Nick Carter, the founder of AddressTwo, explained one of the most successful ways to use his product. The secret? Make a mistake.
For the uninitiated, AddressTwo is CRM for Small Business. It’s a web-based tool for managing your list of customers, prospects and contacts. You can use it for many things, but one of the most popular features is the ability to send bulk email marketing messages. Here’s Nick’s explanation:
However, Carter will be the first to admit that email marketing is not easy. The majority of bulk emails go unread. It’s incredibly challenging to write clear, compelling messages that make people want to click and learn more. Two of his customers, however, independently discovered an incredible technique for generating responses: accidentally send a test message to everyone you know.
When you accidentally send out a message that just says something like “test” or “blah blah blah”, you get all kinds of responses. People write back to make fun of you, or to tell you that you sent the test message, or even to complain.
Nick Carter made it clear that this is user error, not a design problem with his software. But nevertheless, the story illustrates just how successful you can be by making mistakes.
Should your email marketing campaign include the occasional test message “accidentally” sent to everyone in your list? Perhaps this is a strategy worth considering! As we’ve seen before, failure is the secret to success. Screwing up is sometimes the best way to find new opportunities.