1 Good Reason – Social Marketing

BLUF: Get to the point in your emails.

It seems to me that in recent weeks email newsletters have taken a giant step backwards.  So in an effort to demonstrate what I think is most effective and least effective in email I’ve created the following video.

Now my question to you is this; What image do you remember?  Which ones enticed you to want to read more?

Each of the images are the same size, taken from my email preview pane, or a web page.  A special thanks to Greg Cangialosi of Blue Sky Factory for sending me links to their email examples.  He didn’t know what I was going to use them for, so he was particularly brave for sending them my way.

My purpose here is to demonstrate that if you are very lucky, you will have almost as much time as this video demonstrates.

Most likely you will have much less time to Enthrall your email recipient than this video allows.

The Good: (IMO)

This email comes from ION Interactive and is an excellent example of getting to the point.  I know what it’s about and if I’m interested then I’ll decide to read more.

The Bad:

This email is from The Marketing Experiments Journal a part of Marketing Sherpa whom I hold in very high regard.  I’ve read their excellent “Email Marketing Benchmark” study and this message violates most of the rules they’ve laid out there. (Full disclosure, I don’t have any connection with Marketing Sherpa/ Marketing Experiments other than being a customer.)  Frankly I expected better from you folks.

In the first two vertical inches there is nothing to tell me why to read any further.  This is mainly due to the addition of the banner ad for Omma Gaming inserted in the top of the message.  Which have suddenly appeared at the top of numerous emails in the last few weeks.

The Ugly:

As he so often does, Steve Jobs flaunts conventional wisdom.  Does this email tell you what it’s all about? Nope!  Does it get right to the point? Nope!  Does this email make you want to read more?  Yes!  But I believe that is just because Jobs has made such cool products.  If it were about anything more mundane, like for instance email marketing- it wouldn’t be enticing and it wouldn’t work.

Now watch that video again and look at your emails to see what you are getting across in the first second…

And by all means please tell me what you think in the comments below.

Tanks for reading,

Chris

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