From: Netflix
Subject Line: We're Sorry DVD Shipments Are Delayed
Date: August 14, 2008

From: Netflix
Subject Line: We're sorry your DVD shipment was delayed
Date: August 15, 2008

No, you're not seeing double. I received these back-to-back customer service emails from Netflix last week. Seems their shipping system was on the fritz, so they took action by stepping up to the inbox not once, but twice to simply say sorry.

At a time when prices are rising and savvy consumers are fine-tuning their buyers' intuition, it's in every retailer's and service provider's best interest to upgrade their personal, one-to-one interactions with their customers. Taking a few extra minutes and a few extra dollars to keep 'em feeling attended to is well worth the investment. IMHO.

My only copy critique is that they should have switched up the subject lines a tad more. I almost didn't open the second email because I thought it was simply a repeat. Lo and behold, it spelled out specifically what Netflix was doing to make up for the mishap; they were giving me a 15% credit on my bill! Pretty major, right? Something like "We're giving you a 15% credit for DVD delay" as the subject line would have done the trick and let me know that it was a follow-up to the first email.

One more little edit is about the casing in the subject lines; one used headline casing and the other used sentence casing. I've never seen any stats on one being better than the other, so it's more of a style consistency thing. Basically, pick a side and plant your feet.