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Emails that make you smile

This summer’s non-work project for me has been training for a 5K run with Fleet Feet in Menlo Park. As part of the training programs we get weekly emails from the store on Monday. As I was reading through today’s email, I found myself smiling and happy. Lisa, who is one of the store owners and writes the emails, is just so happy and bouncy and thrilled to share her love of running and that comes through in the newsletter.
Our group’s primary coach is the other store owner. During runs we often talk about random stuff, and when I tell people I do email delivery, they always start talking about their experience with email and spam. One night I was running with Jim, and we were talking about Jim’s experiences with sending email. He mentioned their ESP and talked about how convenient it was. But then he mentioned he wasn’t sure that they were sending enough mail (which made me laugh hard enough I almost tripped on a curb).
I realized I am not just a delivery expert when I started thinking about all the ways they could increase the amount of email they send, while still maintaining the quality and the friendly feel of their bulk emails. What could they offer local runners that would increase the value of the store to them? The first very obvious thing was a race calendar. There are dozens of local races every week, telling folks about upcoming races and entry deadlines would be a way to contact folks regularly without it always being a “buy stuff from us!!”
What commercial emails have you gotten recently that have made you smile?

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Delivery is about helping you succeed

I was talking with another delivery person today who’s dealing with a customer struggling with some issues. As most of these discussions go, we get to the part where we have to tell the customer that what they’re doing looks problematic from the outside. And then the customer gets all upset and angry and starts complaining to account reps or managers or executives.
The challenge of delivery is working with clients who don’t want to hear they have to change what they’re doing. Some senders deflect better than a 3 year old caught with her hand in the cookie jar.
I think all of us in the delivery space, or at least most of us, want our customers and clients to succeed in their email goals. We want you to have a great mailing program. But when your delivery is having problems, getting to a great mailing program means doing something differently.
These changes can be hard, both in terms of thinking differently about email and how it works and about business models. Some business models make it extremely difficult to use emails. We understand that. We don’t make the rules, we just explain them.
We want your mail to work.

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Hear me talk about improving delivery

Tom Sather (ReturnPath) and I will be speaking on Thursday at a webinar hosted by the Association of Business and Media Companies.
How to Boost Email Marketing Response Rates

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