The mid-80s were a great time to be an 8 year old.
The TV shows I watched were brimming with every sort of futuristic and sci-fi wonderfulness.
But one thing always made me cringe š¬
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!
Yet…
After heavily using computers and programming them for decades…
I’ve never, ever, ever-ever-ever seen a computer respond with…
“Does not compute!”
Sure… modern user experience writing was a twinkle in the eye back then.
But we were still given something to go on. At least an error code that we could rifle through a wire-bound manual for the explanation.
So… how strange it is to find myself working on a client project and having this eerie dĆ©jĆ 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, 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.”
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 a client. Or worse… drive them away.
So, if you’re ever delving into the wonderful world of email automations…
For your own email list or a client’s…
I encourage you to double-check they’re set up carefully… and well-tested…
So they won’t give Johnny 5 a circuit-frying freak-out!
Ready to build your email list?Ā Go hereā¦
EmailForTheWin.com
Be-de-be-de-be-de-be-de
Chris Milham