What to avoid in your emails: a short demonstration, starting with a lie

Make sure it’s from nobody in particular, sell four things at once, and fancy it up with needless illustration

Someone witty once said that an obituary brings new terror to death.

Many of the emails I receive beget life-sapping irritation and disbelief – this being a good example:

Click here to see the full email.

This event/series of events may well prosper. After all, it or they are free. And there seem to be two or three interesting things going on: the quality of what you sell generally matters far more than how you sell it

But consider the email.

It starts with a lie. I have never, even for a second, given these clowns my opinions about anything – though I am now making up for lost time. I have never shared my “challenges needs for the year ahead”, from which I suppose the word “and” is missing, but one is to stop garbage landing in my inbox.

Good copy does not use tired phrases like “taken onboard”. These are the province of twats talking in meetings.

The enthusiasm they convey in the copy – which is pretty good and well structured – is wasted if they start like that.

I have no idea what all these sets of initials stand for, and better things to do than try and find out.

The rule to follow with an email – though many are sublimely unaware of it – is the same as with direct mail: make it personal. Just as in direct mail you should always use a letter rather than a leaflet, a sound rule in cold emails is to use text or something that looks like it.

That border which somebody put round the text will slash response.I know that because of some tests run a dew years ago

Don’t write from no-one in particular – e.g. The Team. I can’t deal with a “team”. I want to deal with a real person with a name. Stupid corporates do this all the time. Is it because nobody wants to be responsible? Or are they in for the World Cup?

Never try to sell four things at once with equal weight. The rule is simple. Give one prominence or alternatively offer a host of things so that it’s fun to choose. Whatever you are doing, avoid vapid slogans such as Fuel for Modern Marketing Minds, which would have sounded cheesy in 1953.

Don’t centre your type. It makes it hard work on the eye which has to readjust with each line.

This is by no means the worst email I received in the last week, but it really isn’t good enough,