How email marketing (doesn’t) work
Was there ever a marketing tool as lazily, stupidly, wastefully, infuriatingly, deludedly, pointlessly used as email marketing? I’m not thinking about those “Exclusive”, “VIP”, “Just for You” and “Private and Personal” offers that get heaved out by the skip-load from hopeful marketeers who’ve paid for bulk lists of email addresses - whether nicked or legit - but haven’t got the means to create individual salutations (this “Privileged Offer” is “Exclusive To You,” “Dear Valued Client,” but it fetches up in the junk with “Dear Esteemed Customer,” “YOUR PRIVATE AND PERSONAL SECURITY HAS BEEN VIOLATED”). No, I’m talking about your actual “personal touch.” Early in 2006 I stayed at a Britannia Hotel in Coventry. The big, squat block and its contents reminded me of a state-run Interhotel I once endured in deepest (communist, as was) East Germany. Room too small and too chilly, bed too narrow and too hard, bedclothes too sparse; breakfast coffee cold; eggs tepid and greasy; toast damp and f...