen in an email until now. The strangest part was that we took so much flack for
something that: was free, something where people had the choice to either participate or not, and something that showed a new interesting viral
marketing technique we can all learn from.
We rarely receive any complaints on anything we send to our subscribers… but this one got us 100 times more than we have ever received before... a
clear sign that something went wrong.
The most disturbing part was that, as mentioned before, we tested this mailing to 30,000 people and NOT ONE person had a complaint… all the emails
were great compliments loving the idea. But as soon as we launched it to our entire list, the emails started to come in. Since I have been away, I have
not had a chance to investigate this thoroughly, but it is very important. I always teach: test, test, and re-test in everything you do. And I follow the same
rules I set for my clients - we did test, yet something went wrong so I will need to carefully analyze all our data. I will report my findings to you later in
one of my newsletters.
Let me give you a few examples of the complaints we received so you can learn too – some may surprise you.
1) People did not expect us to have some sort of contest or sweepstakes... and thought it was a "cheap or "uncharacteristic" of our style... it cheapened
us?
As explained earlier, it is my responsibility to be aware of all marketing techniques. We emailed 30,000 people to test this before we launched it to
everyone, and we never received one complaint... so we never saw it coming. In fact, if the test results had shown a problem (as they should
have) you would never have received that promotion. I would never send out anything that controversial. However, I did re-read the promotion letter, and I
have to admit when I look at it again, it came across as very "hype", and I was not proud of it. The goal was to show you a new way of viral marketing
and if you wanted to participate you could, but the letter came across as way too much hype. I guess I was just too excited about it at the time.
Hindsight is always 20/20.
2) Some people were offended by the cartoons.
For example, when people would option to pick the scene where the plane crashes into Hawaii (is was done in a fun way, not a serious way), some
people in England thought it was in bad taste and appalling (i.e. the Concord crash recently). We never even considered this – WOW, was it a shock to
have people email us on this. There were a few other sections of the cartoon that also offended a few others. This was not our intention, and we had no
control over the content of the cartoons (that is produced by Advertain). The important lesson to learn here is how humor is in the eyes of the
beholder. The office thought they were super funny, but we did not realize that some were distasteful... and after viewing them from someone else’s
eyes, I can see their concerns and we apologize on behalf of ourselves endorsing this and for Advertain who created it. For those who are wondering,
NO, we have not cancelled the sweepstakes… it is still running. By law we have to complete it and pay out the p
3) People were confused as to why I was charging $10,000 a day for my time. They thought it was ridiculous and that I was making it up.
Yes, people do pay this; it is not a "made up" number. Look at it this way. Take a famous baseball player... they start out making peanuts, but
once their talent is recognized, they get paid millions just a few years later. The same happens in marketing. My fee is based on a very small
percentage of the profit I make for my clients. If I made you a million dollars profit, would you not be happy to pay me 10K? That is exactly why others
do! In comparison, Jay Abraham charges $3,000 PER HOUR.
I also realized in hindsight that many of the new subscribers to our newsletter do not know me, my credentials or my background – which was another
reason that people felt this way. Our regular clients that I have done business with know my rates because I mention them in my Internet marketing
course and on our website – but many don’t know my background and may have thought these rates were fake or ridiculous – which of course causes a
loss of credibility. This is a very important lesson… make sure when you are dealing with your customers or potential clients, if you have something that
may be perceived as unbelievable to the average person, back up the claims and prove them… or you will lose credibility because they may think you
are making it up.
I talk about money a lot, because that’s what "motivates" most people. In reality, money is only a way of keeping score. For me, it’s really about
people… and how privileged I feel to have helped so many. What makes me get up and go to work every morning with a smile on my face is the
enormous satisfaction I get from knowing I have made a significant financial difference in other people’s lives. Let me give you a quick example. Just
recently I was speaking at a conference in Las Vegas. A client of mine by the name of Preston Reuther stood up in front of the audience and told his
story of how he could not even touch a computer before he got my material… and now after 2 years he is making $20,000 a month. He literally
broken down in tears as he was telling his story about how I had made such a difference in his life. Let me say that nothing comes close to
that feeling I got as he told that story– WOW, what an emotional moment to say the least. Not many people
4) Some people were upset because we mailed the promotion twice and thought we were trying to over sell it.
This was a technical glitch on our end – 100% our mistake. If your company employees are to grow, then you have to let your people do their jobs,
accepting that they will make mistakes. One of our newer employees did make a honest mistake by not checking off a critical "checkbox" on our
Mailloop list management software which lead to the problem that anyone using Outlook and a few other email readers saw the email as complete
"garble" (not as a readable HTML message). We were forced to send it again to everyone, as we did not know which of our subscribers could or could
not read it. It was unfortunate, but unavoidable – or so I thought at the time. The lesson here in hindsight is: if you have a mistake in an email, I would not
mail the entire list again (unless it is a critical mistake that can get you in legal trouble). Just respond to the people that asked for it in the correct format
and forget about the rest of the market you missed… it is not worth the complai
5) Some people thought we were harvesting email addresses from their friends.
We did not communicate how people opted-in to the sweepstakes and/or our newsletter effectively in the email, something I wish we had done now as it
created some confusion. To clear up any confusion on how the sweepstakes works, we don’t actually collect ANY email addresses from the
friends/people you send your movie postcard to (nor are we trying to collect your friends’ email addresses like this – that would be unethical). The only
way we would ever add their email to our newsletter subscriber list is if they SPECIFICALLY asked to be on our newsletter list. For example, your friend
you emailed the movie postcard to would have to come to our site to view it, AND then they would have to decide if they wanted to join the sweepstakes,
AND then they would have to make their own postcard, AND then they have to select to be subscribed to our newsletter on the sweepstakes entry form.
In other words they have to REALLY want to be on our newsletter list to get on i
Let’s summarize this email.
The point of this email is that I know there are a lot of people that thought this new viral marketing sweepstakes was great, but I wanted to show you how
others didn't and why they didn't so you don't make the same mistakes we did with your future promotions.
Did we need to write an apology letter to everyone on our list? No. We, of course, apologized to those people that emailed us... but I wanted to apologize
to all those that may have not written us. And for those that thought this was great, I wanted to show you how something that we also thought was great,
that we tested before we launched, could still caused some problems we did not see coming. Yes, the viral marketing technique was a huge
success in the end because so many people did like it (and we will write an article on exactly what happened in the future so you can see exactly
how it worked), but if we were to do this again, we would do it a little differently based on the feedback we got.
With that said, I am very interested to hear what you have to say. What you think is very important and I would really like to know your feelings, so here
is your chance to interact. If you would be kind enough to just drop me a few lines to let me know your thoughts and how you feel, it would be very
appreciated. You can email me at coreyrudl@marketingtips.com or simply hit "Reply" in your email program. Thank you for your thoughtfulness.
So until the next issue, I remain.
Corey Rudl |
