Subject: I think you're going to like this
Preheader: This issue of Madison Magazine will make you bleed purple!

We always send an email out at magazine publishing time to our readers, but it’s historically been a rather bland email that comes from the magazine.

This issue was sent from the editor, and we spiced up the language within the email, making it a personal invitation to read the latest magazine and less of a courtesy informational announcement that there was an issue coming.

Our open and click rates were higher than the email usually receives. But what blew us away was the number of forwards that the email forward rate increased by 409%!! And, our editor got a flurry of positive responses. We marked the email as a success because it generated conversations about Madison.

I work for a university. Shortly after I started my job I pushed send on an email to faculty/staff from the President. This was an email with all the bells and whistles: HTML, links, images, mobile-friendly. The content was given to me around 11am, and I was asked to send it at 1pm the same day. A few peers reviewed the email and off it went. After it landed in the inbox two glaring errors became apparent. The first was that the President's name as the sender was misspelled. The second was that the template I used (that existed before I started my job) included a signature that used a common spelling of his nickname. Unfortunately, the common spelling isn't the way he spells his nickname.

So there you have it, an email with the President's name spelled incorrectly, twice, two different ways.

Everyone agreed that I should have had more time to build out the email, test, edit, etc. And everyone took previews a little bit more seriously after that.