What a BORING first line for an email. Surely our collective marketing hasn’t sunk to the level of trite openings, lifeless sign-offs, and mundane messaging.
But it has. For so many organizations.
Every day we are bombarded with dozens (if not hundreds) of newsletters, sales pitches, and “touching base” emails from organizations reaching out to get us to take some action. Whether it’s to make a donation, get us to buy something, or keep us engaged in a product or service we have already purchased, marketing emails just kind of … suck.
As in “suck the life out of” me wanting to read their emails.
Why is communication so hard?
Truthfully, no matter how many words are at our disposal (in English or any other language), we can often feel like we can’t find the right word to convey what we want to say. In an email we can only convey feeling in writing, so we often feel like words are inadequate, missing, or overused.
We also want to reach our audience, and a lot of the time we haven’t really defined who comprises that audience. Remember, marketing to everyone usually means marketing to no one. Or at least, very few.
Think of the emails you either don’t open (because you can see the subject line and often other messaging), or you open and immediately either delete or unsubscribe from altogether. What did they have in common?
- They were trite/boring
- They were too long
- They were confusing
- They were unclear as to a call to action
- They somehow missed the mark in one of these ways, or others
Communication is hard because language feels inadequate.
Communication (especially for marketing) is a skill.
I know it feels that if you can speak and you can put words on the screen you should be able to use words to spur action. Often times, that is not the case.
In one of my MBA marketing classes, the professor asked us if we thought that marketing towels as “absorbent” was a good way to sell them. We all nodded, yes sure. It made sense.
Then he said “what if I told you that marketing towels by calling them ‘thirsty’ would sell more?” You could feel the lights turn on in all of our heads. That was the first day of that class. By the end we all had a much better idea of what marketing communication is. It’s not regular, standard communication. It’s different. It’s special.
Anyone can write. Not everyone can write marketing copy well.
It’s a hard truth to swallow for some folks, but marketing messaging isn’t easily done by everyone. (I’m looking at you, 90% of developers.) But just as I could learn to code, you can learn to market. The question is: why would you want to?
Unless you’re bootstrapping your first product (and even then, I’d still consider this), you should hire the right people for the job (yes, outsourcing counts). You can build the best, most amazing thing, but if you don’t market it well to sell, what have you accomplished?
Hiring a marketing professional to help with messaging just makes sense. Marketers are trained to understand messaging on different platforms, landing page testing, video creation, and email marketing.
Bottom line. Your messaging matters.
Stop hoping the email “finds them well.” Stop using “Dear _____.” And for the love of all you hold dear, stop signing things “sincerely.”
Make some changes in who crafts your communication and what they create. Then watch to see if your engagement increases, your sales increase, and you can focus more time on creating and perfecting your products instead of using the same old tired messaging.
