oh I so love this post.Thanks Kara. My marketing and best practices teams are also probably tired of me harping on this exact same thing.

The Hunt
You don't have to talk to many marketers before you hear the word "blast" roll off the tongue - at which point my left eye starts to twitch, my leg starts to shake and expletives begin to fly from my mouth like a raunchy truck driver after too much coffee. Graphic? Yes. True? Pretty close. For those of you that have worked with me, clients, prospects and colleagues alike you know that it has been my personal mission to ban the word "blast" from the email industry forever (much like the hyphen in e-mail, which is gaining success as well). Call me an email snob, but if you are a legitimate marketer the word "blast" should never pass your lips unless you are using it to describe the fun networking event you attended last night. Nothing about your marketing efforts should convey that there is no forethought or planning to your marketing and "blast" does exactly that.

The Skunk
Clearly the skunk here is the awful, five-letter dirty word that has made its way in to the vocabulary of email marketers everywhere --- BLAST. A word that so inherently indicates that we are an industry that doesn't care where our messages land so long as we hit someone with an email address and at least one good eye. One colleague likened it to confetti cannons – blast the confetti cannon and you will be cleaning up the mess for months! It’s not too far from the truth really. Look at this industry, email marketers continue to exist today that believe this is the right approach. Call it what you want, "spray and pray," "batch and blast," it is the behavior that has caused so much consumer distrust in email marketing and years later, we are still cleaning up the mess. It is this same mentality that has caused your friends to call you a SPAMMER after you tell them what you do for a living.

The Resolution
Let’s keep "blast" in the past and move into a new, more intelligent era of email communication where we refer to our email communications as campaign launches or customer email distributions. As professional email marketers we are mindful about message content that contains email "dirty words or phrases" like "free" or "limited time offer." The same consideration needs to be given to how we as marketers refer to what we do on a daily basis. We need to "walk the walk" by removing the word "blast" from our daily vernacular starting now. This will also help educate those internal customers that have a stake in your email marketing as well as making it a little easier for sweet old aunt Margie to better understand what you do.

-Dennis
Eloqua

Don't Just Send, Deliver!

Comments

I 100% agree. Blast is a horrible descriptive for our industry and it is so outdated. We can be more specific that that about what we are sending, whether it be a newsletter, alert, promotional piece, and so on!

Too sad and too true! Why use a machine gun to fire buckshot when with just a little extra effort a sniper rifle with a little red laser scope could hone in on the target? Will more regulation be required to stop marketers from blasting away? It seem spam filters are accomplishing it already by blocking anything to resembles mass mailing.

Great post. I'm going to help you spread the word and also work on my own vocabulary. I don't want your left eye to twitch.

Thank you guys! This really has been my fight for many years and I am officially taking it to the streets! I am assembling a gang and taking out offenders one at a time! Let's rally!!

I saw a presentation yesterday where both presenters kept saying "email blast." I cringed every time I heard it. Not sure I would have reacted that way before reading this. Thanks for the education.