The mid-80s were a great time to be an 8 year old.
TV shows… at least the ones I watched… were brimming with every sort of futuristic and sci-fi wonderfulness.
And sitting on my parents’ lounge floor programming my Sega SC3000 home computer…
Made me a geek waaay before it was cool. 😎
So computers and robots were “it” for me.
But one thing always made me cringe 😬
It felt like they wrote it into every script-writer’s job contract.
And very few robots, androids, or AIs were immune.
Whether it was…
Twiki from Buck Rodgers
KITT in Knight Rider
Even Mr “number 5 is alive” himself: Johnny 5
When something went wrong. When it was illogical. When they couldn’t figure it out.
What did we get?
DOES NOT COMPUTE!
And if you’re Twiki? …
An annoying be-de-be-de-be-de-be-de!
And yet…
After heavily using computers and programming them for decades…
I’ve never, ever, ever-ever-ever seen a computer respond: “does not compute”
Sure…
Modern user experience writing was a twinkle in the eye back then…
But we still got something.
At least an error code that we could rifle through a wire-bound manual for.
So… how strange it is to find myself working on a client project and having this eerie déjà vu feeling…
I could almost hear the robotic “does not compute” ringing in my ears.
You see…
I was auditing an ecommerce client’s email automations.
And was looking at some “goodbye” emails triggered when people haven’t engaged with them for a long time.
It turns out, people who were regularly engaged had in fact been getting the “see ya later” emails!
KITT would be the first to tell you…
“I’m sorry, {{Contact.FirstName}}, that does not compute!”
Now, it’s quite OK for a person to just open an email but not click a link. And that’s fine for being considered “engaged.”
But this does-not-compute logic was saying:
“That’s NOT good enough… you have to BOTH open AND click to be engaged… so off to the bye-bye list you go.”
But… how could this happen?
Well… because you can set up any old “logic” you like… you can go right ahead and set up bad logic if you want.
But, no matter the logic it’s…
Always a PEBKAC error
(Google it 😁)
So…
I inherited a hot, sticky mess of 1000+ people who are “engaged” BUT they’ve ALSO been emailed and told:
“See you later. No more emails from us ever again!”.
As you can imagine…
Getting the logic right when it comes to email marketing automations is super-important.
Otherwise you can end up looking a wee bit silly to customers or worse: driving them away.
So, if you’re ever delving into the wonderful world of email automations…
For your own email list or a client’s…
Make sure they’re set up carefully… and tested…
So they won’t give Johnny 5 a circuit-frying freak-out!
And if you’re getting your own email list off the ground and need a domain for it…
I promote Namecheap as an affliate because I use and appreciate their service. Plus it’s always… cheap!
Be-de-be-de-be-de-be-de
Ready to build your email list? Go here…
EmailForTheWin.com
Chris Milham