I don’t have to say too much, because this terrible email campaign is eloquently awful and speaks for itself.

After reading the entire email, it’s easy to see where they go terribly wrong:

• I don’t know the sender and won’t likely trust BIG promises from a stranger: Stranger Danger!
• header is generic and tells me nothing—why would I open?
• they refer to an ‘amazing and an excellent opportunity’.  What the heck is it?
• 4 days only!! Wow, that spurs me to action
• unnamed product that costs $100s.
• they expect me to click through to to a strange site for an expensive mystery product. I don’t think so.

I did change their name in the email copy below—to protect the guilty.

Read it and weep:

eMail Header: “You’re going to love this!”

Hi Newt,
This is simply amazing and an excellent opportunity for you.
With the start of Holiday Season, we are ready to roll out the
Happy Holiday – AjaxPress Christmas event.
For 4 days (from 19th Dec till 22nd dec Midnight EST), you can
snatch 3 of our best selling products [worth $291.00 & $131] at
70% OFF.
Here’s where you can grab the offer:
hotlink to their deal page here.
We’re holding this Kick-Off Christmas sale as a way to say HAPPY
HOLIDAY to you.
Here’s the most exciting part – if you had to buy these products
individually you’d expect to pay a minimum $291.00 or $131.00 -
but in this spirit of holiday season you can grab all 3 products
(bundled) and get instant access for less than $88 or $40,
one-time investment…
As all of our 3 products are our primary products, we won’t be
bundling it EVER again like this (maybe next Christmas, but we
can’t promise that). What we can promise you RIGHT now is, this
is one of the best deal we’ve ever offered at this measly price.
After the end of this AjaxPress Christmas event, all products
will go back to their normal prices.
So, Don’t let this great deal skip away.
Hotlink to their deal page here.

And oh, suggest it to your friends too (they gonna love it).
Stay tuned for our next email to find out which products we have
bundled.
Cheers,

What Am I Marketing Chopped Liver?

If you are one of the millions of iTunes fans, you appreciate the brilliant work they do in aggregating music creatively.  But, they squander the opportunity to connect with me by focusing on what their database knows about the music I buy and that lives within my iTunes account.

Normally, I now just delete without reading, but this week’s eNewsletter was so off target I had to write about it.

iTunes Does It Right. But Their Marketing Does Me Wrong.

Not only does iTunes enable you to do infinite organizing of your music, the iTunes store takes it many steps further. The store includes pre-constructed sets of music from different eras, different artists or different styles in the iTunes store. With iTunes itself, I particularly love the ‘Genius Bar’ which enables you to create new playlists from your stored music or to discover new tunes that you’re likely to love based on a song that you have chosen from your own iTunes collection.

The iTunes folks excel at enabling you to choose,to organize, and to discover all sorts of music that you love.  Of course, you’ve probably bought quite a few more iTunes selections than you should have thanks to their terrifically targeted musical content. iTunes is brilliant at offering you what you didn’t even know you wanted.

That’s why I’m astonished at how far off the mark they are with their weekly eNewsletter that tosses me a hodgepodge of music that ignores my obvious preferences.

Their eNewsletter throws targeted content marketing right out the window.

The iTunes content machine should know exactly what I like because they have assessed what I have bought and what I have loaded on my computer.  My musical taste is eclectic and wide-ranging. It includes everything from Bach to Benny Goodman, from Asleep at the Wheel to Andre Watts,. and from Meatloaf to Mozart. Nonetheless, each week they send me a newsletter about music in which I have either no knowledge, no interest or both.

