oh I so love this post.Thanks 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!
Last 5 posts by Dennis Dayman
- Delivery and deliverability debunked - May 7th, 2012
- European Regulator Warns Silicon Valley About Privacy - April 28th, 2012
- Canada’s anti-spam law won’t take effect until 2013 - April 28th, 2012
- Mr. Dayman Goes to Washington - April 2nd, 2012
- EU proposes a reform of the data protection rules - March 28th, 2012
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.