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July 5, 2006 12:03 AM
Broken: Conference dis-invitation
Terry Jones writes in:
I received an email inviting me as a VIP guest to the "Email Insider Summit", which I thought would be interesting to attend. Shortly after receiving the invite, i received an email with the text below:
Dear Terrell:We apologize if you received an email from MediaPost earlier today inviting you as our VIP guest to the Email Insider Summit.
That email was intended to be sent to a list of the 50 top brand marketers in the industry, that have already agreed to attend the event. The email below is the email you were intended to receive...
Being invited and then dis-invited to an event is definitely broken.
[Especially broken, in my opinion, is dis-inviting Terry Jones, founder of Travelocity - an Internet VIP if there ever was one! -mh]
Maybe the first email was a mistake. Disregarding that they shouldn't have made one, how would you prefer that they remedy it?
This isnt broken in the fact that maybe a computer glitch sent this email to everyone on there list instead of just the 50. It is broken that the founder of Travelocity dosent qualify as such a big shot.
Definitely broken!! If this were me, I would probably be so offended that I wouldn't go even if they paid me.
My thought is this: is it possible that the company was trying to get 50 great people to attend as VIPs and didn't want to go through the trouble of contacting them all individually and then making extra contacts when some of the first 50 declined. That could be very time consuming. So is it possible the thinking was to send a mass e-mailing to great people, and the first 50 who respond are the "winners"? Probably not - just a thought though. Surely they would not do that?
what is really broken is this summit. what a bunch of marketing gobbledy-guk.
"...to share leading edge information and experience..."
"...you can surround yourself with the most though-provoking minds in the industry..."
Oy vey!
I'm surprised nobody has commented on the fact that the conference is on email marketing, and they screwed up their email marketing for the summit.
How much credibility does your conference on email marketing have when you can't get your own email lists straightened out?
>Phil: "This isnt broken in the fact that maybe a computer glitch sent this email to everyone on there list instead of just the 50."
How would that not be broken? Last I checked, computers did what people told them to do, however mistaken or unintended the bugs and errors in their code. The 'glitch' is broken, their handling of it is broken, and Carlos is right: An e-mail marketing conference that can't properly manage their e-mail is DEFINITELY broken.
Of course, the entire e-mail 'marketing channel' to me is entirely broken by the very existence of spam. Even the supposed 'opt in' marketing e-mails go straight to the trash along with all the pEn15 ENLAARGEEMEENT!!! spam. If the conference attendees want to make their e-mail marketing effective, step one is to help destroy spam. Step two is to wait for a generation or two for the current target demographic to get over being bombarded with useless, untargeted crap messages and be replaced by a new target demographic.
I, for one, have a mighty hard time thinking of them as any different from spammers themselves.
Hoki and Carlos have very good points.
Besides, how can it not be broken when it's addressed to "terrel"? How can you get "terrel" from Terry Jones?
Here is the broken-est part: copy says "That email was intended to be sent to a list of the 50 top brand marketers in the industry, that have already agreed to attend the event."
So, these 50 already have agreed to attend, why send them an invitation AFTER THE FACT? Anyways,
Terrel, dude, you obviously just ain't cool enough for that room, you may have just slipped to number 51, so better get your act together man.
Oh, man, this is wrong on so many levels! Even the start, where they dis Terrell by spelling his name with a lower-case T, then proceed to tell him he's not one of the top 50, so nyah, nyah, nyah. Poorly handled and screwed up. What's broken is their system. Just be glad you don't have to sit through the rest of the debacle.
BTW, Terry can be short for Terrell, no?
Reading the first sentence gives the impression that they don't know to whom they sent the initial email: "We apologize *if* you received an email..."
Again, makes you wonder what kind of expert advice you'll get from these jokers.
Oh, brother.
People make mistakes. Companies make mistakes. I make mistakes. I say that the "un-invite" is perfectly reasonable and practical!
NOT BROKEN AT ALL!
To extend an invitation, then summarily recall it via e-mail is reprehensible. On further reading, the entire intent of the eMailInsider Summit is repugnant.
Thank you, Terry for having good manners and sharing.
Let us look for Bill McCloskey in the future, and bombard him with the outpouring of gratitude that he so richly deserves for hosting, in a tranquil setting, a conference of great minds that can further inundate us with unwanted email (SPAM). (Channel marketing)
MediaPost's email Insider Summit = Broken
Disinviting "terrell" as not one of the 50 = compound fracture
Comments on this entry are closed
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Or the broken part is sending an email inviting the top 50 marketers who have "already" agreed to attend.
Posted by: kevin at July 5, 2006 12:21 AM