Here’s a sampling from this week’s iTunes eNewsletter featuring artists I hate or don’t want to know more about:

• Foo Fighters (at least, I know them by name)
• Nine Types of Light by TV on the Radio (or is there TV that’s on the radio?)
• Who You are by Jesse J (who is she?)
• Don’t Turn Out the Lights by NKOTBSB ( I guess the initials stand for something, but I don’t have time to spend figuring it out
• Make Some Noise by the Beastie Boys (well, noise is what it sounds like to me)
• Loverboy by Brett Dennen
• Rihanna & Britanny Spears ( Please!)
• So Beautiful or So What by Paul Simon (OK, this might be worth a listen)

Of course, you may love all this music.  Then, you would have appreciated the eNewsletter.  But, for me, the new music eNewsletter is a nuisance. With all their marketing money, they could have and should have done much better in segmenting the recipients of their weekly outreach to customers.

The #1 Content Marketing Rule That Apple Forgot: Understand What Is Most Important to Your Audience! And Then Deliver Just The Right Content Based on That Understanding

You may have a limited marketing budget that would amount to a rounding error for Apple.  Nonetheless, you can do a better job of targeting your eNewsletter by understanding what is most important to your customers and providing truly relevant information in each newsletter edition. 

You may not have the sophisticated technology tools that iTunes can bring to bear, but you can probably create two or three different iterations of your outbound content that matches the differing information needs of your customers.

The misguided iTunes eNewsletter makes me feel as unappreciated as the hero of the classic country lament by David Allen Coe, “You don’t have to call me darlin’, darlin’.  You don’t even have to call me by my name.”

Come to think of it. They didn’t even call me by my name.

Learn What Not to Do from One Very Boring News Release

Press releases still pack a punch for marketers.

With content rich releases, smart marketers engage not only the press, but thousands of customers as well. But, ineffective press releases benefit neither a company nor its customers.

As with so many things, it’s probably easier to explain what’s important in a press release than it is to execute effectively. Fortunately, it’s much more common sense than it is rocket science.

Effective press releases incorporate core content marketing concepts:

• Understand your customers’ information needs
• Create content that responds precisely to those information needs
• Explain how you can solve their problems whether personal or professional
• Make that content immediately engaging with a strong, benefit-laden
  • headline
  • subhead
  • first paragraph
• Be certain that the lead-off content is all about the customer and not all about your company.
• When it’s time to talk about your company, make sure your unique benefits shine through.

Much of this may seem obvious. But it’s surprising how many marketing professionals seem to get it wrong. This makes for an awful lot of ineffective press releases that sit around mostly unread, cluttering the Internet.

Lessons to Learn from a Snooze-Inducing Press Release

The good news is that we can learn from both great press releases–those that are not quite so great. In the latter category, see if you can figure out what you might take away from the following, real-life news release headline:

BDD Corporation Plans to Utilize Twitter Research 

Unfortunately, this headline gives us almost no reason to continue reading further. And, it doesn’t get much better as the press release proceeds.

Unless we already know the company, we cannot even guess at how they might use Twitter research to our benefit. The headline does not explain how they will use Twitter research nor why they are using it.

Following the headline, we get a quote which essentially serves as a subhead. But, we are still left hanging in terms of precisely how a prospective customer might benefit:

Twitter has announced the release of a new "viral research" technique. BDD Marketing and Management plan to incorporate these techniques into future SEO marketing strategies.

Although we learn that "viral" and "SEO marketing" are somehow involved, we still don’t really know how this new tool will solve the marketing problems of a potential customer.

In the first paragraph that follows, we get a bit more information, learning that "The new form of online research is a new social search platform used to research trends and feeds of twitter accounts all over the world."  Okay. But, how exactly would a customer put this research tool to work?

The next paragraph essentially narrates the story of the company that created the tool, which it says is aimed at "marketing professionals and business owners… And that it "will allow users to be able to gather information from a unique 1% of their potential customers."  What does that mean: “1% of their potential customers?”

It’s not until the third paragraph that we learn that it will enable business owners to better understand their target audiences and shape marketing, events, and social media practices around the likes and dislikes of users.

It Takes Way Too Long to Tell Customers Very Little

We still don’t know exactly what makes this new tool uniquely important. After all, isn’t all research designed to let us know our customers better? We need specificity. We want an example of a unique, powerful insight that was gleaned from this tool. We want a client company to tell us  precisely how they benefited.

