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We have this discussion here every time someone posts about email marketing, and someone else says email is stupid. Your average HN user does not statistically
by wikwocket 13y ago
We have this discussion here every time someone posts about email marketing, and someone else says email is stupid.
Your average HN user does not statistically resemble your average business customer to any degree. People here may hate email, especially HTML email, but there are orders of magnitude more people out there who are thrilled by emails full of cat pictures and inspirational quotes than there are of us.
Email marketing prints money. Well-managed email lists are often rated as one of the best business assets a small business can have. The OP presents a good way to show customers interesting content that they may enjoy, without requiring them to open an attachment, or risk privacy issues by allowing images.
It may be a "ridiculous hack," but only because of the ridiculous state of affairs of rich-text email. And besides, most of what we applaud here on HN could be termed "ridiculous hacks." :)
- leephillips 13y agoI love email, but "Email marketing" sounds like a euphemism for spam. It may "print money"; so may telemarketing for those willing to stoop to that. "ridiculous state of affairs of rich-text email" : it works fine; thanks to MIME, you can send me any kind of document you want. The problem is with some people and some mail software sending out bare HTML without using MIME attachments. But it sounds like these guys are doing this part right. EDIT: I'm obviously not talking about opt-in newsletters and the like. People who use phrases like "email marketing" and "printing money" generally are not talking about these acceptable forms of email.
- minouye 13y agoWait so sending people content they opted to receive now qualifies as spam? Have you never signed up for a newsletter?
- wikwocket 13y agoI'm sure that for some people, "email marketing" means sending spam. But my comments were entirely in the scope of legitimate, legal, opt-in email marketing. Any tool can be used for good or for evil. I feel it's unwise to assume that just because people talk about profit in the context of delivering content to customers that they are black-hat. Plenty of white-hat people are savvy to these terms, and these techniques are very useful when trying to run a business while practicing "don't be evil."
- snowwrestler 13y agoYour edit is wrong; this is exactly what people mean when they say email marketing. Opt-in are the only kind of email products allowed on major email marketing platforms like MailChimp or Exact Target.