Val Geisler - we need to talk about your emails

Look, Reader,
.

There's something that's been on my mind for the last, oh, six months or so. I've been turning it around, trying to figure out the right way to talk to you about it. You know I'm not typically at a loss for words so this has been big for me.

How do I even bring it up?

Here's the truth that I have to get off my chest:

Most emails (yes, even mine) are a waste of people's time.

When your app sends an email encouraging someone to setup their account but they did that two days ago...
When you send an email to everyone on your list without segmenting customers from non-customers...
When you don't make use of the tools at your fingertips and collect data that informs your email marketing decisions...

Your emails suck.

My emails.
Your emails.
Your company's emails.

And with the deep data gathering features many email marketing services are building into their products, there's no excuse for sucky emails anymore.

You don't need the fanciest ESP out there either. Just a little thoughtfulness and strategy.

Personalization is everywhere and if you aren't using it, now's the time to dig in.

"Email isn’t dead. It’s still the #1 owned channel for nurturing leads into customers into raving lunatic fans… and it’s MOST startups’ MOST under-leveraged channel." -Susan Su, Head of Marketing at Reforge

Had I thought to ask you what email service provider you use when you first signed up to my email list, I could be delivering the exact steps to gather data from your subscribers and pull it into your emails.

But I didn't.

So instead I'm going to tell you that what I'm about to share is worth the 5ish minutes to read.

Start here (the brilliant Ed Fry wrote that piece).

^^^That article is moving me from thought to action. You'll see more coming very soon.

So read it over and let me know: how will you go from simply thinking about personalization to actually doing it?

Come talk to me about it here.

-Val