Oddly, after these first several paragraphs the press release veers into talking about a completely different research tool that has absolutely no connection to the headline of the press release. It appears to be designed to reinforce the devotion of BDD to leading edge research tools. That’s good. But, it’s much more about the company than the customer.

The Final Paragraph That Provides BDD’s Company Information Leaves Us Hanging, Too

We learn only that "BDD Marketing and Management is a full-service company. Founded on a deep value system and backed by a highly motivated staff, BDD is a company with a fully customizable menu of business options to fit every need."

Yes, but what exactly do they do? What makes them unique? What sort of full-service company are they? Do they offer absolutely every kind of customizable business option for every need?

BDD probably has a strong set of core capabilities and has done great work for its customers. Unfortunately, this press release pretty much leaves us guessing… Guessing about how we would benefit from the new research tool… And guessing about what makes this company uniquely valuable to solving our marketing needs.

A Missed PR Opportunity That Great Content Would Have Solved

We don’t really know why the headlined research tool would deliver a unique benefit to a business customer. Sadly, there is probably a great story buried somewhere about the new research tool that would have engaged all of us who are desperate to really understand our customers.  All of us, would have devoured that story from start to finish.

If You Don’t, You’ll Be Just Another Generic Acme Corporation Whose Content Marketing is Doomed to Fail

Mission and vision statements may be important to your company internally.  They may even deserve a place on your website once your visitor begins to drill down to learn more about your company.  But they don’t belong on your homepage.

Why? Because they are all about you. They rarely have anything to do with your customer.  To capture your visitors’ attention, you must make your homepage content all about them from the first instant. 

Here’s an actual example of content marketing getting clobbered by the prominence of company-centric clichés.

Really Bad Real-world Mission/Vision Statements Scuttle Home Page of ‘Acme’

The following example makes the case better than I can. I swear that I didn’t invent these two paragraphs.  Nor did I use the automatic mission statement generator from NetInsight. Read these and weep. (I owe the company pseudonym to the always victorious Roadrunner who outwits any Acme products.)

Our mission is to establish Acme Corporation as the National innovative provider of services and products within Organizational Development, Diversity Integration, Homeland Security and Project Management, while maintaining our uncompromising core values and achieving sustainable profitable growth.

Our vision is to be the global provider of products and services within our fields, and practical enough to expand strategically while maintaining our uncompromising core values and achieving sustainable profitable growth.

To be fair, there is a single sentence at the top of the page that provides a pretty generic  benefit statement, “Acme Corporation is a management consulting company that has been helping organizations and individuals reach their potential and achieve greater success since XXXX.”

That’s just 23 words about generic customer benefit. And, that’s all there is, folks.

The real company behind my Acme pseudonym may do great work for its clients. But, as a visitor with no time to waste, I don’t get the sense that Acme knows or cares about me.

As a result, I and most other visitors will take off at the speed of the Roadrunner to find a company that does.

Beep, beep!

Your Content Marketing Must Make It Easy for Your Customers to Understand How You Benefit Them

You may not love Apple or Steve Jobs or their groundbreaking series of  iPhones first launched in 2007 Conversely, you may love much of what Microsoft has brought us in terms of operating systems and office productivity applications.

But, it’s hard not to love the way Steve Jobs keeps it simple and compelling as he introduced the iPhone 4 at their Worldwide Developer Conference in June 2010.  And, it’s hard to find much to love about Steve Ballmer’s own recent presentation on their upcoming smartphone strategy.

So, when you present information, I recommend emulating the Jobs’ simple and graphical approach: Few words and powerful images.

He begins his introduction of the iPhone 4 by saying that it has more than 100 new features but that "I get to cover eight of them with you." He says it simply and colloquially. He doesn’t use gobbledygook speech, as Steve Ballmer does below. Behind Steve initially is the giant word "iPhone" which then segues into his first point, "the first one: all new design."

