Obama email abuse?

Maybe you know this interesting marketing tidbit:

According to one well known marketing site, Obama used email marketing to raise nearly $500 million in online donations for the 2012 campaign (out of the rough total of $690 mill in online donations).

That’s a ton of money from emails.

Now here’s why this is interesting:

Most of the winning subject lines were not benefit rich. They didn’t provide clarity. They often didn’t even make any sense at all.

But wait!

Aren’t you supposed to be clear in the subject? Isn’t that how good email works? Google told me so it must be true!

A lot of online biz owners — even marketing experts who have seen, done and tested it all — would claim that this is list abuse. That you gotta put value right in the subject. That emailing in this fashion doesn’t work. That subscribers will get mad, unsubscribe, click spam, send death threats and then gouge their eyes out in anguish and despair. People also criticized Obama for asking for donations in emails that had unclear subject lines.

Yet somehow Obama raised a crapload of money with these emails. So why did this work? ~ quick note, it wasn’t his celeb status either, he raised a bunch of money with email for 2008 too

Per usual I’m gonna reference something I learned from Ben Settle who picked this up from the recently departed copywriter Scott Haines, and it’s this: curiosity is super powerful.

With email it can be all that’s needed to click open and read.

Another email tidbit:

A year earlier the same reputable marketing site that reported these findings did a case study reporting that clarity beat creativity in an email subject royal rumble (although the creative headlines tested were super weak in the creativity department). Clarity won and the post commenters gushed over how good this data is.

The data cited in the study:

Higher comments, tweets, Facebook likes, traffic, email subscriptions.

(Last time I tried to pay for dinner with a tweet I got spit on and kicked out the door.)

Middle school science refresher: correlation does not equal causation.

These data points — while they can correlate with increased sales — do not guarantee to cause more sales. Do you know what does directly cause sales?

Selling dummy!

So instead of religiously following that data and “best practices”, I’m going to look at what’s worked to achieve the data point that truly matters in business… sales (thanks again BS for that priceless free bit of email advice).

Now I gotta ask:

Do you feel like curiosity subject lines, emails, sales and persuasion tactics are wrong and abusive?

Lemme rephrase that:

Do you feel like getting people to read your stuff and selling them products that take away their problems instead of beating around the bush is wrong and abusive? (considering you run an ethical business and sell goods and services that people actually need and appreciate)

Feels are dumb. Sales and success paint a whole different story. Obama got results and I’m guessing your business will too.

If you want emails written for your business that drive curiosity in a way people enjoy opening, reading, even buying from…

And if you want to base your email efforts on the only data point that reliably feeds your children or buys you sweet new toys, then email me:

austin [at] austinmiller [dot] me

Austin Miller

P.S. Was my subject line spammy clickbait? I don’t think so.

Would only be considered spammy clickbait if my email content was irrelevant.

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