Oct 25, 2015

Anaheim Ducks Email Program

I've been on Anaheim Ducks match only once in March '13. But I still get their newsletter and its schedule and overall approach doesn't really work for me.

It's enough to mention it took them 7 months since my initial game visit to sent me the first email:


And what's wrong with their pre-header? What's the problem to invest some devs time into putting something at least readable here?

Another weak point of their email program is focusing only on tickets. Guys, most likely there's much more people interesting in the team than people who're gonna visit Honda Center, isn't it? Why not to try to tell me about team-related content and news so I can consume them on your website rather than Youtube etc?

Oct 23, 2015

Why Do You Expect ESPs to Provide You With Any Reasonable Service Level?

When speaking at the MailCon conference last week I was talking about the fact that ESPs mostly don't have an idea how much time it takes them to deliver an average email of their customer. And of course they don't want to share that lack of knowledge with their customers - that's why you never see a graph on delivery time in their beautiful interfaces.

Today I was signing up with an ESP, and it was funny to see "Our email will arrive within 5 minutes" during their sign up process.  My first thought was - "Oh, why to be so cautious?". But then an email arrived with a few minutes pause.

If ESPs can't guarantee their own delivery time for transactional email on one of top 3 mailbox providers - why do you expect them to provide you with any reasonable service level?
Received: from smtp1012.usndr.com (smtp1012.usndr.com. [185.18.53.46])        by mx.google.com with ESMTPS id q13si4359319wiv.18.2015.10.23.04.05.41        for <andrey.sas@gmail.com>        (version=TLSv1.2 cipher=ECDHE-RSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256 bits=128/128);        Fri, 23 Oct 2015 04:05:42 -0700 (PDT)...Date: Fri, 23 Oct 2015 11:03:02 +0000

Oct 22, 2015

When Personalization is Totally Possible But Ignored

I'm pretty sure most of the worlds largest railroad companies don't use any data on their customers for email campaigns. At least I've seen French SNCF  and Russian RZD sending me only non-relevant campaigns only.

How does their average email look like? Here're the deals on routes I'm not interested in. Here's a new train to be introduced on the other part of a country. Etc...

But these companies are of the ones that know most about my travel habits, cities I'm visiting, my seasonal behavior and so on - all of this because I was buying tickets from them for years!

What do they know?

  • where I'm likely to be at this point of time (based on my latest trip)
  • what are my regular routes and destinations
  • what kind of fare I usually use - economy, business, first class
I'm not even going to mention my age, gender and other personal data I shared with them when buying tickets...

All of that gives a great opportunity to provide me with a really personalized and therefore successful offers which will make me wish to use railroad instead of other means of transportation.

Not Convenient Email Confirmation Flow

Last week I has been setting up an account with my cell phone service provider. I was kinda amazed when after filling in a sign up form I has been asked to provide a code from an email in order to confirm my email address.

Is it really 2015?

Here's the list of the step a person should take to confirm his email:

  1. Understand that he has not to click as usual but to follow a different flow.
  2. Find a code in a very long text of the confirmation email. It isn't even highlighted with bold or something!
  3. Copy the code in the clipboard.
  4. Find a tab in a browser with the page of the cell phone service provider. It isn't that easy as many people keep dozens of tabs opened.
  5. Paste the code into the input field.
  6. Press 'Submit' button.

As a result we have 6 actions needed instead of 1. But why? Because you really have to do it so the service provider just doesn't really care about your convenience.

P.S. At this time I'm speaking with this exact cell phone provider regarding guiding their email efforts. Hopefully I will be able to improve their email marketing soon :)

Oct 14, 2015

Linked Has Broken its translation system for emails

Seems like something has gone wrong with emails translation system at LinkedIn:


Oct 7, 2015

Email Address Bounced Back? Here's an Alternative Way to Deal With That

In a great blog post at Word to the Wise blog we're seeing a not so frequent approach to processing email bounces. As a shop customer the blogger has received a sticker on her delivery bag asking for an email update because it has bounced. What an example of not so common friendly email marketing! :)


Oct 6, 2015

Double Opt-In? Never Heard Of!

Duolingo language learning website has asked me for an email address and sent me a welcome email soon after. Despite the fact I've never clicked on this welcome email I've got another one later. I'm pretty sure it will result in deliverability issues later when (if?) this project will grow.

Oct 3, 2015

Gmail Has Been Erroneously Assigning Emails to Wrong Gmail Accounts

I've got 2 Gmail accounts I'm logged in at the same browser - a personal one and a work one. So these are 2 different accounts and I have to switch between them in order to see appropriate emails.

But few minutes ago I've mentioned in my work account an email intended to arrive into my personal account!



What does make me think it's a Gmail fault but not something else?
1. Technical headers of the emails show no link with my work account. The headers are saying it was intended and delivered to my personal account.
2. There's no active forwarding or mail fetching rules that might result in this on both personal and work accounts.
3. I'm seeing more that one erroneously delivered email.
4. Those problematic emails are available from different devices.

As a result it makes me think there was a bug in Gmail, and it lasted at least for a few hours.

P.S. I've seen the same failure again on 15/Oct. So probably the problem lasts.

Oct 1, 2015

Yes, Uber Really Need an Email Marketing Manager

Today I've applied to an email marketing manager vacancy at Uber. Their jobs website was extremely slow and almost non-responsive.

Anyway the most important thing about the process was a confirmation email I've got soon after the application. It's really funny to see how it looks like taking into account key requirement for the job - make sure everything works fine both on desktop and web environments.



What are the flaws?
1. Too small to read comfortably.
2. Friendly From doesn't exist, as a result I're getting an email from "no-reply".
3. Too big useless indents.

That's clear that's not one of the most important Uber emails, but why don't you try to deliver your best at every email?

P.S. You could check my previous posts and a good <LINK> and not so good <LINK> examples of Uber emails.