To reinforce each of his points, the screen behind him shows huge images of the iPhone and of its specific features.

Basically, you have a very smart guy explaining in a non-highfalutin way why we would be crazy not to buy the new iPhone 4.

Microsoft: Complicated Visuals and Convoluted Explanations, Oh My!

Contrast that with some slides that were part of Microsoft’s recent analyst’s conference.  There is a awful lot going on with both his slides and his explanations

This is the Windows Phone 7 Slide

Huh?

Here is Steve explaining some Microsoft strategy elements:

Part of what we’ll be doing is driving kind of integrated set of thinking, branding. We’ll be really aggressively marketing Windows Phone. Both Windows PCs in all form factors and Windows Phones will get pretty aggressive marketing support, if you will.

Huh?

If you think I’m all way off base, you can watch Steve Ballmer’s analyst presentation.

Admittedly, he did have to address a complex set of product  issues. Nonetheless, he could have used more, but simpler slides so that viewers would walk away with a clear understanding of the core elements of Microsoft smartphone strategy. For example, in the Windows Phone 7 slide above, it has no headline and no clear focus. I have no idea what to take away from this slide. Imagine how much explanation would be required to clarify what this slide actually meant.

By contrast , I’ll bet that most viewers of the iPhone 4 presentation will remember specific visuals and most of the eight new features on which Steve Jobs focused.

The key to content marketing–and presentation–success is to keep it simple, make it visual, and focus on the most important and memorable points that will be beneficial to your customers.

On the other hand, to paraphrase an old aphorism about advertising that may well apply to Microsoft , " If you can’t create a compelling presentation for your product, you have a product problem, not a presentation problem.”

Gulfshore Insurance Shows They Care How the Hottest Issue in a Generation Impacts Their Clients.  Big Bank/Insurance Giant Ignores It.

I think we can all agree that the health insurance reform legislation of 2010 will touch each and every one of us. It will impact both businesses and individuals.

If you are a business owner, it is vital that you understand how it will affect you and your employees.  Why? Because, unless you are a very small business, you will either have to provide healthcare insurance or pay a penalty for failing to do so. You will have to make some tough decisions in the years to come about how to handle your employees’ health insurance needs.

Because of the dramatic impact of this legislation, there is an urgent need for comprehensive and understandable information so that business owners can plan intelligently.

This creates a uniquely powerful opportunity to provide relevant and compelling content for your current and prospective customers. You can demonstrate thought leadership at a time when business owners are desperate to find an information source they can trust.

One local agency is doing exactly that.  Gulfshore Insurance in Naples, Florida is doing a superb job of content marketing at the exact moment that the health insurance paradigm shift looms large for everyone in the United States.

When you go to their website, you can find a broad range of information about the kinds of insurance coverage they provide, how they help you manage risk, and exactly who they are. That is always important.

But, what is urgent right now–and for years to come–is trustworthy content about healthcare reform. Gulfshore Insurance brings that information front and center on their homepage with their Health Reform Tools and Resources link. 

That link leads you to a wealth of information that is both comprehensive and timely. In the case of health reform, timeliness is vital because so much is undecided, in process, and apparently changeable.

The timeline chart below is a great example of the hard work they have done to help their clients understand what’s in store.

In short, Gulfshore Insurance is executing a content marketing strategy that genuinely benefits their customers and will therefore benefit to them well into the future.

Billion-Dollar Bank/Insurance Agency Completely Misses the Same Once-In-A-Lifetime Content Marketing Opportunity

BB&T is a huge regional bank which has in recent years acquired numerous local insurance agencies. In Southwest Florida, they bought an excellent local firm whose management team and employees continue to provide great products and services.

Unfortunately,  they are missing an unprecedented opportunity to show authentic thought leadership. During this turbulent time in American history when healthcare and healthcare insurance is changing forever, they are missing in action online.

