(Misc) Email marketing done badly, and why this is good news
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Email marketing articles tend, correctly, to feature the positive. There are few articles telling us about all the bad email campaigns out there. But one such campaign reached my inbox yesterday...
The email promoted courses from the continuing education department of one of my old universities. I never knowingly signed up for such material, but the opt-in may have slipped through somewhere (let's give them the benefit of the doubt). That aside, here's what they did wrong:
1. The email started like this:
3034045
BrownlowM
Don't you love being addressed as a number?
2. You had to manually send an email to unsubscribe, which is a little outmoded for an email promoting courses in, among other things, software engineering.
3. The "from" field was a female name I didn't know, and didn't match the name of the person who "signed" the email.
4. There was a typo in the first line of text. And a complete absence of compelling or engaging copy.
A bit of a weak effort all-in-all.
Now here's the good news...
>> We're not perfect yet. This is still a new medium and we're all still learning. And yet email marketing still produces great bottom line results. Imagine how much more success can come from future improvements to tactics and techniques.
>> The competition is unlikely to be cutting edge. Poorly-done emails are common (not to mention spam). While that can induce email fatigue in recipients, it also makes your star shine all the more brighter if you can deliver timely, relevant, quality communications and promotions to your list.
You can be the oasis in a desert of mediocrity. Go for it.
The email promoted courses from the continuing education department of one of my old universities. I never knowingly signed up for such material, but the opt-in may have slipped through somewhere (let's give them the benefit of the doubt). That aside, here's what they did wrong:
1. The email started like this:
3034045
BrownlowM
Don't you love being addressed as a number?
2. You had to manually send an email to unsubscribe, which is a little outmoded for an email promoting courses in, among other things, software engineering.
3. The "from" field was a female name I didn't know, and didn't match the name of the person who "signed" the email.
4. There was a typo in the first line of text. And a complete absence of compelling or engaging copy.
A bit of a weak effort all-in-all.
Now here's the good news...
>> We're not perfect yet. This is still a new medium and we're all still learning. And yet email marketing still produces great bottom line results. Imagine how much more success can come from future improvements to tactics and techniques.
>> The competition is unlikely to be cutting edge. Poorly-done emails are common (not to mention spam). While that can induce email fatigue in recipients, it also makes your star shine all the more brighter if you can deliver timely, relevant, quality communications and promotions to your list.
You can be the oasis in a desert of mediocrity. Go for it.
Permalink | March 15, 2006 |
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