I received a wonderful email offer today from eWeek. The type of marketing email that illustrates a keen awareness of how to make a complete ass of yourself, diminish your chances of success and ruin an opportunity for developing any relationship.
As this image shows, a snippet from the email, they’ve offered me a free subscription to their magazine. And as you can see, the email says that I’ve been selected to apply because of my industry involvement.
This is all great stuff. But I wonder who this ‘Variable Name’ person is that the email is written to. It came to my email address but I don’t know who Mr. or Ms. V. Name is.
To be fair to eWeek, it’s probably a glitch in their mail merge system or whatever it is they used to prepare the email. Clearly no human being got anywhere near this before it went out. But I wonder how many email blasts did go out to this ‘Variable Name’ character.
I can’t imagine any recipient of this email clicking on the button, unless they didn’t read it carefully. So it probably represents a real waste of an opportunity, and a waste of money. It also means that I’m not likely to treat future emails from eWeek with an awful lot of confidence.
Oh, the email concludes by saying that if I miss the deadline, I may request a paid subscription for $195 per year. Right. Why would I do this when I already have access to eWeek via its RSS feeds?
In any event, let me dig out my credit card, the one with the account that’s held by ‘Mr Variable Name.’ Just in case I miss that deadline.
Neville Hobson is the author of the popular NevilleHobson.com blog which focuses on business communication and technology.
Neville is currentlly the VP of New Marketing at Crayon. Visit Neville Hobson’s blog: NevilleHobson.com.
