By now, you have likely either received, or heard about, the errant HBO Max ‘Integration Test Email’ that was sent out last night. As Mashable said, it was the perfect opportunity for everyone to make the same joke:
So, despite it looking like a straight-up phishing scam, it was a pretty standard test email that most companies would rather stay internal. Turning the mistake into a gleeful opportunity for clever tweets, people jumped on Twitter to make jokes only HBO viewers and creators could.
HBO Max eventually moved to address the issue, choosing to (playfully) blame the intern. But, as any marketer can tell you – this can happen to anyone at any level of outbound comms. (And you can probably expect it to happen more, because just to remind you – newsletters are back in style.)
So much work goes into list segmentation, email personalization, content creation, and building email nurturing series behind the scenes that it can feel heartbreaking when something goes to the wrong list and your customers – or, in some cases, the entire internet – are wondering what went wrong. The only upside is, that more and more these days, when this happens, people are more likely to have fun with it rather than try to ruin your career. It may not be the attention your brand was looking for, but you can learn from it, put additional sending or approval protocols in place and live to nurture your customers again.
And to the HBO Max intern: we wish you good luck with integration test 2! The first one got all of Twitter talking, so the expectations are pretty high for the next one.