I haven’t been able to track down any information about what happened, but it seems MINI USA had a major oops in their email marketing recently. So much so that they’re sending out apologies by snail mail. Pictures of the apology package appeared on Reddit earlier this week, and include a chocolate rose, some duct tape and a SPAM can stress reliever.

It’s a great example of a win-back campaign that really focuses on the recipients rather than the sender.

• They communicated with the folks who unsubscribed or blocked them outside of the email channel. When you’ve annoyed someone by sending them mail, sending them more mail doesn’t usually win them back.
• They acknowledged that something went wrong and that they were really sorry for it.
• Their letter included some humor in the letter they sent: “If you’re ever feeling annoyed again you can de-stress using this particularly squeezable can of spam”.
• They set up a easy to get to, easy to type URL at http://www.miniusa.com/sorry/ to collect these signups, making it simple to go from the hard copy letter to the website.

Full text of the letter

Dear John,

Last week you received some emails from us. Hundreds of emails, in some cases. While we love staying in touch, this was unintentional. A server went haywire and the the technical glitch has been fixed, but we wanted to make up for any hassle we might have caused.

Nothing says “I’m sorry” quite like flowers and chocolate, so we’ve combined the two and enclosed a chocolate rose. But if you’re allergic to flowers (or chocolate), we hope this duct tape will help fix things up. Or, if you’re ever feeling annoyed again, you can de-stress using this particularly squeezable can of spam.

Again, our sincerest apologies for the inconvenience.

Motor on,
The MINI team.

Many companies have had major oops moments in email marketing. This is one of the more creative (and probably expensive) responses to that. It goes to show, though, how valuable email marketing is to MINIUSA. I have to wonder how many of these packages were sent out, did they target high value customers specifically? Or did the packages go to everyone who opted out from mail after the oops?