The Email Wars

I have been noodling on this email I got from Smart USA the other week. I had to as if I would have erupted on day one about it I might have gone too “Lord of the Flies” on social media experts out there using email to increase social media marketing. Or even bashed agencies handling client email campaigns who just missed the boat and used the “Check the Box” method of marketing. Campaigns like this convey close to zero sense of engagement and simply using the copy to tell us that you have been really hammering away at social media and not show us is not the way to go about moving your subscribers in that direction.

Leading with the subject line to “follow them online!” was my first pointer to pause and wonder if this email I was reading was not online but I had printed it off or seen it on a bus.

When I see an email like this I think:

Social Media – Check

YouTube – Check

Facebook – Check

Twitter – Check

Email about Social media – Check

I don’t think strategy and a well planned campaign. I think OK we got social media cooking, we should drop an email out there to let people know.

Now that was what the check list looked like to me with SMART’s approach with this email. Here are some quick and easy take aways for using social media in email – and more importantly if you use email to LAUNCH social media how to approach it.

1. SHOW the icons we all understand – use the facebook, youtube and twitter (or other social network) icons. Don’t try to rely on simple text links buried in the content. This is a show not tell media. Do not make your own icons if they end up looking NOT like the ones we all recognize and process quickly. If your goal is to get people to use them then use the ones we all know.

2. Use some of the content you have been “busy” creating in the email to give me a sense of what I might have been missing. Tell me how busy you have been at it is of little to no value to a susbcriber.

3. Use email for what it is, a visual medium to inspire and communicate. Now I know that some people will not agree with my thoughts here but this example of a TEXT ONLY email does nothing to convey any importance or value from taking action on these. Do I really need to be “friends” with a car that I don’t even own? I can see how it might resonate with people that are owners of this brand, but for those of us that aren’t – give us something inspiring to WANT to add you to my social media whirlpool.

Social media, like email, is about engagement. And this email fails to engage me at all and more importantly left me thinking that they weren’t too SMART after all.