I didn’t know I loved {email} marketing until I hated it
What does that image have to do with this content?
The CTA has nothing to do with the page it takes me to.
My images were off, and this looks like a blank page.
Wait, what was the subject line?
This is what my inner (and sometimes outer) monologue looks like when I’m going through my inbox. When I find an email that particularly bothers me, I usually share and analyze.. Ok, rant about it with a few of my coworkers.
That’s always when you notice it — when something’s not quite right. Because when marketing is done well, you might not even know it’s happening.
Some of my biggest pet peeves?
- Subject lines that don’t have anything to do with the email’s content
- CTA’s that aren’t actionable
- Large amounts of copy and/or “fluff” copy
- The ‘and more!’ bullet point
(Re: the ‘and more’ bullet point.. You can file this under ‘fluff’ because it tells the audience absolutely nothing. If there were other, more interesting points, they would be on the list. There are more effective, and quite frankly, less lazy ways to convey to the audience that there’s additional information on the landing page. I digress..)
I’d go through my inbox in the morning, and be so frustrated on the other side of it.
What I hadn’t realized until around my thousandth rant was that I hated what I was seeing so much because I was (am) so passionate about email marketing.
I love it, and it took me a while to pinpoint that.
In fact, for the last 6 years, I’ve been blissfully unaware of this love for email marketing.
I stumbled into email design & development at my first job, and truly only cared about the design and development of each email.
At later jobs, I’d swear it was the same thing.
Does the design make sense?
Does it work across email platforms?
Any spelling errors?
Are the links correct?
Is the right logo at the top?
Great.
That’s where it ended.
What I didn’t realize (or appreciate) was how much marketing there is involved in all of that.
It’s not just, ‘does the design make sense?’. It’s ‘does this design make sense for this particular audience?’. Will this image resonate with the user on the other end?
It’s ‘what email client is the majority of our audience opening in?’, and are we building for that? Are we considering alternatives and fallbacks for users opening on other platforms?
It’s not only about whether the links are correct, and triple checking for grammar mistakes. It’s also, ‘does it make sense to send the user to this location?’ Does our landing page deliver on the promise of our CTA?
It’s about the branding beyond the logo. Does this feel like us? Would you know without a second thought that this was an email from us?
Somewhere along the line, I began asking these questions without even realizing what was happening. Thinking back, I supposed it was inevitable.
