Email Marketing Fail: Apple vs Apple

The other day I was checking my email and came across an odd scenario. Apple had sent me two emails, 40 minutes apart, with almost the exact same messaging. My first thought, is they had two different email addresses for me, but nope — same one.

Then, when I looked at the emails, you start to see slight differences between the two, and it made me wonder if its an A/B test gone wrong (because you never want the same person to get both — it would look stupid to recipient.. and it did.)

The differences I noticed:

• Subject Lines: “Put an iPad under the tree.” vs “Give iPad this holiday season.”
• Photos: the first email has headphones and a flip cam for the ‘All the Trimmings’ section
• Footer: the first email has two other pieces of messaging that the second email doesn’t — ads for Apple Store app and Financing, along with a mention of Gift Wrapping.

Looking a little closer, because for Apple, they tend to get things ‘perfect’ from the start (minus the whole iPhone antenna thing, or the puck mouse, or G4 cube…), it looks like the replyto address for each was different, with one clearly for Canada, the other, for USA. So instead of me getting just the Canadian version (as I’m in Vancouver), I got both — one with a Financing offer that I couldn’t even use (if I wanted to), because I’m not a USA resident.

This goes back to a key point of email marketing (and marketing in general) where you should focus on sending the right message to the right people, each and every time. Apple clearly knows I’m a Canadian, seeing as I’ve bought an iPod, an iPad, a Macbook and countless Apps and Music from them — each time using my credit card, and selecting “Canada” for country. They have this information, yet didn’t take the time to segment their emails by it, resulting in me getting an offer that I couldn’t possibly take advantage of, even if I wanted to. No doubt, a mistake like this can cause confusion to customers wanting to take advantage financing, who would then seek help from customer service, only to be told that the offer wasn’t applicable to them — thus, wasting the customers’ time and portraying Apple in a bad light.

Then, to add to this problem, they sent me another email — the right email this time for Canadians — but a second one nontheless. When you double up emails with very similar messaging, and on the same day, you’re much more likley to get the recipient to unsubscribe (as its no longer relevant), while at the same time hinting the first email had an issue.

Whether it was an honest mistake, or an ongoing flaw in their email marketing program, this example by Apple clearly demonstrates how email segmentation around the most basic demographics (country) can significantly increase your email’s relevance, and avoid confusion among the recipients.

Comments

About Author