How to send me scurrying your competitors’ arms
- Wednesday Mar 11,2009 12:39 PM
- By Iris
- In social networking, word power
This is an email I received today from Company X, trying to sell me service Y. I am not a fan of direct mail marketing and unsolicited mail is the worst. I wrote back to them asking them to remove me from their mailing list.
***HYPOCRITE ALERT ON***
I’ve sent out my fair share of unsolicited emails in my time.
***HYPOCRITE ALERT OFF***
The thing that got me about this email is it was rather self-satisfied and overly familiar. Not the tone you want to hit when you enter someone’s inbox uninvited and are making first contact.
Here’s a tip about direct mail campaigns: either make them completely generic and don’t even try to disguise the fact that this is a mass mail run, or, take the time to pick out something distinctive about each addressee.
Don’t fall between the two stalls. It’s irksome and readers are unlikely to make it all the the way through to the end of an irksome email. (Much like this blog, one might argue).
I’ve cut out the choicest snippets below:
Hello Iris:
Really? First-naming me? We’re not doing the professionalism thing anymore? This is a hair’s breadth away from “G’day mate!”. Ugh. Not a great start.
I hope that you had a good time at the XYZ Event –
It was alright but do you really hope that? If I came up to you right this second and told you your life depended on your being able to list all your hopes, all of them, would the quality of little bitty ol’ me’s Saturday night experience make it onto your list? I suspect you’re not that bothered about what kind of time I had. And that’s alright. But why say that you are? Strike 1: inappropriately matey. Strike 2: insincere platitudes. Bleurgh.
Thank you for being interested in Service Y.
Eh? I’ve never even heard of Service Y. Instead of congratulating yourself on how into it I am, why not tell me what it is? Strike….
And (I) hope that you have a great time in <city name>.
Three! Strike three! When am I going to <city name>? What for? Why are you thrusting random travel itineraries upon me and peppering your email with references I don’t even recognize?
Blah, blah blah. Details, numbers, stats,
Let me know if you have any questions, and have fun with Service Y
and at XYZ Event!
Fabulous. And you let me know if you have any questions about, oh, I don’t know, cold fusion or quantitative easing.
Best,
Yeah?
<writer’s first name, with no surname>
I give up.
email etiquette, email salutations, formal, how not to, inbox, over familiar, unsolicited email
2 Responses for "How to send me scurrying your competitors’ arms"
Sehr geehrte Frau Jumbe,
why do you read those mails at all? Professional interest? If you respond in any way you get them 100fold. It’s sad, but this kind of marketing works in certain circles – I hear it again and again. 100.000 mails are sent out at nearly zero cost, assuming a response of 0.1% you have 100 visitors on your website. If the response is 0.01% you sent out a million. There are email addresses en masse – if you sell a mass product you may succeed in the short run.
What would 100 visitors have cost you via web-advertising? – But what kind of people respond to this kind of marketing and how many potential customers you have annoyed with your insincere talk and spamming: that’s another question with a big ?
Hochachtungsvoll
Detlef Cordes
That’s the thing, Dc. I was really annoyed because it came to an address I only ever give out to clients / business acquaintances. I know where they got it from – a networking thing I attended a few weeks ago.
W?hat bothered me was the sloppy, chummy tone of the email, combined with the fact that I was never asked if it was ok to use my email address to try and sell me stuff.
As it turns out, it is actually a pretty useful service that is being offered but now I know that I will use any service provider *but* this one.