Act 2 – The Old Approach
Let me be honest with you.
Email marketing hasn’t changed much since the first email was sent in 1971.
Sure, we have better EMS and fancy tracking systems now.
But most of the “best practices” originated from the direct response principles of the 1960s Mad Men era, including:
- Crazy Discount
- Flash Sale
- Deadlines
- Fake deadline extensions
- Guarantees
Buy, buy, buy, buy, buy…
The subscribes have only two options:
Buy immediately…
– OR –
Unsubscribe.
This is STILL how most e-commerces are doing their email marketing right now.
I’ve worked with a $295M per year e-commerce not too long ago…
You’d think a brand this size would have everything figured out.
But, before I joined, the only email marketing strategy they were using was –
Broadcast a “bUy oNe GEt OnE fReE – flAsH saLeS – tOdAY oNLy” every two weeks – with three fake deadline extensions!
That’s the textbook definition of, “I don’t care about relationships.”
To be fair, this (kind of) makes sense in the 90s – the early age of the Internet.
Because traffic is cheap…
…audiences are unaware
…and attention is dispensable.
Who cares if you burn the list when you can buy new leads for a penny a piece?
The answer to, “Want more customers?” had always been…
“Get more leads.”
But the new reality is: traffic is expensive, and prospects are skeptical.
For e-commerces to grow effectively, it’s no longer acceptable to continuously (and arrogantly) burn their list – the list that cost them an arm and a leg to build.
To make things worse…
Facebook, Google, and YouTube are changing policies, banning accounts, plus shutting down businesses left and right.
No explanation. No appeal.
This means “get more leads” is no longer a guaranteed, risk-free solution.
That’s why you need a better approach.