Tuesday, January 20, 2009

Don't Say the B-Word!

The Hunt
You don't have to talk to many marketers before you hear the word "blast" roll off the tongue - at which point my left eye starts to twitch, my leg starts to shake and expletives begin to fly from my mouth like a raunchy truck driver after too much coffee. Graphic? Yes. True? Pretty close. For those of you that have worked with me, clients, prospects and colleagues alike you know that it has been my personal mission to ban the word "blast" from the email industry forever (much like the hyphen in e-mail, which is gaining success as well). Call me an email snob, but if you are a legitimate marketer the word "blast" should never pass your lips unless you are using it to describe the fun networking event you attended last night. Nothing about your marketing efforts should convey that there is no forethought or planning to your marketing and "blast" does exactly that.


The Skunk

Clearly the skunk here is the awful, five-letter dirty word that has made its way in to the vocabulary of email marketers everywhere --- BLAST. A word that so inherently indicates that we are an industry that doesn't care where our messages land so long as we hit someone with an email address and at least one good eye. One colleague likened it to confetti cannons – blast the confetti cannon and you will be cleaning up the mess for months! It’s not too far from the truth really. Look at this industry, email marketers continue to exist today that believe this is the right approach. Call it what you want, "spray and pray," "batch and blast," it is the behavior that has caused so much consumer distrust in email marketing and years later, we are still cleaning up the mess. It is this same mentality that has caused your friends to call you a SPAMMER after you tell them what you do for a living.


The Resolution

Let’s keep "blast" in the past and move into a new, more intelligent era of email communication where we refer to our email communications as campaign launches or customer email distributions. As professional email marketers we are mindful about message content that contains email "dirty words or phrases" like "free" or "limited time offer." The same consideration needs to be given to how we as marketers refer to what we do on a daily basis. We need to "walk the walk" by removing the word "blast" from our daily vernacular starting now. This will also help educate those internal customers that have a stake in your email marketing as well as making it a little easier for sweet old aunt Margie to better understand what you do.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

I couldn't agree with you more!

Another one that gets me is "auto-responder". Every event-triggered email is an automatic response....

DJ Waldow said...

Kara -

Would it be odd to say, I Love You? Great post. I could not agree more. Sign the petition!

Wow. Looks like a lot of folks talk about email blast on twitter!

See you in AZ.

dj

--
DJ Waldow
Director of Best Practices & Deliverability at Bronto

The Email Advisor said...

Awww - I love you too!

Maybe it is kinda weird. What can you do - it's the industry we love!

Thanks DJ! See you in AZ - morning drinks before the panel?

evilla said...

100% agree - I am working to eliminate this word in my work environments too.

I think we need a Facebook group for this effort - I like Tamara's quote on your blog DJ as a name for this group... "Email is fun, but its not a blast!"

DJ Waldow said...

@evilla -

Sounds like a great idea to me. When are you starting the Facebook page.

Also...who are you? Avatar, Blog, Twitter handle? Identify yourself (I joke b/c I care).

dj
@djwaldow