Thoughts on Marketing…

Lately, my in-box has been bringing me examples of really awful email marketing practices. Here’s one that arrived last month.

“Hi Marte,
I wanted to follow up about that our Summer Special Offer, which allows you to save 50% of your budget, ends in 3 days.

Place an order today and we will build 50% Bonus Links For Your Order For Free! Offer ends on August 21. Order now.”

Ummm… who are these people, and what did they offer me?

I have no idea. I can scroll down to the signature and see that it’s a search engine optimization company. But since I haven’t opted in for information about SEO, why are they writing to me?

And why aren’t they telling me why?

We can all understand about wanting to hurry up and send a blast out to your list, especially if the deadline for the offer is in just a few hours. But unless you tell people what you’re offering and why they should care, there’s not much point in it.

Also, when the message is this short, there’s no excuse not to read it and correct it before you send it. The writer breaks the first rule in copywriting – by beginning the first sentence with the word “I.”

Do we care what this writer wants? We don’t even know who he is!

Then, this: “that our Summer Special” is a goofy mistake – and the rest of the sentence is a bit strange as well. Most writers occasionally use sentence fragments, but this one doesn’t really make sense.

I shouldn’t criticize that. I know I’ve missed typos in the past, and I’ve gotten an extra word stuck in when I’ve been revising copy. It happens. But darn… the whole message is only 4 lines!

Of course, the real sin here isn’t a typo or a strange arrangement of words. It’s the fact that the reader doesn’t know what the writer is offering. 50% of what?

We all forget things – but we shouldn’t forget that prospects always need to know who we are and why they should care. Then, they need a “reason why” if they’re going to respond. This may be a good offer and it may be coming from a good company – but how would we ever know?

Continuity is good. Drip marketing works. But we should never assume that any reader will open every one of our messages, and we should never expect him to remember what the last one said, even if he did read it.

So, even if you wrote yesterday – or this afternoon – take the extra minutes to reveal who you are, repeat your offer, and let those customers know what’s in it for them if they respond.