Email Content Cliches: Stop Doing What

Everyone Else is Doing

@EmailSnarketing

Kristin Bond• My job involves training a lot of people on email marketing in

a specific ESP, and optimizing marketing emails for Girl Scouts at the national level. (And no, I can’t get you free cookies. Buy them from a Girl Scout next January.)

• My other job involves teaching the basics of email marketing to people who want to start their own companies.

• My non-job job involves writing a blog that mocks bad email marketing, and tweeting about life as an email marketer.

Sr. Email Marketing Manager, Girl Scouts of the USA

For my blog, I subscribed to a lot of emails. And I saw a few very common themes…

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Welcome Emails

the first to know

you’re the first to know

be the first to know

you’re the first to know

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Welcome Emails

• Are your email subscribers really the first to know?

• …ALL of them?

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Why It’s Bad• It’s not even true.

• Almost every single brand does it.

• Who cares? What’s the benefit of being “first to know” for subscribers?

• Why are we even welcoming people to receive advertisements from us in the first place?

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Do this instead• Thank them for subscribing.

• Introduce your brand.

• Give them something of value, whether it’s a discount or great content (or both!).

• Ask new subscribers to update their preferences or sign up to follow you on social.

• Ditch the word “Welcome” completely. • Ask them to update preferences

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~Exclusive~ offers

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Why it’s bad

• If your list or offer is exclusive, you will probably have terrible ROI. • You know that thing where you see a word too many times and it begins to lose meaning? That’s

what’s happening with “Exclusive.” • Why should anyone care that other people may or may not be getting this deal?

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Do this instead• Stop calling things exclusive.

• Get a thesaurus.

• Think about what’s compelling about your offer, and use that to describe it.

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And then there’s “Exclusive’s” BFF…

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Just for you• I received an email about an upcoming

conference that has more than 120,000 attendees.

• The email had information about speakers and sessions, and a countdown - the content was actually pretty good.

• But the subject line was not.Subject: “Kristin— [Conference] News Just for You!”

• This news was NOT just for me. It was for 119,999 other people too.

A conference

A conference logo

A conference

A conference

conference

A company

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Why it’s bad• Again, it’s usually not true.

• Your subscribers aren’t stupid. Don’t insult their intelligence.

• Who cares? For something like this, as an attendee, I would want all the other people to know what’s going on.

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Do this instead• With personalization - show, don’t tell.

• Don’t fake personalization.

• Instead of blatantly saying how unique the content is, just… have unique content that is interesting and relevant to the subscriber. Let them think you can read their minds.

• If you’re basing recommendations on previous purchases or behavior - it’s okay to be upfront about it. People prefer honesty over creepiness.

Holidays

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April Fools’ Day

Subject Line: Thanks For Your Order!

A furniture store

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Why It’s Bad• This one made a lot of people mad, especially if they had ever

experienced identity theft. • It went viral. Not in a good way. • This one wasn’t even funny. It was cheesy.

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Do this instead• Your April Fool’s marketing email should be a joke, not a prank.

• Ideal reaction: You want to make people do a double take, maybe fool them for a moment, but not upset them.

• Be funny and clever.

• Do something similar enough to something that your brand would normally do that it throws people off, but make it very clear that it’s not real.

• Involve cute animals in some way. It just works.

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UberNYC Lions

• This was similar to other emails Uber had sent, like Uber Kittens, so it had that “Are they serious?!?” moment, but it was obviously not a real thing.

• They had a social good element where they donated money to National Geographic’s Big Cats Initiative. They sent another email later in the day talking about the initiative and showing ways for people to donate.

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Warby Parker’s “Warby Barker”• This campaign was incredibly detailed:

It had a landing page with an FAQ about dog prescriptions and a video with the co-founders explaining the collection of dog glasses.

• It had the same look and feel as the brand’s other emails and website at the time, right down to the dog head turns on the product pages.

• It was cute, and funny.

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Boden’s Dress Recall• This email from Johnnie Boden, a British clothing

retailer, recalled a dress with a beach print that had tiny people on it because, upon closer inspection, there were naked people on the dress.

• The email was written as an apology, and had instructions for returning it for a refund. If people clicked on the link for more info, they were let in on the joke.

• It featured a product that people could actually buy, and people bought it. I bought the skirt in this print because of this email. 

Sending an April Fool’s email with “NO JOKE!”

Seriously.

What’s worse than sending an April Fool’s email with a bad joke?

