The new email marketing: use the right words

Part 7 of an ongoing series:

(We're looking at the strategies and tactics that distinguish a smart email marketer from a bulk email marketer. See the New Email Marketing index page to access the rest of the series.)

(We're looking at the strategies and tactics that distinguish a smart email marketer from a bulk email marketer.)

Part 6 of this series drew on the wisdom of Voltaire to alert us to the benefits of asking the right questions about our email programs. Now it's the turn of US sci-fi writer Philip K. Dick:



Anyone in marketing appreciates the importance of good (copy)writing in persuading others to take action. So we'll take that as a given.

In the new email marketing, the "right words" also refers to the technical email marketing vocabulary you use when talking to yourself, colleagues and subscribers.

Internal communication

Email marketing has several inappropriate terms that seduce you into the wrong kind of thinking.

The most famous example is probably "open rate" which says nothing about how many people opened your email. Hence calls to rename it the render rate.

Another example is delivery rate, which says nothing about how many of your emails were delivered to the inbox.

Email experts have long railed against the term "email blast," most recently Mathew Patterson and Justin Premick.

Blast is a word that smells of haphazard carelessness rather than thoughtful relevant, targeted, sophisticated communication.

Language does matter. Words matter. Words influence. If a word misleads or misinforms, then use one that doesn't.

External communication

But why worry about email marketing jargon when communicating with subscribers? We don't talk email marketing with subscribers.

Except we do.

Nearly every administrative message contains email marketing jargon. And your use of specialist terminology helps or hinders understanding and expectations.

Obviously if you want someone to do something, you need them to understand what you want them to do. If they can't comprehend a request or instruction, how can they react positively to it or take the appropriate action?

Does everyone out there know what unsubscribe means? (Don't roll your eyeballs: you and I live in a jargon bubble.)

Go out and find five friends who are not power users of the web or email.

Ask them to "whitelist your email address."

Then ask them if they want the HTML version of your email.

And then tell them not to worry because your email is "fully Can-Spam compliant?"

They will look at you like you're speaking Estonian.

Go through all your administrative messages, sign-up forms, subscriber preference centers etc. and double check whether your audience is likely to understand what you mean.

And it's about more than just encouraging comprehension. Words set expectations.

Many email marketing programs subscribe people to a "newsletter" and send them sales promotions. But the word "newsletter" implies informational content to many people.

There's nothing wrong with promotional emails (obviously). But anytime you set an expectation and then fail to fulfill it, you hurt the customer/prospect relationship and run the risk of being labeled spam.

What expectations do you have when you sign up to an "alert" or a "mailing list" or a "newsletter" or "deals"? Yes, these things matter.

In such cases, as one of Dick's fellow writers (Isaac Asimov) wrote, "It pays to be obvious."

Tags: email marketing

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