From: LenovoSubject Line: Oops - the Lenovo.com site is back up. We've extended Employee Pricing.
Date: Wednesday, December 2, 2009
Sometimes, too much of a good thing can be a problem. You craft the perfect campaign, consumers are eager to find deals and shop, and your website gets overloaded. Then, all the hard work you put into your campaign comes to a screeching halt, and you have to try and figure out how to recover lost sales. Sadly, several retailers experienced "Cyber Monday Meltdown", but how you respond to it can make all the difference.
I'm typically not a fan of the "oopsie" email and I regularly advise against sending apology emails, unless you are going to extend some benefit to the impacted customers and give them a reason to try again. That's why I love this example from Lenovo.
Notice how the subject line and pre-header work in tandem to acknowledge the problem, state it was solved, and promote the extension of the sale. It even clearly lists the date of the extension and reinforces the consumer's benefit. They shortened the email to more of a postcard format, with a very simple call to action. While I can't share numbers, I can tell you the apology email was almost as successful in total sales as the original launch.
When life gives you lemons, make some lemonade.
Comments
This is a perfect example of where campaign throttling features come in handy. Most ESPs should be maintaining settings on their MTAs to limit volume so that specific ISPs' thresholds aren't passed - transparent to the sender so they don't have to worry about it of course.
However, additional throttling at the campaign level can help prevent overloading web sites. Take into account how many hits your site can handle and what your expected response rate is and throttle the campaign accordingly.
The same process can be used to avoid overwhelming call centers too if your campaigns tend to generate customer calls.
Posted by: Rich Bloyd | December 14, 2009 11:30 PM