Merging the IT infrastructure of two companies after an acquisition can be a mess. Also, marketing loves using automated "reminder" emails to potentially increase retention rates. Combine both, and a small mistake on a Saturday morning could be catastrophic.
So, this morning, within a few minutes, I got a few hundreds email reminding me that my free trial of a pro account on HootSuite was expiring. None of them addressed to me, but then the gigantic "To" field of the email, complete with full names, was quite telling of the level of error this was. Hastily, I had to log in to the web interface of iCloud, make a filter rule to send all HootSuite messages to the junk folder, marked everything else as junk mail, and cancelled my HootSuite account in faint hope this will stop the deluge.
It just so happens that, "lucky" me, I wasn't the only one. Many previous Seesmic users, which were "ported" to HootSuite after the acquisition, had the same issue.
Will I forgive the mistake and recover my account after the CEO's apology? Of course not. I never asked to be automatically ported to HootSuite. Moreover, I never asked for a free trial period of Pro, just to be reminded that it expires. This is the same kind of annoying "retention" crap I'm now seeing both Facebook and Twitter do, and it's disgusting. If I didn't subscribe to your mailing list and the message isn't of the highest importance, your automated email is junk and will make me want to avoid your service. My "potential customer" experience isn't a relationship.
Some poor IT guy will get fired for this, but the CEO will remain at the head of a company with a shady marketing scheme, offering a service that Twitter could easily pull their plug. Oh, they're Canadian? So what? Screw them anyway.
Published on November 10, 2012 at 18:56 EST
Older post: Trackpads are the New Trackballs
Newer post: Red Dwarf: Patience