In an age of intense click-bait marketing every email needs to contain a problem and a solution (plus social proof, quantification and glamour).
In that context, it’s good to find people getting great results by just ignoring these modern marketing rules entirely!!!
Jimmy Daly over at Vero behavioural email software has a really nice blog on email marketing, offering some good examples of email practices, similar to our own email gallery…
In a recent post, buried in his 20 tips for ‘dramatically better emails’ we found five suggestions that sound immediately counter-intuitive. we’ve clustered them together here:
1. Keep readers on their toes
Check out the pick and mix innovation-update chaos that is Product Hunt…
2. Use the same subject line every time
Every day Alex Madrigal sends an email with exactly the same (dull) title… and it works…
3. Overwhelm users with value
Brain Pickings has a dedicated 40,000+ subscribers to an eclectic mix of ‘just stuff’…
4. Leverage Partners’ brand power
IFTTT the Zapier-like technology solution-building, led by Alexander Tibbets place all the attention on their contributory technologies, but not their own contribution – the vital integration value of joining them together
5. Include downloads
Against all logic and the risks of overwhelming readers, emails sent with attachments rose 43% between 2009 and 2013 according to email traffic analysts Radicati…
In truth, the only sensible takeaway from Jimmy’s 5 is that email can contain more or less anything!
If your value proposition is clear, and what you are emailing is actually wanted, then email remains a fantastic, intimate and trustworthy channel to communicate that value. In some cases the email actually IS the value. Product and content fuse into a single con-duct.
Inspiring as they are, corporates and charities should think twice before accepting these examples as best practice though. Like all skills, before you can break the rules, you should first know what they are. Copper does.
Tim Kitchin is client service director and director of consulting at Copper, the digital marketing agency.
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