The name has been blurred to protect the guilty.

I’m sure these chaps do not have a malicious bone in their bodies, a few annoying ones maybe, but just a few bad practices many are guilty of.

They found me on LinkedIn, downloaded their contact list from it and are violating the Australian SPAM Act by emailing to it. Good for you…

Bad for me and anyone else their email is completely irrelevant to.

This brought it home to me just how far most businesses can be removed from exactly what their email marketing could be about.

Jamming as many names as you can find into an email service provider isn’t opt in. Writing chatty little emails on the latest thing you are trying to sell and pulling the trigger spraying us all in irrelevance like a deranged Terminator, is not engagement.

Now you know why I chose the picture (stay to the end, it gets better)…

Apart from the obvious upsetting of the email police, what are missed opportunities and problems going on here?

• Assumption of Interest: setting the direction of your content is based on what? It cannot be set on my interest because they do not know me. I didn’t opt in so my interest is completely assumed and I’m ultimately a waste of resource. How are you identifying whats of interest and why your offer is a solid one?

• No Ad Budget: list building “tactics” like this are usually a symptom of little or no advertising budget. Depending on one or two streams of lead generation is like trying to eat dinner on a table with two legs, you won’t make it to desert. If your database is not actively updated with new leads it eventually stagnates.

• One Email for Everyone: this old chestnut – better than nothing at all, but nowhere near as good as being specific. What did they opt into, what are they interested in or want more of? Better still what did they buy and what’s the next thing they’ll need? Discovering some of these improves each message and focuses your messaging.

• High Unopened Rate: No interest + No open + No click = No point. I’m sure it gets some results for them as much of their database I hope is legit but it would be worth a good review and clean up.

Service based businesses such as law firms cannot be sold purely on email. You can deliver value, remove objections and reverse risk but it has to be based on…

ACTUAL INTEREST!

This is the whole point, so I wrote it big.

How do you amplify interest in your business, if you haven’t planned for it we know it isn’t happening for you.

Isn’t it time this was put your emarketing on auto-pilot, better still outsource your email marketing or you could buy a list from a guy you met in a pub…

Actually don’t do that!

P.S. If you know these guys please don’t out them, it serves no purpose and I’m sure they’ll do the right thing when they find out.

P.S.S And this is the coolest thing on the internet RIGHT NOW!