If you go to the old local web address or the parent company insurance agency address, you will find absolutely nothing about healthcare reform. Moreover, they have eliminated any kind of local information on the website to tell you about the kinds of professionals that you would deal with in Southwest Florida.  If you drill down several layers, you can find telephone numbers to call but no e-mail or individual contact information. Even worse, they tell you absolutely nothing about the local company.   If I were not already familiar with that company, I would be at a complete loss to know why I should become a client.

The bottom line:

The Good–

• Gulfshore Insurance is showing authentic thought leadership that will resonate with clients and prospects for years to come.
• By providing lots of relevant, localized information, Gulfshore Insurance enables search engines to rank them highly and prospective clients to find them easily .
• Gulfshore Insurance shows up high on the first page of local search results for terms such as health insurance, business insurance, and personal insurance. Great content has a lot to do with that.

The Bad–

• BB&T has lost that same once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to show thought leadership and engender trust.
• They provide almost no information about their local presence in Southwest Florida.
• Their search engine performance is abysmal. Neither their current website address nor the predecessor local website shows up at all when you search for health insurance in Fort Myers or Naples–our two largest local markets.

They Don’t Make It Easy to Buy.  They Make You Want to Run for Your Life.

Danger, danger, Will Robinson!!  Car salesmen approaching!! 

I’m guessing that I didn’t even need an evocative photo for each of you to conjure up your own happy showroom memory.

My own recollection is fresh since I’m considering (ugh!) a new car purchase. At a local car dealer, no less than 5 sales guys tried to foist themselves on me.  I was just one salesperson away from hightailing it out of there.

Car dealers and manufacturers spend a fortune getting you in the showroom door. Imagine if they invested equally in delivering a valuable, in-person content marketing experience.  One can dream.

But, because we can learn from the awful as well as the awesome, here are some content marketing lessons to take away from the typically painful automobile showroom encounter.

5 Lessons to Learn from the Agony of Anti-Content Marketing Car Showroom Visits

1. Don’t make it blindingly obvious that you are desperate to sell a walk-in—read web visitor—prospect anything you can manage to squeeze them into.  Your web visitors want you to make them smarter about possible solutions to their problems so they can make smart buying decisions.
2. Find a fun, unique way to offer helpful info from the get go.  Don’t replicate the same old, same old kind of greeting that you get in a showroom.  I can’t remember a car salesman ever beginning with a useful offer of information, research, fun factoids that might bring me out of my protective shell. Your website can find a zillion different ways to invite and inform your visitors.
3. Provide useful, non-salesy takeaway information that isn’t all about you or your company.  Wouldn’t it be great to get some tangible product information in a showroom without having to survive a gauntlet of desperate-seeming sales guys?  Make it easy for your visitors to take away great content via eBooks or whitepapers without an obtrusive request for buying intention or detailed contact information.
4. Display in-depth knowledge of your products and services in the context of your customers’ concerns. I’ve been astonished by how often a car salesperson is clueless about car information that the dealer or manufacturers should know is top of mind among customers.  Your website is the perfect venue to provide easily accessible, but ultimately in-depth content that answers your visitors most urgent and important questions.
5. Don’t have a pop-up as your web visitors are about to move on that says the non-automotive equivalent of: “What will it take to put you in a car today?”  Apparently, car sales reps are instilled with the assumed truism that if you let a prospect leave the showroom leave without getting them to make an offer, you’ll never see them again. 
   I’m pretty sure that’s because they hated dealing with you so much that they would rather have root canal without anesthetic than relive the showroom assault. 
   On the other hand, offering your web visitors relevant and compelling content that leads them naturally closer to trusting you will encourage them to return.

I”m probably naive about this but I really believe that smart car dealers could deliver a positive–and mutually rewarding–content marketing experience if they made the buying process all about the customer and his needs.

But, there is one thing I am sure about. When you show that you genuinely care about your online customers by benefiting them from the time they first land on your site, a significant percentage will come back to spend time on your site and to buy.  

