Virgin Media newsletter snowballs, burying customers with unwanted emails


Userlevel 7
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The classic mistake when emailing a large number of people is to include all of their addresses in the cc: field rather than the bcc:
Doing that means that everyone gets to see everyone else’s email address.
Which is fine if you don’t mind complete strangers (including perhaps spammers, fraudsters, and pushy sales people) knowing that you’re a subscriber to the newsletter and how to contact you.
But Virgin Media didn’t make the cc: blunder. Instead, it screwed up in a different way.
 
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Userlevel 7
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Hi Jasper! I think this is funny but not according to some...
Let me illiterate as DavidP said big Goof up for ISP...
Thanks ...
Sherry
Userlevel 7
Yeah.. this was a HUGE goof up, especially for an ISP!  I know someone who was affected, and he/she verifies that the amount of email to be deleted from the inbox was immense.
Userlevel 7
Badge +56
This is a pretty rookie mistake.  I can't imagine an experienced email marketer screwing up this badly.
Userlevel 7
Well now, David...fancy that...what a small world it is...but I think you must be referring to little ol' me...;)
 
Indeed, I think that I must have cleared nearly 500 emails from inbox due to that...and it took Virgin some 45 minutes to react...and in that time you would not believe how dumb some people can be...we had people email everyone to stop emailing...doh, we had people indulging in free advertising...anyone need a plumber or builder...have a few offers I can pass on to the interested, and apparently Liz Hurley uses Virgin (oxymoron if I every heard one...;)).  There were even emails about potential litigation against Virgin, and a particularly nasty line if personal attacks on Richard Branson...which I cannot repeat here...as I know there are ladies reading this thread.
 
Suffice to say that it was most entertaining for a while...especially from the perspective of what it says about human nature...it is a real jungle out there.
 
Well, hope that you enjoyed the first hand experience? :D
 
Regards
 
 
Baldrick

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