“Like this Page” email

Score… 🥁 0/10

Buckle up for a frothy one. (Fresh out the oven and covid-free today!)

This is a special edition, because unlike other teardowns, I’m not going to anonymise the email.

You’d have no trouble guessing the sender even if I did. And anyway, I have no hesitation in pointing fingers at this company, given the direction they’ve gone in.

The backstory:

I was 17 when Facebook hit the bigtime. For five years I allowed its popularity mechanisms to throw petrol on my childhood insecurities, and bit by bit over the past decade, I’ve started to wake up and check out. I’m now stuck in a limbo, using it for a couple of community groups where it’s the tool of choice for keeping in touch and organising things.

There’s more and more evidence that social media harms us in ways we cannot see, and that these platforms have been optimised to prey on our weak spots as human beings (so that they can then turn advertisers upside down and shake mountains of cash out of their pockets) rather than actually improve anyone’s lives through communication. I know this probably isn’t “news” to you, so I’ll park that rant here.

Onward to the email. Spoiler… I unsubscribed. At last. After years of letting these innocent-looking notifications insert themselves into my life and my mind, I unsubscribed.

— — — — — Forwarded message — — — — -

Subject: “A friend wants you to like a Page on Facebook”

A “friend”, you say? Ahh, how loudly the bullshit alarm is ringing. The likelihood of this person being a someone I really consider a friend is around 1 in 100, which is a downer for starters.

“Hi Corissa”,

“<Person A> invited you to like <Band>.”

Oof. I had an almost-relationship with <Person A> when I was 15. I only met him once. Ironically, he was in a band himself, and I went to see them play and… well, let’s just say it didn’t fan the flames of ardour. Backfire.

“<Person B>, <Person C> and 5 other friends like this.”

OK, I have met these two people slightly more often than once, but nowhere near often enough to want to take their music recommendations on board.

“[Like]”

“Thanks,
“<Band>”

So now the email is being signed off as if it came from the band the original “friend” wants me to “like”? Pull the other one! This framing is utterly totally crackers.

— — — — — End — — — — —

Conclusion:

Email Teardown Club score = 0/10

Do these “like a Page” emails ever work on people? Urgh. I suppose they must, otherwise Facebook wouldn’t keep sending them. But I can’t be the only jaded millennial who’s so battered and bruised from the untamed beast of social media that the very logo makes my spleen do somersaults.

And besides that, the email’s messaging is objectively a mess. Objectively. It tries to stitch together a bunch of real live human beings and their creative endeavours into a meaningful narrative, but all that comes out is a hellscape tapestry of confusion, as if it was mangled by a robot puppeteer with no interest in or understanding of the reality of human relationships and what they mean and how they wax and wane. Which of course is exactly the problem.

No doubt the time will come in future when the scales have fallen from our eyes and we’ve strapped a harness onto the beast and we can coexist with connective technology in peace and harmony.

I mean… I have to believe in this. Despite the lack of evidence that it will happen.

What do you believe?

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*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