I’m a fan of Evernote, but I hate their emails.
- It looks like an intimidating wall of unreadable noise: Yes, even plaintext emails need to look nice.
- There are no high value nodes or targets. It all runs together. Related items should be “chunked”, and links need to be less passive. Why should I click? Can I do something or are you just giving me a boring reading assignment?
- It’s low relevance, and totally scattered. I don’t need to hear about Windows stuff, and really none of this has any bearing on me as an Evernote user.
- Bottom line: Nothing in this is relevant or enticing. Actually, they did link to an iPhone case with a camera enhancing lens, which IS relevant to my interests and my use of Evernote, but it was lost in the noise until I carefully re-read the email while composing this post.
If your marketing email requires careful reading to find the gems, you’re DOOMED.
How to fix it?
- Much, much less copy.
- Only tell me the single most important thing that Evernote could possible tell an Evernote user.
- Make sure whatever you tell me is relevant and actionable.
- Fine, if you’re going to tell me more than one thing, limit it to three things, but make sure they’re visually chunked so I can make sense of it all.
Related Post: The 3 pillars of good email marketing are Interestingness, Relevance, and Actionability.