Hey hey - Ian here.
Iâm not normally a whinge-and-moan kind of person, but every now and then Iâll see something in the world of email marketing that makes me mad.
Luckily it also gives me the opportunity to call it out as a bad example so we can all avoid making the same mistakes.
Anyhoo - I spotted a couple in my inbox this morning. One is an obvious one youâll have seen before. But the other might be a new one for you.
Iâve blurred out the senders and their branding as this is not about attacking individuals - itâs about highlighting practices I think you should avoid.
The first is an old chestnut: the âre:âŠâ trick. In other words sending out a bulk email pretending itâs actually a reply. The idea being to trick recipients into opening it thinking youâre replying to something they sent or did.
In this case thereâs a slight twist. Itâs âre: your applicationâ. So rather than tricking people into thinking itâs a reply to one of their emails, itâs tricking people into thinking it relates to something theyâve applied for.
Of course, they havenât. The email is a pitch to get you to âapplyâ. And by âapplyâ, what that really means is youâll end up on the end of a sales call.
Interestingly this email ended up in my spam folder. Probably because I havenât opened any emails from this person for a long while. But I also like to think spam is exactly where this kind of email deserves to be.
Hereâs another example:
This one I suspect may be more misguided than deliberately misleading.
The email has clearly been sent to the segment of people on this personâs list who hadnât registered for his upcoming webinar to suggest they might want to. And thatâs a very sensible thing to do.
Whatâs not so sensible is to pretend that youâre emailing them because you personally read through the list of webinar registrations and you care about them so much you noticed their particular name wasnât on the list and then recorded a quick video just for them.
No. You tagged the people who registered and bulk-emailed everyone else.
The sender probably thought âItâll be nice if I personalise the email to the recipientâ. But to me it just waves a big trust red flag. Itâs a lie.
Hereâs the thing: these tricks most likely work. Thatâs why people keep using them.
Some people will be fooled. Others will spot the trickery and not care - or even chuckle at it. Others will spot it and be turned off.
But most likely enough people will buy to make it worthwhile economically to use these tricks. Thatâs why they keep being used.
But that doesnât mean you should use them.
The senders probably justify using them by telling themselves that the products theyâre selling as a result will really benefit the people who buy. So a little bit of chicanery to get them to open their emails or sign up is in their best interests anyway.
But thatâs just BS. Just because you believe someone will benefit from your products doesnât mean itâs OK to use trickery to get them to do so.
Now Iâm not claiming to be some almighty arbiter of ethics or anything. Iâm sure I do plenty wrong too.
But I do wish weâd stop using âclever tricksâ like this in email marketing.
I think weâre better than that.
- Ian