Of Emails and Staying in Contact – Part 3
I am re-visiting this topic because of an incident that happened recently.
I was talking to someone about a change to their site, and commented I had not received any notification of the changes; to which they replied that they had sent out emails. A quick check showed that I really had not received the email, and had not been receiving their updates for several months!
So what had gone wrong? The answer was that they had sent an email out about 4 months previously saying that they were moving their mailing list to a new mailing list manager, and that people needed to re-signup as the software required authorisation from the destination email address.
(Good practice as it reduces the risk of people maliciously signing up other people).
However I had either not read the email or read and forgotten to act on it, so I was not on the current mailing list.
So how could this situation be avoided?
customer:
- Read all admin emails carefully, especially if they are marked as important
- Act on changes to contact details, mail methods, etc.
- Check periodically that you are receiving the emails you expect to – if a company normally mails yo monthly and you don’t hear for a couple of months, check and see if there is a problem.
admin/company:
- Keep important updates such as change of address/contact method/etc separate from normal communications
- Mark them as important/urgent so that customers know it is required reading
- Consider splitting communications into 2 channels – routine and important
- If moving email delivery methods, send follow up emails via old method once change is implemented to catch anyone who missed first communication.
Remember, as I said in my earlier posts – it is about creating and maintaining a 2-way line of communication, it benefits neither side if the lines of communication get broken.
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This Blog is a reflection of some of my views and experiences of The internet and Internet Marketing