When Email Marketing Goes Bad

Email marketing can be a business's best friend. Keeping in touch with your customers and promoting special events and new product releases are just a few of the perks email marketing can provide. But that same medium of communication can quickly turn into a "frenemy" (you know, a friend/enemy).

Customers are quick to judge if mistakes are made. Take for example the email below. Can you see the mistakes? (For those of you who are reading this on a phone, the mistakes are highlighted in the image at the end of this blog.) 

Even before I can get into the meat of this email, the first line contains some Chinese lingo I do not understand. I can guess that the word is "IT'S," but what if it isn't? Maybe this company meant to put in a different call to action. Searching Google tells me this symbol is associated with weights and measurements. 

The bigger point is, do I (or does any customer) want to trust our personal data backup to a company that can't send a coherent email? Do I want to do business with any company that does not check to make sure the email is compatible with the major email interfaces out there today? The answer is probably not. 

You, as a business, have just a few precious seconds to capture your customer's attention. Don't waste it on a silly mistake like grammar or incorrect formatting. When creating your email campaigns, it is important to test, test and then test it again to make sure your message comes across crystal clear on all email interfaces or internet browsers. (The only exception would be really old versions of Internet Explorer. For more info on this, see any blog we've ever written, ever.)