6 of My All-Time Favorite Quotes About Marketing

In the new fourth edition of my book, “Email Marketing Rules,” I include quotes from scores of experts who have impacted how I think about the email channel, as well as about marketing in general. Here, I’d like to share six of my favorite quotes along with the wisdom I see in them. In no particular order, here they are …

Where Law Meets Emails and Consumers

“The law is the low bar.”

— Laura Atkins, owner of Word to the Wise

Most businesses are intrinsically against any new laws or regulations, which invariably introduce additional compliance costs or restrict business practices. Canada’s Anti-Spam Legislation (CASL), the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) and other privacy and anti-spam laws have undeniably done both of those.

However, I would argue that these laws have actually protected businesses and the email channel. The truth is the law always lags consumer expectations, as well as the expectations of inbox providers in the case of anti-spam laws. And a growing gap in expectations is a growing risk to businesses in terms of customer loyalty and brand image and reputation.

This danger is most evident in the US, where the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 is still sadly in effect. In this country, merely complying with CAN-SPAM would be disastrous, leading to blocklistings and wholesale junking and blocking of campaigns by inbox providers. As Laura says, our subscribers expect much more from us. At a minimum, they expect us to respect their permission, both in terms of opt-ins and in terms of responding to their inactivity by eventually suppressing future emails to them.

Related Article: 5 Truths About Inactive Email Subscribers

Quality Customers and Quality Emails

“Customer loyalty is mostly about choosing the right customers.”

— John Jantsch, author of “Duct Tape Marketing“

Where you acquire new subscribers almost predetermines whether your email program will struggle or thrive. If you acquire many of your subscribers through list purchases, poorly done list rentals, sweepstakes and other sources that are far from your business operations, then you’ll be plagued by high bounce rates, low engagement and high spam complaints.

On the other hand, if you’re gaining the vast majority of your subscribers via signups during your online or in-store checkout processes, on your website and in your app, then you will have added lots of customers to your list who are genuine fans that are predisposed to engage with your emails and buy again.

If you’re unsure how your audience acquisition sources are affecting your overall email program health, then start tagging your sources so you can track the behaviors of the subscribers that come onto your list from each one. Chances are you’ll find that one or two of your acquisition sources are responsible for the majority of your bounces, inactivity and complaints.

Related Article: Signed up for 100 Marketing Emails. Here’s What I Learned

Avoid Baiting Subject Lines for Open Rates

“Don’t confuse attention for intent.”

— John Bonini, founder of Some Good Content

Too many email marketers still believe that the key to getting more conversions is to get more opens. After all, a subscriber can’t convert if they don’t open the email, they reason.

In the pursuit of high open rates, these marketers often use vague and cryptic subject lines and preview text — often defending their use as being “clever” or in service of creating a “curiosity gap.” However, these open-bait tactics only succeed in attracting curious subscribers rather than ones who are actually interested in the email’s call-to-action. Not only does this result in low click-to-open rates, but open rates eventually decline over time as subscribers end up repeatedly feeling like their time was wasted reading messages they ended up having little interest in.

In these cases, the marketer has sacrificed subscriber trust in exchange for getting additional opens that rarely drove business goals. The wiser path is to respect your subscribers’ time by using envelope content that reflects the content of the email. Long-term, this results in higher total opens, as well as more conversions and less list churn as your openers will have stronger intent.

While John was talking about campaign engagement when he said this, his sentiment can also easily be applied to marketers’ habit of pushing their way into channels that consumers prefer to use for communicating with family and friends rather than focusing on the channels like email where consumers most want to hear from brands.

Related Article: 10 Common Email Marketing Mistakes That Are Easy to Fix

Marketers: Manage Your Audiences

“The customers are the assets; not the store and not the ecommerce sites.”

— Michael Brown, partner at A.T. Kearney

Marketers too often get confused about what they’re supposed to be managing. Often, they think they should be managing product inventories. In particular, email marketers often think they should be managing email campaigns.

As Michael points out, the truth is that marketers should be managing their audiences. I certainly understand that business demands routinely drive the goals of email and other digital marketing campaigns, but the overarching focus should be on serving your audience. If you do that well — sending relevant campaigns at the right time and right cadence — then you’ll likely find that you’re also meeting your business goals.

Related Article: 4 Ways Brands Go Wrong With Digital Marketing Metrics

Trim That Bloated Email Content

“When you emphasize everything, you emphasize nothing.”

— Herschell Gordon Lewis, author of “Effective E-mail Marketing“

Everybody wants a piece of email marketing, so marketers often find themselves fending off requests from their coworkers in merchandising, operations and beyond. (It’s because of those persistent merchandisers that so many marketers think their job is managing inventory levels.) If unshielded from that, email marketers often feel pressured to include an excessive amount of content in the messages they craft, with that clutter undermining overall performance.

Given the trend toward shorter, more focused emails with fewer calls-to-action, as well as the trend toward AI-driven content, it’s more important than ever to have a curated and clear content hierarchy to guide your time-starved subscribers to the actions you most want them to take. When it comes to email content, more usually isn’t better.

Related Article: The Fold in the Inbox: Hard Line, Soft Line, Imaginary Line?

Make That Next Email Better

“The strength and power of anything — whether it is a business, an individual fitness plan, or event — has its foundation in an accumulation of small, incremental improvements that all either fit together or build on each other. To sum it up: small improvement x consistency = substance.”

— Nicole Penn, president of The EGC Group

One of my favorite things about email marketing is that it’s a channel that’s built for iteration. It doesn’t matter so much if your last campaign wasn’t perfect, or if you made this mistake or that mistake, because chances are that you’re sending another campaign in two or three days, if not sooner. And every send is an opportunity to get a little better.

I’ve tried to bring this spirit of iteration to “Email Marketing Rules.” With each new edition, I’ve added new rules, concepts and checklists — which are both a reflection of email marketing’s growing complexity and my own personal growth as an email marketer. I hope you’ll join me on this journey of incremental improvement.