How to Write a Marketing Email That Does Not Sound Like You're a Stalker

And some other lessons from Steve Jobs...

Aug 02, 2023

Hello Gobbledeers,

How’s it going? Good? Great.

I hope you’ll indulge me and allow me to start here:

Editor’s Note:

OK, I really, really overestimated my readers. I thought that none of you would give me grief for last week’s subject line (“Cap’n Crunch finally gets fingered for a promotion”). I was wrong.

So thank you to the several-to-many of you (you know who you are) who texted or emailed me last week a note that just said “Fingered????”

I thought that subject line was har har har, because:

“Fingered” is slang for “selected,” as in “the witness fingered the mugger in the lineup.”
If you actually read the stupid newsletter, you’ll note that part about Cap’n Crunch receiving a 5th finger, where previously he had 4 fingers.

(Every joke is funnier when you have to explain it using multiple bullet points.)

It had nothing to do with the Tom Green movie classic “Freddie Got Fingered,” nor did it have to do with the other thing most-to-all of you were thinking.

I learned my lesson - no more writing about cereal.

He’s just pointing. He’s definitely not making a gesture toward my friends who wrote to me.

Every Breath You Take…

A really great bit of email copywriting should show the reader that you know them. It should be personalized and resonate in a way that feels like your brand is right there in the room with the reader.

Also, a really great bit of email copywriting should be edited by someone who is not the copywriter, because - God bless all of us who write stuff - sometimes we’re idiots (not you, other people.)

Related to those two pieces of information, the athleisure clothing company Feat recently sent an email to its customers that implied (pretty directly) that it was being sent by your neighbor who, by the way, has been watching you through your window.

(From the Wall Street Journal):

Sophie Deluna was checking her email Saturday when, she said, a subject line caught her eye: “A message from your neighbor.”
“Hi Sophie, it’s your neighbor right across the street with the silver car and little dog,” the email began. “Anyway, just wanted to let you know everyone in the neighborhood can see when you walk around your house in your underwear all day.”
Deluna, who lives in Bainbridge Island, Wash., said she immediately pictured a male neighbor who really does live across the street.
The message concludes with a postscript about trash pickup. “Don’t forget its [sic] trash day tomorrow! Cans must be out by 7am and back inside by 7pm!”

It then went on to mention there’s a sale on shorts.

Not weird at all!

So because online and whatever, the company issued an apology (er, “apology”), saying, “While a majority of our customers (men and women) responded positively to this email, there was a small subset of customers for whom the email triggered fear, anxiety and discomfort,” [CEO Taylor] Offer said in a statement. “This was never our intention and the opposite of what we aspire to do as a brand.”

“Small subset.”

I like that the Journal wanted to get a “both sides” thing going, so they included a quote from a guy who liked the email:

“Las Vegas-based Michael Notaro, who co-owns a sea moss products company called The Good Moss, said he and his wife frequently buy from Feat…He said he found the email “very catchy” and believes even if he hadn’t bought from Feat before, he would be intrigued about the company.”

So the lesson is, maybe like don’t use stalking to sell shorts? Or only send weird stalky emails to Vegas-based sea moss company owners? Maybe the problem was one of targeting? And is it weird that the women quoted in the story were all, “this is stalky and kinda upsetting” but the Vegas guy is like, “hmmmmm, intriguing!”

An Actual Marketing Lesson from Steve Jobs

One of the weird legacies of Steve Jobs is that what many (many) founders have taken away from Jobs’ success is that being the “brilliant asshole” is a surefire way to show that you are a genius (emphasis on the asshole, less emphasis on the brilliant.)

Elizabeth Holmes - whom Inc. called “The Next Steve Jobs” - was one of those who seemed to think that wearing a mock turtleneck, treating everyone like garbage, and stealing a billion dollars was the way to continue the Apple founder’s legacy.

And while the “reality distortion field” and “parking in a handicapped spot” and “not having a license plate” and “not enjoying a healthy relationship with his daughter” are all less-than-admirable qualities, they are not the reasons why Apple was successful.

