U2 ... Me Too?

Thanks to my new job, I'm getting to be quite knowledgeable about email marketing and how to do it well. Today I thought I'd call attention to a way to do it poorly.

Yesterday I got an email from the Patriots that said because I was a season ticket holder, I was "on the list" and would be able to buy tickets for U2's September 20 show at Gillette Stadium early, before the general public has at 'em next week. I was told I'd be receiving an email today and that I'd have to act quickly because "the best seats will be gone before [I] know it." That certainly caught my eye. After all, I am a U2 fan and I love their new album.

But here's where the sender screwed up: For one thing, I'm not a Patriots season ticket holder. In fact, I've never even been to a Patriots game. Sure, I've been to concerts at Gillette Stadium before, and I've seen U2 before, but nope. Never a Pats game. Whoever was segmenting the mailing list or deciding who to mail to just didn't synch up the data correctly.

Secondly, and perhaps most importantly, the sender didn't deliver on its promise. As I write this, it's now about 28 hours after I received the preview email, and while pre-sale tickets are now on sale, I haven't been told how I can get mine. That's crazy, and if you ask me, it's stupid too. Perhaps the Patriots figured out I wasn't really a season ticket holder and thus, I'm not eligible to participate in the pre-sale. Well, that's not my fault. They still told me I'd been selected to participate, so I expect to have my chance. (And if that is the case, and they figured out their mistake, then they should have emailed to apologize and try to correct their mistake.) And sure, the day's not over yet. But it's now 7 p.m. and I'm thinking the marketing folks have gone home, so there won't be any follow-up email.

I hope I'm jumping the gun here, and that I will get my pre-sale info, because I sure would like to see this show and I sure would like to have the opportunity I was promised. If I have to compete with the rest of the fans on Monday, that's just going to be annoying.

Update, 8:45 p.m.: So of course it happened this way. At 8:28 the email arrived, and when I logged into Ticketmaster less than five minutes later to buy tickets for me and two friends, all the available ones that didn't cost $242.50 were gone. Of course. But at least we had our chance ... sort of. So I guess this post was a jinx or something. And now we'll just try again on Monday at 10 a.m.