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Why It’s Bad• You’re right - it’s not a joke. Jokes are funny. • This is not funny. • It’s not clever. • It’s boring. Stop it.

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Do this instead• Send something truly clever and original.

• Or just send a normal email. Most people don’t celebrate or recognize April Fool’s Day anyway.

• Or… don’t send an email at all. You don’t have to send an email every day. It’s okay. You deserve a break. You have enough other holidays to worry about.

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Like these.

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Fake Holidays

WHAT?!

NO!!!

I DID NOT OPT IN TO THIS AS A MARKETER.

Uh, ok…

“ ”

OK NOPE NOPENOPEXX X

We can’t seem to agree on consistent, real timing for

these fake holidays.

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Spring Black Friday

The blue hardware store

The blue hardware store

The orange hardware store

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Why It’s Bad• The real versions of these “holidays” are bad enough. • These are confusing at best. • Customers see right through this. • Don’t be the brand who cried “OMG Lowest prices of the

year!!!!” …every month.

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Do this instead• Just don’t. Don’t do this. Send emails about

literally anything else.

And while we’re on the subject of holidays that

don’t make sense…

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Cyber Monday"The name Cyber Monday grew out of the observation that millions of otherwise productive working Americans, fresh off a Thanksgiving weekend of window shopping, were returning to high-speed Internet connections at work Monday and buying what they liked.”

~The New York Times

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Not exactly.• At the time, the Monday after Thanksgiving was

nowhere NEAR the highest online sales day - it was more like #12. December 12 was the highest day for online sales in 2005, and December 13 was the highest in 2006. That pattern has continued, more or less.

• Cyber Monday sales have increased over the years, but it’s not the day that most people are shopping.

And now we send Cyber Monday emails as if we didn’t all have

devices with high speed internet in our hands at all times.

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The other problem with Cyber Monday… it’s not just a day.

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Do this instead #StopCyberMonday

• If we must do it - let’s pick ONE day, okay? Stop “extending” these fake holidays.

• Can we at least change the name? “Cyber” is a weird and icky word.

• Or like, could we move it to Thanksgiving day so people can stay home, and have retail stores go back to being closed on Thanksgiving Day? Everyone wins there. We’re the marketers. We control this. SOLIDARITY! #StopCyberMonday

Thursday Friday Saturday Sunday Monday

Eat turkey. Be with family.

Customers can shop online at

night.

More online sales. Or in

store, I guess, but that can go

away too, right?

Push in-store sales

Push in-store sales Nothing

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Award Show Emails

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Award Shows

I received all of these in the span of a few hours on Oscar Night.

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Why It’s Bad• This is lazy marketing.

• These brands are just sending emails with the first subject line that pops into their heads for this occasion. 

• Instead of sending something relevant to our products, we just try to make our products relevant to whatever’s going on, even if it doesn’t make sense.

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• With award shows, and ANY other special occasion: find something that makes sense for your brand, like Food52’s #oscarnoms

• (This was on Twitter and was a last minute thing, but something like this could be promoted in email…)

Do this Instead

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Kristin’s Final Thoughts

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• Brainstorm the first, most obvious things that come to mind with any given occasion. Throw out that list and do something else.

• If you’ve done it before, don’t do it. Or at least, build on it.

• If other brands have done it before and you liked it, don’t do it.

• Think about what is special and unique about your brand. Highlight that in your emails instead.

• If you don’t have enough original content to send emails every day, stop sending emails every day.

• Email marketing isn’t just about selling things.

Kristin’s Final Thoughts

Do something interesting. Like these brands…

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BarkBox• Sends newsletters with

excellent, very shareable dog content

• Promotion of their actual products is minimal and at the bottom of the email, but since the other content was so shareable, other people likely saw it.

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Bonobos• From Name: A Dress Shirt From Bonobos

• Subject: I’d like to add you to my professional network

• Linked to a clever LinkedIn page where you could connect with the shirt. The shirt had job history, recommendations, and connections.

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Poppin• Beautiful photography

that tells a story with color and showcases what’s special about their products

• Very clean layout, simple CTAs, and no gaudy promotional language

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DonorsChoose• Subject Line: Treat Ms. Bond's

classroom • My last name is Bond, so of

course I opened this email • Used data for personalization

in an interesting way, asking people to donate to a teacher who has the same last name as them

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These brands all found a way to stand out by doing something completely different, that made sense for their brand. And we all can do that too.

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Now go re-write your welcome email.