Did the EEC spam its members? Ken Magill certainly seems to think so. Here’s what really happened:
in celebration of Earth Day the eec thought it would be nice to give something free to our subscribers (just like we did when we gave away free dice from SubscriberMail during the holidays 2 years ago). We decided to go with one free issue of VIV magazine. We chose this because it both demonstrated how email can extend into the digital world even further and because it is an all “green” publication.
Sadly, when the service message was set to send, notifying people their eec gift was ready for review, a few things went awry:
- People received two or more emails with this notification
- The context of the eec Earth Day gift was left off the copy
While no one’s information was rented or sold to any other company, admittedly, the perceived recipient experience looked pretty poor.
Source: EEC blog
Now, we all know that Ken Magill likes to post controversial articles and he’s not afraid to spread gossip either, but he does have a point in his article: VIV Magazine had no business sending emails to the EEC list: EEC members never opted in to receive emails from third parties (it doesn’t matter that the email was announced) and the offer (a digital woman’s magazine) was completely irrelevant to a large part of its member base (a gift that would have been of value to all EEC members would have been eg. free access to one of their reports/studies).
However, let’s not make this any bigger than it is. As far as I’m concerned, this was a mistake and I’m willing to forgive them for it.
Jeanniey has done and is doing wonderful things with the Email Experience Council and I would hate to see the EEC lose credibility over this.
And to answer Ken’s question: Jeanniey assured me that the email addresses of EEC members were not added to Zinio’s database.
You can read Ken’s article here.
Be Relevant 
Tamara, I agree that this isn’t a huge deal. Things like this happen. Ken is always a bit testy, snarky is his way of life. But he does have a very good point: if you are an expert, or claim to be one, you have to hold yourself to a higher standard.
Our marketing department is just like any other, they work hard and make a little slip up from time to time. But I am extra hard on them, is it fair? Maybe not, but we are an email marketing company, so we just HAVE to do it right. You just can’t do anything stupid or you lose your credibility.
Some one at the EEC should have said, “Wait, is this the right thing to do? – are we practicing what we preach?”
Honestly, what was the goal here? Was it to give EEC members an earth day gift? If so, it was a very poor choice, quite a reach for an explanation. Or was this more of self serving agenda? I think that’s the real question, was the use of the EEC list co-opted to get some press for one of Jeanniey’s clients?
Tamara,
I kind of have to agree with Ken on this one… the new “spam” is irrelevant messaging, and the message sent to me (three times) was pretty irrelevant. I did recognized it for what it was, and didn’t complain about it (JHD in this case), other then to let them know I got duplicate copies. Cross pollinating lists like this can really hurt your reputation when done wrong, especially when branding is not carried across the different mailings.
However I do agree with you on the fact the EEC has done some really cool things, but as “leaders” your held to a higher standard.
Here is my take on how it should have gone down…
* The messages should have been sent using the “From” for the EEC, not the Zinio system
* It should have been branded EEC.
* There should not have been three copies, with two different content pieces, if this was a one off mailing.
* Messages should have been Gender neutral, or better targeted…
I totally agree that the choice of the gift was a very poor one. VIV magazine is owned by Zinio, and Jeanniey is Zinio’s CMO – you do the math…
I also agree that being a thought leader – and in this case a organization that promotes email best practices – you need to hold yourself to a much higher standard. Because if the EEC goofs up like this, they are basically telling marketers that it’s okay to do this and it jeopardizes the credibility of the eec.
Like I said, I’m a big fan of the eec and I’m pretty sure they got the message and will thread more carefully in the future.
Totally agree with Tamara and the others on this one – this was a really badly thought out piece of Email Marketing. It seriously damaged the credibility of the EEC. To cap it all off, there was no unsubscribe on the VIV mailer – this is the no.1 email faux pas! It also should have had some lead-in copy saying it was from the EEC, with some minor branding.
If that was the case, I would’ve given it a chance and dismissed it as poorly targetted.
Why simply not ask the readers who would like to receive the magazine? In an age where list feedback is key, sending a women’s mag to men shows this wasn’t thought out? Segmentation was non-existent here.
I like Jeanniey’s work…but they’ll need to do some serious legwork to recover from this.
Tamara,
If the email addresses of EEC members were not added to Zinio’s database then is very strange to see that those emails has been send out using an other email marketing system than that used by EEC.
I admire Jeanniey’s work and love all her articles but this sound very strange.