As Marketer's, we all know the rewards that come with personalizing our messages. Higher open rates, higher click-through rates, higher conversions...etc. This recent e-mail from Best Buy though, reminded me of the risks that come with personalization as well:
As you can see from the e-mail above (if you can read the small print), the "As of 0" and the "will expire on 0" look a bit odd. This is because my reward points already expired. The point of the e-mail though was to remind me to use my points BEFORE they expired.
To make things worse, when I clicked the "click here to download your certificates" link in the e-mail, this is what popped up on my web browser:
This unfortunate error should remind us as marketer's that we should always have logic/check points incorporated into our processes to help prevent these types of errors. In this case, I'm guessing there was a "timing issue" between when my points expired and when the e-mail was sent (obviously, the e-mail should have been sent first).
OK. Now let's get real. Even with every conceivable logic/check point baked into your processes, there's bound to be the occasional "uh-oh" that slips through the cracks. The point is, if you're going to be sending out automated/personalized communications, it's imperative that you have some logic/check points incorporated into your process to help minimize these types of errors. If you don't want to spend the time and effort to include these processes, I suggest you don't personalize your messaging AT ALL because (in my opinion) it's worse to personalize incorrectly than not personalize at all.
P.S.
I don't mean to pick on Best Buy. It just turned out that I received this e-mail shortly before writing this blog post. It's likely that Best Buy does have logic/check points baked into their marketing processes and this e-mail was the unfortunate "uh-oh" that slipped through the cracks.
