At the time, not all of the companies brought into the fold were also brought in to our existing marketing programs. But I can understand why, when Adobe acquired Omniture on September 15, Adobe would want to introduce itself to Omniture’s customers. I’m just not sure they went about it the right way.

I’m not an Omniture customer. I follow their news because staying abreast of analytics trends is relevant to my industry and to my clients. I’ve downloaded their whitepapers and have possibly attended a webinar in the past several years, but I’m not an Omniture client.

I received a joint Omniture/Adobe email this morning — more than a month after the acquisition — addressed “Dear Omniture Customer,” with the subject line, “Omniture is now an Adobe company.”

It made me laugh. Nope, not a customer. And this is old news. These days, I’m so attuned to stories breaking on Twitter, the thought of sending an email like this out even a few days post-acquisition would be a little beside the point.

But maybe I was being too hard. I examined the email further to determine if there was a more substantive rationale for sending it. Does the Adobe communications team want to whet my appetite with some exciting news, development road maps, or visions of what joining forces with Omniture will mean to me?

Eh…you decide:

By combining Adobe’s content creation tools and ubiquitous clients with Omniture’s Web analytics, measurement and optimization technologies, the company will be well positioned to deliver solutions that can transform the future of engaging experiences and e-commerce across all digital content, platforms and devices.

I read further and noticed that tucked away into the body of the email was this gem:

To best serve our customers, we may choose to integrate Omniture’s contact database, including your information, into Adobe’s database in the future.

Adobe/Omniture just sent me an email announcing that I was officially being opted in from Omniture’s database to Adobe’s database. But without using those words.

Why not just come out and say it? I’m not going to bite.

Clarity of message is such a key part of tech PR. Can we let the buzzwords die once and for all and just talk to people?

In summary: wrong target audience (from a company that should be experts at parsing lists). Incoherent, misleading message. Pointless email.

Thank you for writing to WNYC, New York Public Radio, about this morning’s broadcast of Morning Edition. What you heard was actually a mistake, when we inadvertently broadcast The Takeaway on both our AM and our FM stations at 8:00AM. Fortunately, this went on for only about a minute, before it was caught and corrected. Needless to say, we are embarrassed by this error. As you may know, we are in the process of moving to a new office, with new recording studios. This morning, our regular engineer was over at the new building, learning the ropes, and another person, who was not familiar with the protocol, was over here. Unfortunately, we have to accept that we do occasionally make mistakes, and this is especially true when we are working with new programming.

We appreciate your taking the time to write to us. Often, it is listeners who sound the first alarm when such errors occur.

Best regards,

WNYC Listener Services

Why this customer service email is great:

It starts with a thank you. Thanking me for my email is a simple, but classy, touch. Putting the thank you at the beginning, instead of tucking it away in the body of the email, makes the recipient feel that thanking them is a priority.

It reiterates my specifics. The respondent repeated the reason for my email back to me. That proves she really heard me. (Starting Over fans in the house will recognize this as a move straight out of the Iyanla Vanzant playbook.)

It admits embarrassment. It was such a small mistake (perhaps too small to get huffy about — I didn’t realize this went on for only a minute and a half. By that time, I’d turned the radio off). That’s a humanizing touch. It was just a minute, but they were still embarrassed by it. They have the same high standards that I do.

It shares the details. Perhaps the most amazing part of this reply is that the listener services team member actually told me what went wrong in the studio. That’s a level of detail you rarely get from customer service.

It subtly reinforces my valued place in their community. I love the line, “Often, it is listeners who sound the first alarm when such errors occur.” This goes beyond a simple thank you — it’s as though they were hoping a listener would raise the problem to their attention.

Bravo to the WNYC Listener Services team for providing a textbook example of a customer service email at its finest.

Nope, it really was Bronto, an email marketing software company, calling. (Sorry, Walter.)

After a short conversation where I declined the invitation to participate in a demo but passed along my email address to receive information — why not? I’m always looking for a better way to send emails — the folks at Bronto were strangely incommunicado. Typically, after offering up my email address, I receive information right away.

Not so with Bronto. However, I did receive this about three weeks later:

A few small nit-picks:

1. Our conversation wasn’t really “recent” at the time I received this email. It came nearly 2-3 weeks after the initial call.