It’s worth watching this 7 minute clip of Steve Jobs talking about marketing:

He’s promoting the launch of the “Here’s to the Crazy Ones” campaign, but he says a few things before that that were great:

“ Even a great brand needs investment and caring if it's going to retain its relevance and vitality, and the Apple brand has clearly suffered from neglect in this area in the last few years and we need to bring it back.”
“The way to do that is not to talk about speeds and feeds it's not to talk about nips and megahertz it's not to talk about why we're better than Windows. The dairy industry tried for 20 years to convince you that milk was good for you…and then they tried Got Milk and the sales are going like this (makes upward movement). Got Milk doesn't even talk about the product. It focuses on the absence of the product.”
He then talks about Nike, and how they don’t go into the specs of their products, and instead they “honor great athletes and they honor great athletics. That's who they are and that's what they are about…”

There are a few things there that I want to call out:

Steve Jobs believed in investing in your brand, and that’s why if you work for a software company and you are not allowed to invest in the brand and you’re only allowed to spend on Demand Gen, your boss might not the next Steve Jobs. (If you refer to the 5th grade as “my senior year”, you might be a redneck.) There is no Apple without brand investment. Have you ever had a conversation with your CEO and that person says something like, “I don’t want you to focus on brand right now, we just need to bring in more leads?” That is your sign to leave the company, because they will not succeed.
I cannot stress how unusual it is to hear the CEO of a tech company talk about brand. It’s actually kinda jarring.
It’s not about the product specs. It’s not. I promise. It’s not. It’s also not about the category, nor about creating the category. Those are things you care about when you don’t do the difficult work of creating and investing in a brand. For example, whenever a new iPhone comes out, Samsung starts talking about how they had all those features 2 years ago. Right. But Samsung isn’t Apple. Apple isn’t competing on features. If you’re competing on features, you better have the world’s greatest product team that is constantly - constantly - introducing great new stuff. Also, you’re competing with billions and billions of dollars of VC investment in new products. I guess I’m saying that if you think you’re competing on features, you’ve lost. And if your company in the past year changed their homepage to make sure everyone knows whateverthehell product you’re selling is now “headless” or “AI-based,” you’ve also lost.

Then Jobs provides a cheat sheet for how to actually create a brand:

“Apple’s customers want to know who is Apple, and what is it that we stand for, and where do we fit in this world? What we're about isn't making boxes for people to get their jobs done…[Apple’s] core value is that we believe that people with passion can change the world for the better.”

Who are you?
What do you stand for?
Where do you fit in the world?

You can say that Apple’s core value is a stupid core value, but Apple created campaign after campaign that reflected that value.

Of course Apple does talk about product specs - their page on Macbooks mentions “a fanless design means it stays silent even under intense workloads.” (Look at that - they mentioned the benefit - it’s silent - and not just that it’s “fanless." Nobody cares that it’s fanless. They only care that it’s silent.)

But really, the most remarkable part of the video is that the CEO of a tech company actually cared enough about marketing - and believed enough in marketing - to say those things in the first place.

So in honor of that, I’d suggest that your team do two exercises (I can facilitate! Or not!). In the first exercise, take those 3 questions above and answer them. I promise, the answer is not “we stand for ensuring everyone has access to a flexible architecture built on microservices that blah blah blah.” That is not the answer.

In the second exercise, take every statement on your website and add the words, “that means…” at the end, then finish the sentence. In Apple’s case, “a fanless design means it stays silent even under intense workloads.”

I almost never - never! - see “that means.” I see a lot of:

Contentstack is more than a headless CMS - it's a platform that will elevate your business to the next level.

And

Take your business to more places with the only fully automated Composable DXP powered by the #1 headless CMS.

Very inspiring.

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How We Can Work Together

As always, thanks so much for reading, especially because you could’ve been reading the indictments instead.

If you’re a marketer and you’re starting to think about your positioning, there are two ways we can work together:

In a half-day (or so) workshop we’ll help you hone your positioning and messaging so it’s clear what you do, and why you’re better than your competitors.
Do you have an event where you want someone to talk about messaging and positioning in a fun way? I do that!

Happy to chat - here’s my Calendly link. (I’ve had great conversations lately with some people who were thinking about names for the company, with people presenting to their board and wanted to make sure what they’re saying made sense, and others who just wanted feedback on their website…those are all good reasons to chat).

And it would mean the world if you could share Gobbledy with 3 friends. Would you mind? (My daughter said, in fact, she would mind. So she’s off the hook…)