Bad e-mail marketing. (What is it that you do again?)

My friend - and Opinionated Marketer Emeritus - John Whiteside just forwarded me a prospecting e-mail he’d received.

I’m not going to give things away here - who wants to embarrass an eager young sales guy just trying to make a buck. (And for all we know, his approach may be very successful. Just not when it comes to hard-cases like me and John.)

As for the e-mail in question:

First off, it was sent to the company’s generic “marketing@” address, and addressed, within the e-mail, “To Whom It May Concern.”

Okay, sometimes you don’t know the actual name of the person you’re sending something to, and a stab in the dark is better than no stab at all, right? But “To Whom It May Concern”? Better to leave the greeting and salutation stuff off, or put in something closer to relevance - like “Dear Marketer”.

But it was more the lame-o claim-os in the e-mail that got to John, i.e., the claim that “our analysis of your business indicates there’s a fit between our organization and yours,” which was followed by a statement that they’d like to “validate their research of your business.”

Now, there was nothing in the e-mail that would actually betray the fact that there had been any analysis of the company’s business. Can it be that difficult to embed something in a generic e-mail, a field for <company business goes here>, with <a reason why company’s in that business> would profit from their products and services? Sure, the e-mail recipient might still realize that you hadn’t exactly analyze analyzed their business. But it would signal that at least someone (or something) had made the effort to identify just who they are.

But the thing that bugged John the most was that nowhere in the e-mail was there a mention of what, precisely, the e-mail sender was selling. Just the usual ‘we’ll get results for you, and can increase your online sales by 15%.’ I suppose inquiring minds would be so captivated by this come-on that they’d truck on over to the website and find out just what was for sale. But why make a deep, dark secret about what you do? Go ahead, tell me that you can increase our online sales, but how about letting us know that you do so through your patent pending, magic-mesmerizer that, when embedded in your home page, works with that 15% of the buying populace with receptors that will cause them to spring into action.

The kicker, of course, was that John’s company already has a mesmerizer of their own, thank you, which analysis of their company business (i.e., a look at their website) would have actually revealed.

Not to mention that the sender asked John to contact him if he wanted to do business. No call to action. No offer (webinar, podcast, introductory offer…). Not even a threat that the sender would call to follow up. (Admittedly, that would be a bit dicey, given that he didn’t know John’s name. Still, he could have called and asked who handles the the marketing@ e-mails.)

Maybe a better approach would have been to write:

Dear John/Dear Marketer:

I see from your website that you’re using a mesmerizer.  Are you getting the results that you want out of it?

We’re the makers of the Magic Mesmerizer, the world’s foremost mind-altering website widget, and we have a track record of increasing online sales by 15%, whether we’re working with companies new to mesmerizing, or with mesmerizers in place. We’ve gotten these results with a number of companies - including Famous Company and Household Word -  which, like yours, offer B2B technology services. I’ve enclosed a link to our recent podcast, in which Household Word’s Joe Blow gives his five tips for maximizing your mesmerizer.

I’ll call you within the next day or so to see if we can find the time to talk about what the Magic Mesmerizer can do for you.

Alternatively - and maybe better yet, since this sort of e-mail (if read at all) may be read on a smartphone:

As a mesmerizer user, you may be interest in this recent podcast: Five Tips for Mesmerizer Maximization from Household Word’s Joe Blow. He’s one of our many customers who’ve increased online sales by 15% with the Magic Mesmerizer. Hope you enjoy it!

Obviously, I didn’t put a ton of thought into my straw e-mails here. (You get what you pay for!)  Yet I can’t help but believe that an e-mail that actually mentioned what a company does, and offered a bit of value, would get better results.

Oh, maybe I’m just an old marketing crank…

But e-mail marketing’s hard enough. Why make it any harder for yourself?

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