2. Why hit me with a “double opt-in” at this stage? I spoke to a real person on the phone. Couldn’t the real person send me a real email with their real name attached to it? (Preferably one that contained information on their service, who I could follow-up with if I was interested in learning more?)

3. Who is Susan? Why is she sending this email? I spoke with a man. If not from the actual person I spoke with, shouldn’t the follow-up have come from “info@bronto.com” or “sales@bronto.com?” The jaded conspiracy theorist interactive marketer in me wonders if Bronto’s “info@” and “sales@” addresses have already been blacklisted by a few servers.

4. Pay special attention to the closing line: “If you’d prefer not to receive email from Bronto, simply ignore this email and you will not be added to our list.”

Then came:

A week later, it seemed that I got what should have been the email I originally expected — the one that should have been sent to me right after my call.

Is it wrong of me to hate seeing my name in ALL CAPS? I know names are placed into these types of auto-emails without human intervention. But caps? A little subtlety, please. YEAH, WE CAN PERSONALIZE! LOOK, WE PUT YOUR NAME IN THERE!

To state to the obvious, I never opted-in to that first email. And, this time, Susan wasn’t around to bring consistency to our awkward interaction:

Who are you? Huh? What just happened?

Look, every marketer sends out a bad email once in awhile. A client insists on using the phrase “click here;” the CEO hated the first stock photo, forcing you to replace it at the last minute; the sales guy demands that you to bump up the font size on his email address to 24-point. There are almost always too many chefs in the email kitchen.

But, need I remind you, Bronto is an email marketing company. This is what they do.

Yipes, Bronto.

Yipes.

Key takeaways from the article E-Mail Marketing May Be All Grown Up, But Marketers Still Have Lessons to Learn include:

• Effective e-mail marketing is more challenging than ever as there are a number of critical factors to consider, including: list quality, content and design, different e-mail providers, changing perceptions of what constitutes as spam, etc.

• Forrester research: 77% of consumers feel they get too many e-mail marketing messages; 72% delete most e-mail without reading it

• Marketers must be more innovative than ever with their campaigns in order for consumers to value their message

• Companies should focus on long-term goals instead of short-term gains, balance user needs with business goals and put campaign measurement practices in place

• Too many marketers still send broadcast e-mail messages instead of customized communications; this can negatively affect a company’s reputation and its ability to reach customers

• Blanket e-mails are ineffective because they have no understanding of you as a customer; relevancy is what truly produces an engaged customer

• Shar VanBoskirk, senior analyst, Forrester Research: “Most marketers today place too much focus on their business goals—sell product, liquidate inventory, drive brand awareness—and disregard the needs of their customers—save money, find a gift, manage loyalty points. No matter how creative or well-timed an e-mail message is, if a user doesn’t find any value in it, the marketing program will be useless to the marketer.”

• At the end of the day, the companies that experience the most success with their campaigns are those that provide their opt-in list with the content their customers care about

The email is fine. But why pay for scroll bar customization? (It’s purple and has arrows that are a tiny bit different from the classic Outlook scroll bar.)

Lesson: If you’re going to pay someone to design and code your email, make sure they focus on the important stuff –especially if the email is going out to fellow marketers who are likely to pick apart its flaws.

2. I signed up to receive more information on the iPhone the same day as Steve Jobs’ famous keynote. Today, I finally received my first email from Apple! Except…

…there was absolutely no information on how or where to purchase the phone.

When I signed up to receive iPhone email updates back in January, I was already sold on the product. In fact, I had already pored over every feature and function that is mentioned in this email. So why email me what I already know? Was I foolish to think that by giving Apple my email address, I’d receive a special offer, or other relevant purchasing information, before the general public? Apple does a lot of things right — but are they *so* big and revolutionary that the give-and-take rules of marketing no longer apply?

To answer my own rhetorical question, I might have to say yes. Because even though I consider this email unsuccessful and unnecessary…I’m still going to buy an iPhone.

Lesson: Give your email sign-ups the respect they deserve. When you make a promise to serve up relevant (and exclusive) information via email, deliver it. Even if you’re Apple.