Kudos to Mark Brownlow at Email Marketing Reports for helping us laugh at ourselves and a few of those “bad practices” we all try to avoid (yet still see all too often) in B2B email marketing. I encourage you to watch it with your marketing team to see if any of the content reminds you of your organizational emails–or just gets you a bit red in the face:
Brownlow’s humorous depiction of an email that’s come to life serves as a vivid reminder of some no-no’s in B2B email. A few examples of how NOT to email market:
1) Personalization
a. “Dear First Name … or is it Suzy?”
2) Timing
a. “We met eight months ago at a trade show…”
b. “You may be busy on Tuesday morning, but statistics show that this is the best time to send, regardless of what the user wants.”
3) Relevancy
a. “Here’s some important company information about our new London office … What, you live in Argentina? Well, you never know when you might be abroad…”
b. “This offer is for a small business, but even though you’re a global enterprise, maybe you’ll need this in the future anyway!”
4) Customer-centric
a. “We’re committed to customer-centric initiatives… but hold the feedback for now. We weren’t able to get the resources to have true two-way dialogues. Please don’t interrupt us while we’re talking!”
b. “We have pictures of British people–which implies our great service and customer focus!”
Mark makes some great points, and he saves the best (and most honest) part of the dialogue for last: “It’s been fantastic talking at you!”
Lessons for all.
