Here's Why I Deleted Your Email without Reading It

To: me@company.com

From: salesdude@myawesomecompany.com

Subject: RE: following up

"You might have missed my previous email. . ."

No, no I didn't. I marked it as spam and deleted it. 

"Did you get a chance to take a quick look at the email I sent over to you last week?"

Did I get a chance to shower today? No. So on a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being the most urgent and critical thing, like coffee, I would rank reading your email a -27.

"I’ve reached out to you a few times now, to see if we could chat about MyAwesomeCompany, and why I think we could help you. I realize that you must get hundreds of emails each day similar to mine, so I’m going to do you a favor and stop filling up your inbox."

Oh gee, thanks. Your empathy is touching, it really is.

And my favorite:

"This is a reminder concerning an email request I sent last week requesting a brief discussion around your needs."

Maybe, just maybe, the reason I didn't respond to you is because you have absolutely no idea what my needs are, so unless you are knocking at my office door right now, a piping hot 8 oz Americano in hand made from lovingly hand-picked, fair trade beans from the Blue Mountains of Jamaica, I most certainly do not need a reminder to answer your email.

(These are all real, by the way, though the names have been changed to protect the guilty.)

I'm a marketer. I absolutely, 100 percent understand that it's a hard slog to differentiate a message and get it out. But the recent spate of "email marketing" is using techniques that I find downright distasteful. Specifically:

1. The use of "RE:" in the subject line, as if this was continuing a conversation we've been having back and forth. It manufactures a relationship that doesn't exist.

2. The vague subject line. In concert with the "RE:," vague subject lines take advantage of two noxious facts of the workplace: 1) we have way too many emails to process (and I say hurrah to companies like Atos, which torpedoed email entirely in 2011 and lived to tell the tale); and 2) FOMO, which lurks in even the most zen of workers.

3. The injured tone. In a normal exchange of emails between individuals who know each other, it is often considered bad form to not respond at all, especially when a response is requested. But when the email "exchange" is completely manufactured (see point #1), the implication that somehow I have dropped the ball in the conversation is infuriating on days when I can muster the energy to be infuriated.

Taken together, these kinds of email solicitations not only prompt me to hit delete (and mark it as spam), they leave a permanently bad taste in my mouth about the brands they're purporting to represent. 

Alright, then, so how should companies market? Isn't email marketing still the most effective way to reach customers? Yes, it is. In fact, I subscribe to a borderline ridiculous number of email newsletters and actually read most of them. But cold solicitations? Well, if you must, please keep these in mind:

1. Don't assume a familiarity with me that doesn't exist.  I don't know you, you don't know me. Try a subject line that acknowledges that fact, maybe with some variation of the word "introduction" in it. Better yet, find an actual person who knows you and knows me, and have them introduce you.

2. Don't assume I have time to have a discussion with you. I don't want to talk with you. It's not personal: I barely have enough time to talk to the people inside my company that I need to talk to.  I want to receive potentially relevant and interesting information, and, if it seems to be something that addresses a genuine -- and urgent -- need that I have, give me a link to research.

3. Do understand that guilt is a terrible selling tool. I am a parent; I am immune from externally-imposed guilt. If I haven't responded to your first two emails, it's likely that either my company has an excellent spam filter, or I am just not interested.

4. Do realize that the Internet has fundamentally changed the buying journey. It generally follows a path similar to this: 1) I ask someone I know if they have solved a similar problem before; 2) if I come up empty, I'll ask my network (my husband found nanny #11 by posting on Facebook, so it works); 3) if I still come up empty -- which tends to be extremely rare -- I'll consult Google.

In fact, reams of research have been devoted to this shift toward self-guided research: my favorite article is the oldie-but-goodie one by Forrester's Lori Wizdo: Buyer Behavior Helps B2B Marketers Guide the Buyer's Journey.  

But while Lori's answer is more automation to create more personalization, my preferred approach is rooted in some basic common sense:

1. Find my watering holes. Join the discussions where I and people like me talk about the problems we face. Engage in the conversation in a meaningful way; for example, pull in those customer examples you're so anxious to shove into my inbox when I haven't expressed an interest. Take the time to find the right opening.

2. Give up on the idea of volume for now. It's completely up to you to consider sending the same "automated" emails, where the macro puts my name in between commas, but know that I will delete them. Just as everyone thinks they're the good guy, every email recipient is convinced of his or her own individuality. Do the harder work of understanding who I am and where I go to look for advice: LinkedIn and other social sites make this easy. In some utopian future, you'll be able to have volume and personalization, but despite the hype, that day has yet to really arrive. 

3. Have your happy customers speak for you. This is one of those techniques that hasn't changed much since the days of Wedgwood and his (literally) textbook use of the celebrity endorsement, in his case, the royal warrant from Her Majesty the Queen Herself. If someone is doing amazing stuff with your product or service, and it happens to dovetail with something I hope to do, there's an incredibly high probability I will find out about it (especially if you help them talk about it). 

Is it slower? Yes. Is it less gratifying than being able to say, "I sent out 300 emails today to prospects"? Oh yes. But if you're one of those who values impact over activity, then please, for the love of Outlook, stop sending -- and resending -- emails that don't work. 

Update posted June 24th: Whoa, this post generated a lot of conversation, both publicly in the Comments section and via InMail. While this was intended as a tongue-in-cheek cri de couer, it does point to the fact that marketing and sales mirror evolution: techniques that used to work stop working after awhile.  Based on that, I'm going to explore what might come next in the B2B world through a series of posts, starting with this one: Twin Powers, Activate!. And I recently added another one in response to "so what emails DO work?," complete with examples. Looking forward to a continued dialogue!