Some­times you have to stop and con­sider what the long-​​term cost is by sav­ing a few dol­lars by skimp­ing on the ser­vices of a qual­ity designer. I won­der how many sales were lost from this? I bet it cost more than had they payed the designer.


Client: “That’s way too much money to charge for an email cam­paign. It’s not hard to put a few graph­ics in an email.”

Me: “I charge based off of my reg­u­lar hourly rate and that’s how long it will take to com­plete the project.”

Client: “For­get it. We’ll just do it in house. We have a copy of Dreamweaver.”
[Phone call 2 weeks later]

Client: “Can you talk for a second?”

Me: “Sure.”

Client:OK. We made that email cam­paign, but I can’t fig­ure out why all of the links take me to the unsub­scribe page.”

Me: “I’m not sure. Is this a test email you’re talk­ing about? I can fin­ish the project for you based on my hourly rate.”

Client: “Well…no. We already sent it.”

The client sent an email cam­paign to a list of 74,000 cus­tomers with every link in the email being a one-​​click unsubscribe.


Via Clients From Hell

About the author

Jeff designs print and web expe­ri­ences for a vari­ety of clients and enjoys shar­ing what he learns along the way. He entered the indus­try at the split of web design from graphic design occurred and is now fas­ci­nated as the two dis­ci­plines are on the cusp of com­ing full cir­cle to merge into a new, media savvy gen­er­a­tion of design­ers. When not crazy busy, Jeff likes geo­caching and con­sum­ing copi­ous amounts of cof­fee. You should fol­low him on Twit­ter and Facebook.