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Near the end of Anthill’s first year in business, we made a monumental direct mail stuff-up.
Perhaps giddy with the thrill of sending our very first renewal letter (to the 150 early-adopters who subscribed to Anthill with its launch edition), we made one of the most common mistakes among new DM marketers.
We mixed up our lists.
The result was a letter sent to all subscribers (except the 150 it was intended for) informing them that their subscription was about to expire.
New subscribers, including those yet to receive even their first issue, received this letter. VIPs on our ‘free list’ were also given the hurry-up that it was time to renew.
The phones rang hot with complaints, as did our fax machine.
On Friday, Virgin’s Velocity program made a similar blunder, sending the following note to members well beyond its intended frequent flyers database.
The email is a free upgrade offer to Velocity Gold (“given you came so close to making it on your own”, whatever that means), accompanied by a detailed description of the perks.
Of course, we’re sure that many of the unintended unfrequent flying recipients would have been thrilled, only to have their hopes dashed later that day when the following correction arrived.
While it would be easy to pass judgement on the marketing folks at Virgin for this DM 101 blunder, you can’t help respect the quick turnaround (by big corporate standards) and Virgin’s trademark cheeky sense of humour.
Should anyone follow the links from the original mis-mailed correspondence, they’ll now be greeted by an apology and an offer.
When handed lemons, this is one organisation that clearly knows how to make lemonade (perhaps with a dash of rum, a sprinkling of mint and a Virgin branded miniature umbrella).
When Anthill made its early DM faux pas, way back in 2004, a surprising thing happened. A significant number of people actually renewed, including many of those VIPs on the free list.
This does make me wonder, as veterans of email direct marketing, could Virgin have known about this possible outcome? To make such a big faux pas on Friday the 13th was, indeed, awfully convenient. Could Virgin be pioneering a new technique?
Perhaps we’ve just witnessed a new dawn in marketing – the strategic marketing mistake.
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View Comments
the strategic marketing mistake - Ben-Rowe.com
November 16th, 2009 at 10:50 pm
[...] Article over at Anthill Magazine about Virgin’s blunder this [...]
Leela Cosgrove
November 17th, 2009 at 1:23 pm
Strategic Marketing Mistake: Smacks of ISnack 2.0, doesn’t it?
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Wes Towers
November 17th, 2009 at 2:04 pm
Dishonesty in marketing? No, never…
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Stephen wilson
November 17th, 2009 at 2:14 pm
WTF? I was at the receiving end of this upgrade and retraction. It struck me as 100% inept. There is no marketing upside to this whatsoever.
In particular, there is no “offer” associated with the apology, just a screen of propaganda about how fantastic gold is once you get there.
Whatever marketing experts attribute marketing smarts to this cock-up are belying their own lack of marketing sense. It’s not at all like iSnack2.0. That was a new product sitting on a shelf waiting to be bought. The Virgin Gold Upgrade on the other hand was a gift that was taken back. That doesn’t pique my interest or tantalise — it offends.
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Harold Dimpel
November 17th, 2009 at 2:32 pm
Marketing mistake? yeah right!
Having been a victim to this “mistake” I was very p@#$$%$ to say the least!!
After trawling the web, I could not help notice the disproportionately high number of “similar” blog posts absolving Virgin Blue and putting positive spin on the issue and portraying the “victims” as mean and stingy! Quite alot of the “positive posts” looked like nice “polite” posts along the lines of “get over it, you were not entitled to the offer in the first place….Vigin are great…etc”.
It looks very suspiciously like orchestrated damage control by Virgin Blue who mobilised an army of bloggers to do this “positive” posting. Hell I would have!!
Is it damage contol of carefully mobilised PR?
I can’t believe that over 50% of the posts were excusing Virgin! This totally goes against traditional consumer outrage! Is Virgins brand loyalty that good? If a retailer advertises a price or promotion incorrectly, they are obliged to honour it. Why is Virgin not doing the same in this case?
Another thing, there is no such thing as bad PR – look see even I am writing about Virgin Blue and this will elevated their rankings in Google etc through syndicated linkages etc….
Clever move Virgin Blue…I think you have invented a new marketing channel….
(For the record I still fly with Virgin Blue) and have as yet NOT upgraded to Gold membership.
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Elizabeth Ball
November 17th, 2009 at 3:34 pm
Well, Virgin IS the master of marketing, but it does happen.
