I Don’t Open Email Attachments.
“We’re thrilled to announce the opening of our new Institute of Auto Repair and Poodle Grooming! For more details, see the attachment.”
“You’re invited to our open house! For more information see the attachment.”
“Attached is our monthly newsletter”
Just three examples of well-meaning people who don’t grok email marketing.
Firstly, it’s a miracle any of these emails make it through my spam filters…particularly since often the sender neglected to put anything in the subject line and/or they’ve loaded the email with text in various fonts and several colors, including the big Spam bounce tripper, red. (ouch!) As for the newsletter - why would I want to open it? Anything interesting to me? And, how long is it? (20-page PDF, no thanks!)
Secondly, I don’t open attachments unless I really love (and trust) the sender. Most such “news” goes right into the trash, unopened. (Just like a lot of my snail mail - straight from the mail box to the trash can.)
Even if I’m interested in the Open House, I probably won’t take time to open the attachment (which will probably be in Word…and tells me I have to call or fax to RSVP…and then print a form and mail you a check.) I get a lot of (legit) emails every day and by the time I take care of those, well…sorry, I forgot about that attachment.
If you want people to read your email, act on an special offer, or come to your event:
1. Don’t send out “blasts” to people you don’t know. If it looks like spam, sounds like spam, it is spam - regardless of your intentions.
2. Give them the relevant info in the body of the email - and above the fold. Don’t make ‘em scroll.
3. Keep it simple. Don’t do a fancy-schmancy design full of different fonts, exclamation points, and colors. Unless you’re using a template from Constant Contact, My Emma, or iConnect, chances are the recipient will get a bunch of wacked-looking text and code. What you see isn’t what they get. And, the fancier you get, the more likely you’ll set off the spam alarms.
4. Make it super easy to respond. Let them RSVP via return email (Please, never ever do “do not reply” This tells people you really don’t care about them. You just want their money.)
Note: This is not just a small biz tech-ignorant issue. Some of the worst offenders are Poobah high-tech players who use all the communications toys…They just use them badly.
Related Posts:
More What Not To Do in Emarketing
Email Blasts = Spam
Email Marketing: One Size Doesn’t Fit All
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Tags: marketing, marketing troubleshooting, email marketing, communications, emarketing
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February 12th, 2008 at 3:27 pm
Hmmm. It’s actually worse than that in many ways. “Modern” email campaigns use tracking codes and such embedded in the HTML code of the underlying email. Which I don’t have a problem with per-se.
It’s just that spammers use the exact same technology. Recall all the advice of “don’t click on the unsubscribe link” in spammers emails? Else you just validate your address for them?
Well, these days you don’t need to do anything other than open an email. And sometimes not even that.
Bad news all round.
Advice?
). Disable auto loading of remote images - so it looks a big ugly. Shrug. Not My problem. IMHO The message itself is far more important than the look of it. 
Use a not-brain-dead email client (No guesses for whose product(s) I refer to here!
If you can switch to a simpler HTML view, or even plain text. I read all my emails in a plain text format, and only *very* rarely will I enable one of the HTML views.
And check the various options your email client gives to increase your privacy/security. The better clients enable these features by default.
I’d also add that by doing this, you can *drastically* increase your ability to cope with email. If only by massively simplifying the core text you need to read.
I have to react to literally thousands of emails a day. Dealing with people’s pretty… crud is a big time waster.
Some of my professional colleagues and friends go so far as to *deliberately* use the older green-screen console style email clients (eg mutt) to manage their email loads.
HTH?
Cheers!
- Steve
FWIW? I recommend Thunderbird. Not perfect, by any stretch, but good enough. YMMV.
February 12th, 2008 at 3:33 pm
Aha! I use Thunderbird, with images off.
And then I had to explain to a client why her spiffy newsletter had those “funny little boxes” in it when one of her customers opened it. (Um, tell your customer to turn on images…)
February 12th, 2008 at 5:32 pm
Heh. Get the same client with the spiffy newsletter to view one of their spiffy newsletters in a pure plain text mode.
It never ceases to amaze me how *badly* various servers/software generate email. If the email show raw HTML or CSS? Very bad. The actual newsletter itself becomes totally unreadable unless one is *really* persistent or keen.
It’s a good habit if only from the perspective of dealing with accessibility and the like.
Cheers!