Melon Corporate Blog
Forbes.com’s Four Email Marketing Blunders ... in One Campaign
HTML emails are a notoriously inconsistent technology and without proper quality control can be prone to errors. Every html email campaign is made up of several intricate elements where even a one character mistake can result in a significant error such as a broken link.
An email arrived in our inbox on Thursday 11 December 2008 which provided us with a good case study as to how easy it is to make a multitude of errors in an email campaign - even if you are a very large established company like Forbes Publishing.
Forbes distributed an email campaign that advertised a competition whereby entrants could win a skiing holiday and a diamond pendant. This was a decent prize considering there was no purchase necessary to enter and all one had to do was register to be entered into the draw - a simple process in theory.
The email however contained several errors that made it difficult to work out what the campaign was about and how to get to the destination competition entry page.
Error 1 - Email Unreadable in Outlook 2007
The designer(s) created an email that utilised beautiful rich imagery, clean crisp colors and contained a clear message - we think they wanted the email to appear like the image below:
However users of Microsoft Outlook 2007 didn't see the above - they instead saw the following:
Users of Microsoft Outlook 2007 who received the email were unable to see the background image which resulted in the email appearing as an odd collection of illegible words on a white background. The text also didn't render in the correct size.
Microsoft Outlook 2007 makes use of the Microsoft Word rendering engine to display HTML emails - this rendering engine has limited support for HTML and CSS. Furthermore the Word rendering engine doesn't support background images and does not support animated GIFS.
In general Outlook 2007 fails to adequately render a whole variety of other important html/CSS elements.
Error 2 - All Image Email & No Online Version
This email campaign relies entirely on the background to deliver the content of the email.
An all image email is poor practice as it does not take into account the large amount of people who elect to block images on incoming HTML-formatted messages in their inbox.
Having images disabled on one's personal preferences or due to default settings makes this email appear as one large broken image.
Many email programs default to images off and some don't even display the alternate text
There is also a lack of a ‘view in browser' button/link. This online link would enable recipients to view the flawless image in a browser regardless of any html rendering problems.
Error 3 - Broken Click-Through Link
Assuming users were not using Outlook 2007 or had their images switched off they may have actually seen the offer and wanted to enter.
However on click through they would have arrived at an error page.
How did they get this wrong? The campaign essentially only has one link!
An error like this is inexcusable and makes the company appear lightweight and amateur.
Error 4 - Content Inconsistencies
Despite the broken link in the email the Melon Team was able to work out the ‘proposed' click-through page.
At first glance all seems ok however on closer inspection the following was found:
Click-through entry page
Html email
How many differences can you spot?
Consistency here obviously is a problem.
Click-through page: "getaway"
Html email: "get-away"
Click through page and html differing upper case and apostrophe use.
Where to from here?
At the bottom of the email a note states: You are receiving this email because you registered at Forbes.com LLC. and signed up to receive third party emails To manage your preferences or change your delivery address, please click here
I suspect this email was put together by a third party that legitimately accessed the Forbes.com list. However the email's "from field" was "Forbes.com" and the reply to address was .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address). From the users' perspective this email and all its errors related to Forbes.
Forbes may have been sloppy with with respect to reviewing third party emails thoroughly - and their brand has paid the price.
This case study demonstrates how easy it is to ruin even a simple html email campaign. Errors resulting from lack of thoroughness *will* get noticed, impact the desired outcome of the campaign and negatively impact the brand.
HTML emails are now a well established marketing and communications medium and there really is little excuse for anyone, let alone a large publishing company to get it so wrong.
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