What would you do?

Posted by Matt V - @emailkarma | Jan 24, 2008 | 2

Recently on the Email Marketers Club the question was raised;

“My provider had a major issue, where another client’s content was sent to my list, causing a number of my subscribers to get angry and unsubscribe from theme email lists. Should I find a new Service Provider?”

So far the responses have ranged of – get out now and fast – to send your lawyers in – to everyone makes a mistake it’s how you recover from the mistake that matters…

What’s your take on this? Does everyone deserve a second chance or should the current provider get left in the dust?

About The Author

Matt V - @emailkarma

Matthew Vernhout is a digital messaging industry veteran and Certified International Privacy Professional (Canada) (CIPP/C) with nearly two decades of experience in email marketing. Matthew is a trusted industry expert, recognized as the 2019 EEC thought-leader of the year, and speaks frequently at email marketing and technology conferences around the globe.

2 Comments

Anonymous on January 25, 2008 at 18:06

To my mind, even having the ability for content from one customers to be sent to the subscribers of another customer sounds like extremely bad database design. A correctly engineered system should not be able to mix content, no matter what is going wrong.

Mistakes and problems do happen, anyone who has been in business for more than 3 months knows that. In this case it was not only a customer facing problems, but it made the customer look bad to their customers. They may be able to keep my business, but it is unlikely.

I would probably take my lists and my contacts and move somewhere else. There are probably circumstances that would make me change my mind, but the company would have to have a really good, detailed explanation for what happened and what they have done to insure this will never happen again.
Anonymous on January 25, 2008 at 21:29

I’ve got to agree here. There shouldn’t be a way for this to happen. If there is you’re running a Mickey Mouse operation and shouldn’t be in charge of others mail. I’d jump ship.