“Cold-sales covid” email

Score… 🥁 4/10

Are you trawling your inbox for a distraction on this weirdest of bank holidays?

I feel you.

Let’s see what we can do about that… Email Teardown Club at your service 🙏

As you’ve probably noticed, the longer this lockdown rumbles on, the more businesses are scrambling to stem the bleeding.

Campaigns. Special offers. Offline activities moving online. Some things wash, some don’t, but who can blame them for trying?

Conferences are one of the many industries that have been hit hard, and my heart goes out to anyone who’s spent months planning one that’s gone down the pan.

Nobody likes having to cancel an event. Events cost a ton of money, time and sanity to put on and are hard to pull off at the best of times. I know. I’ve been there myself in a past life as a community manager and I still have the scars.

In theory, some conferences can move online and still deliver some (if not all) of their original intended value to attendees.

And that’s what today’s teardown is about.

The backstory:

A few days ago, a cold sales email landed in my inbox. A pseudo-personal one. It came from a chap I’ve never heard of who says he tracked me down on Linkedin.

He was trying to sell me a ticket to a product design conference that has now moved online.

I’ve been to a few product design conferences before and I have time on my hands at the moment. Bullseye!

So did his approach work?

…no.

There’s so much to unpack in the subject line alone that I’m going to keep this teardown to just that: the subject line.

(Sender anonymised to “Xxxx” out of courtesy. Think you know who? Guess away.)

— — — — — Forwarded message — — — — -

Subject line: “Learn during lockdown — join an almost free online event helping teams improve Product Outcomes”

Yowza! OK. I’ll break this subject line down in order of gut reaction, not chronological order.

“Almost free”…?

Come again?!

This phrase reminds me of Dylan Moran’s standup comedy:

“I asked a women I was with once, simple question, I asked her ‘Have you ever eaten pheasant?’ See, it’s direct, isn’t it?! It’s enclosed, it contains everything that needs to be said! And she said a wonderful thing. She said ‘Erm’… (she thought about it!) and she said ‘Er, not really.’ What does that mean? On any level? I mean, did you suck it and throw it away? Did someone drop it in your drink? What happened? Was it a speeding car — one lick? WHAT, WHAT?!?!”

In the same way, “Almost free” is gibberish.

Worse still, the tone whiffs of clickbait and covid-19 sharkiness, of companies who are out there to capitalise on the situation.

Logically I know there’s a chance the event organisers are just trying to cover their costs here (fair play) but I can’t fight the fact that my gut reaction makes me want to run a mile.

If it wasn’t for this teardown, I wouldn’t have bothered to click on the link in the body of the email to find out what “almost free” means. But the sake of closing the loop I thought I’d make the effort. The answer took me a few minutes to unearth (longer than it should’ve done, given the hook of the email). In the end though I found a tiny box at the bottom of the page: tickets are £10.

To me, £10 a pop sounds unlikely to cover the costs of a conference, yet it’s arguably still quite a jump from £0. In other words, this is a No Man’s Land of a price that means nothing without an explanation.

“…helping online teams improve Product Outcomes”

I’ve worked with product teams on and off for nearly a decade, but the phrase “improve product outcomes” conjures up nothing but crickets in my head. I don’t want to pull out my pointy finger and accuse it of being jargon… I can imagine it appears in plenty of OKRs and KPIs among tech teams… but this cold sales email is not speaking my language, even though I might be just the lead they’re looking for.

And since when have “Product Outcomes” earned themselves the position of a Proper Noun with Capital Letters? Look, people. Words like “government”, “pandemic”, “life” and “death” are written in lower case. Let’s go easy on the uppity grammar.

“Learn during lockdown”

Can’t argue with that! This message meets a real need in the world right now. As a value proposition, it gets a lot across in just three words.

— — — — — End — — — — —

Conclusion:

Email Teardown Club score = 4/10

Messaging aside… I didn’t love having my personal email inbox invaded by a randomer who somehow managed to crowbar his way in there via Linkedin, but under the circumstances, he gets a pass.

Why not just state upfront that online tickets cost a tenner? All in all, I have a hunch that £10 for a product design conference wouldn’t be a bad investment. And I really do sympathise with anyone who’s struggling to communicate on behalf of their company at times like these when all bets are off. Here’s hoping he had more success with his other recipients.

Enjoyed this post? Please consider forwarding it on to someone else who’d get a lot out of it ✌

Been sent this way by someone lovely? Want the next instalment of the Email Teardown Club delivered straight to your inbox? 👉 Sign up here (it’s free)

*Side note* These teardowns are just my gut reactions as a real life customer, mashed together with my copywriter background, to explore what good and bad messaging looks like outside the sender’s ivory tower. I’m only one person, and I might not be representative. Agree or disagree? Tell me in the comments!

Cheerio,
Corissa

P.S. If you need a hand with your messaging strategy, I can help. I also have a few slots of 121 writing coaching up for grabs. Find out more 👉 corissanunn.com