It was the end of February and the Digital Signage Expo was on the horizon, so we decided to do a pain point e-campaign on our Meeting Room Scheduling Solutions. I followed the normal course of events: met with the manager of that department, began the process with my designer,  laid out the graphics and content, and before long it was finalized.

I sat pondering what the subject line of the email should be, not realizing how important that decision really was.  I came up with “What time is our meeting?” It seemed catchy and appropriate to the content. We were ready to roll.  So with a click of a button the email was out there.

Within seconds hundreds of emails were filling my inbox and I started to sweat, every person asking,

“What meeting?”

“Do we have a meeting?”

“I am so sorry but I can’t remember what our meeting is about.”

Our customers were reaching out to their contacts at Advanced asking, “who is Amy Fulton and do I have a meeting with her?”

Worse, many were responding without reading the body of the communication.

What a mess!

Of course, of all days my boss was heading to the NSCA Business and Leadership Conference in Dallas and was up in the friendly skies. I debated on how I should handle this and decided to reply back to each and every person individually.  I apologized for the miscommunication and made it clear that my intent was just to inform them of the meeting scheduling solutions that we offer.  It took me all day.

What had I done?

Our open rate on this email had skyrocketed – almost 40 percent of our client database had opened the email – all based on this subject line! Suddenly new conversations erupted. Four viable leads in need of this technology came out of this campaign, and many responded that they would check out our website for more information. Some said they would forward the message on to the right person. Whatever the case was, doors were opening and people were talking.  I was surprised that we didn’t get a single negative response. Many people thanked me for a good laugh.  It was really amazing how it all unfolded.

Although it was not really a mistake, it was actually, in the end, a very successful campaign. I learned my open rate is based highly on the subject line. This campaign is a series. I will keep you posted on how it turns out. A colleague suggested my next subject line should be…”You missed our meeting.”