Week 10 Part A - Researching Email Marketing

 

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Welcome back, reader! Today's topic is researching email marketing.

How often to send from my faux business? I think quarterly except for to advertise new products when the customer selects to receive those. Right now I only have two products in mind – Make ‘em Pay and and a wearable mesh that provides signal access for internet, directly to the person, creating Internet access as a service in a subscription to the person (who can then give internet to their devices, just like it always should’ve been.) What I would really want to accomplish with an email list is to establish reliability and trust in my company/brand. 

A funny but impactful personal story here is that I used to work for a small business, and the owner had a “buy or die policy” on customer outreach (kind of like Phi Theta Kappa – they make me wish I wasn’t a good student – kidding, I like good grades.) He told me to keep calling former customers until they buy or die. Ugh. I hated it. The call recipients did too. Now I get emails from Phi Theta Kappa every day, sometimes twice a day, and like you, Professor, I didn’t sign up for this – they bought my info*. When I didn’t respond, they sent physical mail and continued with the obsessive email probing. Everyone I’ve talked to has just unsubscribed. I’m personally waiting for them to helicopter drop scholars in tactical gear into my backyard, hold me at gunpoint, and make me join. 

The kind of information my business could use as content would of course include things from the Using Email Marketing video, such as: showing off new products, letting people know the business is here for them, and offering discounts and coupons. I think many of my customers would like how-to guides on relevant tech topics. If it seemed that my customers were interested in more informational type outreach, and I would find out by surveying them in exchange for a discount on my product(s), then I would create a mix of short summaries and links to quick videos. I would also use the survey to determine how often they would like to be contacted, since I’ve had such poignant experiences with marketing. I would of course include calls to action which would lead from learn-more buttons to external sites, as well as links to my social media pages. And at the bottom, I’d include the unsubscribe link in case Revolution ever got too much for someone.
 

*And what institution had access to my grades that was also connected to my personally identifying information? But then again, I probably agreed to a EULA that allowed me to use okta and simultaneously transmuted my soul to residual data, thereby affording the school rights to sell me piecemeal, in perpetuity.