If Your Visitors Have To Search for It, They Won’t.

I continue to be surprised by the number of marketing and advertising companies who have websites that hide examples of the great work that they do behind a bunch of content clichés that fail to distinguish them from every other similar company. 

I recently stumbled upon the website of such a company who is missing its primary content marketing opportunity. They have great stuff, but it’s really hard to find.

Content marketing is all about providing relevant, compelling, and easily accessible information to your prospective customers.

In this case, what is genuinely relevant and compelling is the work that this agency has done on behalf of of its clients. That  visual content represents potential solutions to the problems that its Web visitors are facing.Unfortunately, the content that counts is lurking behind some same old, same old verbiage.

The copy below is from the actual website that I happened upon  They appear to do some really good work. But,  as a potential client, I would have to be truly driven to find that work. First, I would have to wade through all the generic copy that promises pretty much what any good marketing/advertising company could do for me :

“Fill in the Blank” Advertising Company creates custom marketing solutions from strategy through execution to help build and transform your business needs. Let us get to know you inside and out. Let us become instrumental in helping you develop breakthrough solutions to meet your brand objectives and increase your profits. With smart planning & execution, we strengthen your image and reputation as the world around us changes. Change is reality.

We differentiate your company from the competition……

A genuine irony flows from the website copy that makes the promise: "We differentiate your company from the competition."  Sadly, there is almost nothing in the copy that differentiates this agency from its competition.

Actually,  there is a differentiation to be found on this website–but not easily found. That differentiation consists of the proof behind the copy clichés, that is, the actual work that this agency has done. But, you have to struggle to hard-to-find it.

Making It Too Hard to Get to What Really Matters

To get to the good stuff,  you must click on a small  link called, "The Work,"  that sits at the bottom of the page. There, you will find a wealth of visual examples of excellent marketing and advertising projects done for a broad range of companies from relatively small to very very large.  You can even watch videos of commercials that are memorably amusing and interesting.

Moreover, the agency’s work examples include several very well-known brands that add implicit credibility to their skills and experience.

There is another missed opportunity, however. In an era of quantification, none of the work examples are accompanied by information about the objectives of the work and successful outcomes. I’m sure that there were plenty and that they would provide plenty of trust building content for potential clients.

The simple lesson: When you have great work to show, make sure that it is front and center on your website so that impatient visitors find it immediately. Then, use that work to power the copy that populates your homepage and the rest of your site.  Content marketing fails when you cannot find the content that counts quickly and easily. Only pirates love buried treasure.

In other words, when you can show specific successes, you do not have to rely on generic copy that fails to differentiate you from dozens of other similar companies.

Oh,and be sure to avoid clichés like the plague.

Or Maybe I’m on a special list of empty-headed business people.

But I’m hit by way too many email marketing campaigns that must assume that I’m exceptionally gullible. Perhaps I’m the only person that hates this stuff, but I’m going to share the agonizingly long text of an intelligence-insulting promotional email so you can judge for yourself.

Several normal emails kicked off the campaign promoting an online workshop. That was fine. I’m interested in the topic and am ok getting marketing missives.  But, then came the first ‘oops’ email follow up with a lame ‘I goofed’ message. And then the pathetic ‘boo boo mistake’ attempt that you see below in appropriate scarlet letters sneaked into my in box.  Does this woman really think I will fall for this?

Please marketers. I’m begging you. Write great copy. Be persuasive. Show me value. Share your wisdom. Ask for the order. All that is fine. Just don’t take me for an idiot with this kind of tripe which they must teach in ‘Take Your Customers for Chumps Online Marketing School’:

Am I the only one that hates this stuff?

Hi Newt,

I made a big boo boo mistake this afternoon.

Just as my team and I were getting ready to close down
registration for the Website Creation Workshop, I
accidentally sent an email out to the wrong list.

Now let me explain….

