5 Minute Usability Tip: If it’s automated make sure it’s also useful
It’s no secret that I’m an absolute believer in personalization and automation and when combined the two tools can make for amazing campaigns, especially in email. However as I’ve said a number of times it’s essential to think through how your campaign logic works and identify people who should be suppressed, opted out or just get a non-personalized message. Tonight’s example comes from an FTD email which, if filled with some content, would be a great sample of relevancy and timeliness but as you can see from the screenshot below that’s just not the case. FTD’s template acknowledges than I have 0 reminders for the month yet the email went out as if I had 20 (or at least 1) leaving me with a big blank message instead of a good branding statement or just an offer.
What FTD should have done here, and what their email even eluded too was encouraged me to setup a calendar of events with a nice graphic email that pushed me right over to their site. They could have even offered to import from outlook or a social media site like FaceBook and really embedded themselves for the future while serving some value up. But instead all I got was a blank email with no events.
