Deadly sins of email

My inbox is a constant source of cautionary examples. In this case, it’s a textbook case of how not to send email to your customers. 

I got this message from METRO, Houston’s public transit agency (click to enlarge):

Here’s what they are doing right: they are asking customers (I’m a registered owner of their stored value fare card) what they think of the new web site. That’s really great. 

Here are some tactical mistakes: the message comes from “METROLink” and is signed “Thank you, METRO.” Which is about as personal as watching the bus roll by. Email messages should come from human beings. This should have been signed by the director of customer service, or the head of web operations, or the chief marketer. Or the CEO. It screams, “Spam!” And in this case, where it’s coming from a publicly-subsidized organization that depends on public goodwill to keep its support, it’s a good opportunity to put a human face on something that people often think of as “that thing that my taxes pay for” or “the people who can’t get my bus to show up on time.” 

But those errors (all too common, I’m afraid) pale next to the big one. Did you catch it? Look at the message. I wanted to take the survey, so I grabbed my mouse to click the link. 

Oh, wait. There’s no link to the survey. 

At this point, of course, 90% of the people who actually wanted to take the survey think, “Oh, well,” and hit delete. I went to METRO’s home page to see if the survey was there. Here’s what greeted me (again, click to enlarge):

The survey is there. You have to hunt, though; it’s a tiny little text link in the middle of the page, and looks like it’s part of the job fair item. 

I don’t think they are going to get good results from this one. 

So what’s the lesson here? If you’re going to send an email to customers, make it personal. Sign it with a person’s name. Explain why you’re writing; do people know that METRO has a new web site? (I didn’t.) Tell the story: “We launched our site, and we’re proud of it, but we want to know if it’s working for you…”

And if you want them to do something, make it easy: give them a link. Give them more links if they have more options. 

Finally: test it. I have to believe there was no testing of this; if it had been sent to anyone, the first thing they would have said was, “Where’s the damn survey?” You can make bonehead mistakes no matter how good you are (I certainly have made my share). But testing will catch an awful lot of them.

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