I got started a bit late in the promotion cycle with one
of my partners and we didn’t do our preview
interview call until just yesterday.

Since the call that was to introduce me to her readers was
only a day before the registration deadline, we talked and
we both agreed,  that extending the deadline by a couple of
days was the right thing to do.

I really would rather have not done this, but its my own
fault for scheduling a teleseminar the day before the deadline.

Because as I said in a post on the blog earlier today,
[Link removed to protect the innocent]
I need to finish getting the Workshop ready. And in particular
my team needs time to get the remaining Student Project
websites setup.

So today as I was sending out the email to the sublist
of people who were "Friends of Lynn" only, I
accidentally included a whole bunch of other email
sublists that I actually wanted to *exclude*. Aaggh!

Now a whole bunch of people got this "deadline extended"
email that probably didn’t make a whole lot of sense.

Here is what I am doing then. I am extending the deadline
for you too until 11:00am Eastern Time, Saturday morning,
March 25th.

[Link removed to protect the innocent]

I really do need the time to finish getting ready for the
Workshop, but I feel it is only fair that you get this
extension now too. I and some of my staff will just have to
work more this weekend.

We’ll get over it though. And after you register we will
have your Student Website ready as soon as we can.

Here is the link for you to register…

[Link removed to protect the innocent]

This Taking Us for Idiots Email Marketing May Work, But I hate it All the Same

I guess this must work often enough to keep annoying me with it. On the other hand, it might explain why email marketing too often deserves a dubious reputation.

A Sadly Wasted Effort for a Mystery Event That Might Even Have Been Worth Attending

I just received an email promotion that was so wrong-headed that it makes a perfect negative case study.  As always we can learn from what is terrific or, in this case, not so terrific.

Here are 4 Major Email Promo Mistakes that You Should Avoid:

• The header: This is the email header I saw in my inbox: “invitation for March 17”.  It doesn’t tell me what is happening on that date or why I should care. Since I, like all of you, receive way too many emails, I have no earthly reason to open it. 
  Your header must entice the recipient to open your email by showing quickly that your reader will benefit. It plays the critical role of a headline in a news story or an advertisement and is even more important because it’s the only thing your recipients may see in their crowded in box.

• The sender: The sender was Pearl Collier, but I neither know her nor can determine who she works for by looking at the sender name. That makes me nervous. If I take the trouble to cursor over the name, I can figure out that her email address seems to come from a large local R.E. developer. But, I bothered to do that only because I was motivated to write this article.
  Your send address mustn’t be mysterious. Unless you are mass mailing to folks who are inclined to open something from you because they know or respect you, you should use inexpensive software such as Constant Contact or MailChimp that lets you show a company name as sender in order to give you credibility.
• The message body: This tells me nothing other than the fact that an unspecified event is happening in an unspecified location at an unspecified time for an unspecified reason. I can see that the sender is connected to ‘Verandah’ but I don’t necessary know what Verandah is or what on earth the event is all about.
  Your message body should include everything your target needs to know to motivate them to take the next step whether it’s to attend an event, visit your website, get a free report, etc., etc. Make it obvious and enticing.
• The attachment: Since I don’t know this person and am paranoid about viruses and evil spyware demons, I will not open something that might wreck havoc on my PC.  Even if I knew the sender, she hasn’t given me enough explanation about why I would benefit to justify opening it.
  Your attachments should be rare or non-existent in promotional mailings. Put what you need to communicate in the body of the message. Make it super easy for your recipients to do what you want them to do.

A Sadly Missed Content Marketing Opportunity

What’s really unfortunate about this promotional mailing is that it is almost certainly promoting an event that is important for the company, expensive to produce, and most likely enjoyable to attend.  But, few recipients are likely get past the marketing hurdles that make it hard for them to justify taking action.

Don’t let this happen to you. Make sure that your header and your message body provide relevant and compelling content that motivates your prospects to take the next step toward becoming your customers.