Hello, may I pierce your head with a spike? To me, that’s what the following message (a real email from a real enterprise) really says:
So I’m going to accept a challenge posed by a copywriting and autoresponder expert,
[xxxx], and write an auto responder (also called lead nurturing email) every day
(not including weekends) for the next 30 days. I will be writing about all sorts of things -
focusing on the world of online and B2B marketing. They could include things about
my life that somehow pertains. Who knows?!There will be no sales pitches in any of these emails — just my thoughts and experiences,
focused on the world of marketing and my perspectives.My question to you is this: Would you like to receive these emails? The experiment
needs an audience so we can see what works and what doesn’t — and I’d love your feedback
and replies as we go along.So if you’re up for it — getting an email from me every day for the next 30 business days -
click the link below and let me know you’d like to receive them.
What am I missing here? I can understand why the author of this email would want to promote this 30-day tsunami of spam — but why would anyone want to be on the receiving end of it? (To get “things about my life that somehow pertains”?) And why would this email author expect anyone to be excited about this “opportunity”?
Please, I’m serious. Enlighten me. If you see something I don’t, let me know.
Jonathan,
I received the same email yesterday. The thing that got me was the intro:
“Hello fellow marketer! I’ve been talking with a lot of people and been working with a lot of our customers, as well as our own folks, to create more understanding around creating lead nurturing sequences — actually writing the emails — because most people think this is a difficult task that either requires a consultant or is something that smaller businesses will just not tackle.”
It baffles me that this person has no idea what she will be writing about for the next 30 emails, and yet she is classifying this experience as lead nurturing. Lead nurturing isn’t a random set of (30!) emails sent daily, but rather it should be coordinated contacts that help move a specific audience though the buying process. When done well, it certainly isn’t something thrown together on a whim because a challenge.
Michele
Ouch. That really hurt.
Not to echo Michele too closely, but this person is sadly off the mark in terms of understanding both the goal of and structure of an autoresponder campaign. The goal is not to throw stuff at the wall, each day for 30 days, and hope a few people accidentally click on your links. Even if it were, this invitation to opt in (thank marketing gods, this person is at least asking permission for the opt in) is so unappealing that I’d be tempted to blacklist the sender as a spammer to avoid having to field any additional requests.
Like all marketing materials, an autoresponder campaign must consider the prospect’s needs first. It’s about providing useful and relevant information delivered in a sequence that makes sense and is timed to correspond logically with the prospect’s current position in the sales experience – encouraging him to take the next step towards the action of making a purchase.
What the sender of the email quoted in your post is offering would be more accurately described as a daily newsletter or perhaps a blog in email format. Even so, the random content does not sound like something I’d like to waste my time on.
Hope it works out for this person. Glad I didn’t get the email.
Now, if you’ll please excuse me, I have to go pull this spike out of my head and write some copy.
(PS – thanks for the chuckle!)