🧷Playing it too safe w/ email campaigns?

This is Inbox Hacking, a free newsletter with Email Marketing insights, tools, & tactics sent twice per week. Join marketers from Hyatt, the NBA, & BASF, and sign up for a Free subscription.

Morning. Is it me or is every third news item pimping pumpkin spice this-n-that?

We can’t get bogged down by society’s infatuation with the basic. So let’s look at 5 pieces of evidence that you should not play it too safe with your email marketing.

Marketing Experts Don’t Know it All

Hindsight’s 20/20 when it comes to genius marketing.

No one has any idea which campaign or ad concept will take off.

No guarantees. So why not roll the dice occasionally? Especially when you have loyal email subscribers.

They’re more likely to unsubscribe if you crank out cookie-cutter campaigns versus testing a few clever marketing campaigns.

Examples below…

5 Clever Marketing Campaigns / Brands that Experts Would Not Suggest

#1 IKEA selling food.

Name a marketer who would advise a home furnishings store to sell meatballs and other food. Nobody! Yet, this clever marketing tactic keeps shoppers from fleeing the store when they get hungry, which would cost IKEA sales.

#2 Dos Equis Most Interesting Man in the World.

Two unknown (at the time) marketing dudes came up with the concept and the suits at corporate didn’t love it. Check that… they hated the idea. Luckily someone had the guts to press the issue. This clever marketing campaign became wildly popular, plus Dos Equis’ actual sales jumped. Today, the brand name ‘Dos Equis’ gets 60k searches monthly, “Dos Equis Guy” gets 10k and the ads no longer even run!

#3 PodcastNotes’ unique newsletter content is not easily acquired.

Raise your hand if you’ve got time to cover a ton of podcasts with detailed notes? Exactly. That’s why PodcastNotes’ newsletter is worth checking out each time it arrives. The team curates content from audio and despite AI tools, it has to be tedious work.

#4 Slow Boring newsletter sounds true to the title.

See tagline below. What? No vikings storming DC? No “All Hell Broke Loose” clickbait like Forbes’ YT headlines? No investor would’ve put money into a newsletter like Slow Boring, but 12-minute reads without theatrics apparently generates $800k a year.

#5 Codie Sanchez should not be a marketing hero.

What marketing expert would’ve predicted this young woman would gain fame and fortune investing in plumbing companies and other blue-collar businesses? What marketing professor would advise students to take this route or approach a plunger? (Well, Norm Brodsky of Inc. Magazine would have— he always promoted “boring businesses”)

Bottom Line on Experts & Clever Marketing Campaigns

‘Shoulds’ are roadblocks.

We should write only about topics the largest email newsletters cover

This ad should work because we swiped a Facebook Ad Library ad that’s been running for 14 months

We should avoid newsletter topics that might upset a segment of our list (2 thin-skinned, no-clicking, job-allergic folks out West don’t count as a segment)

I get it, once your brand gets so big, you have a brand voice and one of those style guide encyclopedias.

Flip side, when you’re still trying to grow, you don’t wanna screw things up, so you stick to the playbook of larger brands.

But those guidelines are just guidelines… they’re not barbwire.

You are allowed to color outside the lines. Especially with email marketing campaigns.

Read below for a heads-up on invalid email addresses & Today’s Hack promotes reruns to improve sales.

Email Fails

Spam filters are hurting even good emailers.

Apple’s trying to put email marketers in the poor house.

And readers have the attention span of a meth-headed goldfish.

I guess we should all give up, go home, and cry to mama?

Well, mama don’t wanna hear it.

Instead, do the simplest thing possible to improve your email deliverability…

Get subscribers to open more of your emails. It is not as hard as it used to be.

Because of Inbox Mailers’ triggered emails. These emails skip the line at the inbox to ensure your emails get top billing, get opened, then get clicked on.

Demo Inbox Mailers for yourself and see how simple it is to engage subscribers when you can target them while they’re in their inbox!

*sponsored

Knowledge Base

⚡Knowledge is power, so is avoiding certain boat rides

Invalid email addresses you wouldn’t expect

🤩Seen Inbox Mailers’ updated tools (Creatives + AI Features)?

Why email authentication is vital to emailers

🎂Win Optinmonster prizes… or get a job with them

Best email engagement among sectors via Constant Contact study

📩Are your emails easy to read (check to see)

Follow Inbox Mailers…

Self Help

Got a brother who’s been trying to quit smoking for a couple decades.

Decades, with a D – as in defeated.

Why? He goes it alone. With structured help from other people, he could beat Big Tobacco with a whooping stick.

Even bacteria have sense enough to work together. We humans are too hard-headed.

* Inbox Hackers Shout-out:

📢Darci at Risk Optics (compliance)

📢Diana at Diana Stem (marketing)

Facts and Stats

Nearly 20% of knowledge workers check email / communication apps every 1 to 3 minutes (SuperHuman 2021)

Email response rate nearly doubled when the copy was reduced from 8 sentences to 3 (Writing for Busy Readers)

Trend tracking: 23% of social media marketers do so multiple times a day (HubSpot Survey)

Bonus: Why we can’t trust every statistic. Recent example below. Ridiculous.

WallyWorld Effect [But in Email]

Brands beg to be put on Walmart’s shelves.

They go to great lengths like slashing production costs so Walmart lets them in their walled garden.

What’s that tell us?

The network effect is crazy powerful. Get your product seen by countless shoppers who view the inside of a Walmart and your sales soar.

Inbox Mailers gives you this same network effect by triggering your emails to arrive next to other emails your subscribers are interested in. Not just interested in, but emails they are actively reading when your new email arrives. This produces more opens, more clicks, and more sales.

The network effect. A simple email strategy to improve your email marketing revenue quickly. Schedule a demo to take advantage of an age-old phenomenon using Inbox Mailers’ network triggered emails.