Failure
Back in the day - you know, the pre-internet day - every direct marketer had a sad tale of disaster that had happened to them, or to a colleague: the campaign that got destroyed by a stupid mistake. The mailing to 500,000 consumers - with glittery creative and a great call to action and an irresistible offer - turned out to have been printed with an incorrect postal indicia, and never got to the mailboxes. Or the paper wasn't strong enough and everything got shredded on the way. Or the 800 number was wrong.
Two of the funnier ones from my own world (both someone else's errors, I've escaped disaster thus far):
1. While I was working for a software vendor, we learned that someone hawking breast enhancement surgery on late night infomercials had gotten their 800 number wrong and was giving out ours instead. So our inside sales team started getting calls from people wanting the surgery.
2. A colleague worked at a company that created a very high end brochure to send to potential clients. So high end that it was bound in a really cool metal cover. Except that the edges of the cover were kind of sharp, and the potential clients for their very expensive services were getting cuts when they opened the packages.
NetImperative reports on a more mundane kind of failure: the web site that isn't there when someone clicks a link to respond to your campaign. It's the 21st century equivalent of the botched reply card or incorrect phone number. The numbers in their study are quite shocking: site failure affects three-quarters of campaigns.
How many users can your web site handle? What would it take to make it stop working? If you do large-scale campaigns that use web response forms, you'd better know that. You can start by having a good relationship with your IT director - the kind of relationship that means you'll get honest answers about the issues, and not be told that it will be fine as he or she moves on to the crisis of the day. (There's always a crisis of the day in the IT department.)
NetImperative says only 22% of those surveyed even involve the IT department in their campaigns. No wonder there are so many problems.
Your web site failure will be a funny "I learned my lesson!" tale over drinks five years from now, but when it happens, it won't be amusing. Do your homework. Involve the technical staff. Make sure that your investment pays off by not missing the last step!
Two of the funnier ones from my own world (both someone else's errors, I've escaped disaster thus far):
1. While I was working for a software vendor, we learned that someone hawking breast enhancement surgery on late night infomercials had gotten their 800 number wrong and was giving out ours instead. So our inside sales team started getting calls from people wanting the surgery.
2. A colleague worked at a company that created a very high end brochure to send to potential clients. So high end that it was bound in a really cool metal cover. Except that the edges of the cover were kind of sharp, and the potential clients for their very expensive services were getting cuts when they opened the packages.
NetImperative reports on a more mundane kind of failure: the web site that isn't there when someone clicks a link to respond to your campaign. It's the 21st century equivalent of the botched reply card or incorrect phone number. The numbers in their study are quite shocking: site failure affects three-quarters of campaigns.
How many users can your web site handle? What would it take to make it stop working? If you do large-scale campaigns that use web response forms, you'd better know that. You can start by having a good relationship with your IT director - the kind of relationship that means you'll get honest answers about the issues, and not be told that it will be fine as he or she moves on to the crisis of the day. (There's always a crisis of the day in the IT department.)
NetImperative says only 22% of those surveyed even involve the IT department in their campaigns. No wonder there are so many problems.
Your web site failure will be a funny "I learned my lesson!" tale over drinks five years from now, but when it happens, it won't be amusing. Do your homework. Involve the technical staff. Make sure that your investment pays off by not missing the last step!
posted by John Whiteside at 8/15/2005 08:09:00 AM
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