I just did it yesterday, accidentally managing to send my November horoscope newsletter to my suppliers list instead of a gift update. The funny(?) thing is that I had a higher open rate from the newsletter than the update. It shows if people know your brand, they will look out for your emails…
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Bambi Gordon
November 17th, 2009 at 5:56 pm
IMHO it is ludicrous to suggest that it was a deliberate ploy. If marketing is about connecting your brand with your most ideal customers than this would be a #fail – regardless of 50% ‘forgiving’ Virgin Blue for the mistake.
It seems obvious that someone just pressed the send button to the wrong list – something that is very easy to do and is obviously embarrassing. Well done to them for getting onto it within 3 hours with another mass emailing.
I agree that the current page does not have an Offer. It looks to me as if they have simply added a quick disclaimer at the top of the existing text on the gold page…Text that looks the same as before the mistake and is simply there to inform people as to what is a gold membership.
Though – a quick special offer would have been a good marketing tactic.
As far as Virgin Blue having carefully orchestrated PR, I posted what I thought at the time. I was not contacted by VB. It was just my honest opinion – and still is.
With regard to this being a ’strategic’ decision…LOL. Not only is it not marketing,evenif it was it would be a tactic…not a strategy.
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VirginBlue shows exactly how NOT to email your customers | Doing Words | Helping startups tell their story
November 17th, 2009 at 6:13 pm
[...] effects of that email are still rippling through trade press, online media, Twitter and the blogosphere and will probably be in the weekend’s papers when [...]
Kim
November 18th, 2009 at 3:29 pm
To anyone who undertakes large scale email marketing on a regular basis, you’ll KNOW this would definately have been a mistake. We’ve ALL made them. More than once.
But this sort of mistake often offers an opportunity – a silver lining.
When you ADMIT a mistake, people tend to be pretty forgiving. Most businesses will do anyone other than admit a mistake.
Many. many years ago I worked for a large telecommunications company, back in the days when there was only Telstra, Optus and 2-3 other players.
Our tech team got a tad excited one day and ACCIDENTALLY “churned” a bunch of people from Tesltra to us. And by a bunch, I mean many thousands. These were people who already had their long distance with us, but due to some “regulatory stuff”, they were technically still with Telstra. And before we churned them, we needed a signed form we didn’t yet have.
After we got over the panic, we asked Telstra to take them back. Which they couldn’t without the signed paperwork WE should have had before churning them to us.
Back to the panic. Our only option was to send a letter of apology to them all, explaining our mistake. We had to send them a form to churn back – but we of course also pointed out how much cheaper we were than Telstra.
We braced ourselves for outrage. Angry calls. Complaints to ombudsman.
Instead, we got MANY calls to the Customer service centre THANKING us for being honest about our mistake. People waxed lyrical about how rare it was for a big company to own up.
And literally almost NO-ONE bothered to “churn back”.
Why do I tell this story?
Sometimes a mistake is a mistake. We all make them, and we will all continue to make them.
ADMIT IT to your customers, and maybe it won’t turn in the big disaster it could be. It could even prove a bonus.
And as for Virgin, it may sound simplistic, but for my two cents, they should have honoured the offer. I guarantee, with a bit of creative thought, they would have been able to reap unexpected benefits, despite the ‘cost’ – and made a bunch of people very happy, making them fantastic brand advocates.
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Leela Cosgrove
November 18th, 2009 at 5:02 pm
Wow … some people are REALLY angry about this … why?
I was also a “victim” of this – got the upgrade to Gold email, then the takeback email.
So what?
They made a mistake?
Or even if they did it on purpose … who cares?
Chill … it’s not that big a deal!
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Stephen wilson Reply:
November 18th, 2009 at 6:10 pm
OK, compared with my dog dying or my turbo charger blowing up or global warming, this is indeed no big deal. But in the context of this thread, it is certainly an exciting topic isn’t it? I would have said that debating whether SMEs should have logos or not is an even slighter issue, but that didn’t stop you!
I do find this caper quite interesting. A supposedly well-equipped, customer-focussed and market-savvy organisation makes a huge blunder, and unceremoniously withdraws the mistaken offer. Then some marketing people debate whether this was a ruse or not. For people who profess to know about marketing and who pass judgement on Virgin Blue, for or against, it is interesting whether those marketeers can make sense of this issue or not. It’s a nice test.
So yes, I am scrutinising the issue and, more importantly, the various responses. I wouldn’t say I’m angry, but I’m not impressed by the quality of some of the analysis.
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