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It's appropriate, in the month of Halloween, to start this issue of the dispatch by mentioning a scary development.
Adverts in newsletters, served by an ad-tech company that is given access to the reader's data to tailor their advertising experience inside the newsletter, possibly even in realtime.
Isn't diversity awful?
That's not us speaking, by the way. It's Mailchimp's AI. It doesn't like diversity one bit. It wants us all to do things the same way. Write the same as its algorithm says we should.
Psst! Is someone else talking to your customers? (Hint: yes, they are.)
A couple of weeks ago, Roger asked in a LinkedIn post what people who have a newsletter want to achieve with it. The post was viewed 310 times. Five fabulous people left a response. Maybe the other 305 didn't have a newsletter.
Anyway, here are the results:
Marketing departments have ruined everything.
Building an email list used to be easy, especially if you didn't ask anyone whether they wanted to be included. They got your emails, no backsies. There was some attrition, of course, and it upset a lot of people, but the collateral damage was considered justifiable by marketing executives. Besides, they weren't doing anything illegal, so regulators weren't too fussed.
Roger here. Writing this intro from the heart.
I wasn't sure whether to send our dispatch today (its scheduled release day). I'm a little shaken at the moment. Maybe you are too. And I doubted it was the right time to send out a monthly round up of lighthearted newsletter insight. In the face of cataclysmic events, Show & Tell's work seems very small indeed.
Businesses today are genuine. They are guided by authenticity. They reek of honesty.
Isn't it awful?
This issue of our dispatch celebrates lies, deception and falseness.
We have adopted these as our new values.
This past week, we thought about effective messages.
We agreed: short is best.
