Peter Levitan & Co.

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A Marketing Email Program With Personality

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Yup, Your Marketing Email Program Can Have Personality

Me-Too is bad. Different is good. Boring is bad. Personality is good. Here are some ideas about building a marketing email program that works harder by delivering some cool personality. For your readers and for your advertising agency.

 

How many marketing or information emails do you get? I get a lot. To be clear, I am talking about both direct marketing emails (the unsolicited kind) and email newsletters that I have subscribed to. In both cases, I am a hell of a lot more interested if the email has some personality. Most don’t. This brings me to The Hustle.

Hustle On Brothers and Sisters

Below is the copy of a “Thank You For Subscribing” email that I got from the HUSTLE. As the Hustlers say:

Your smart, good looking friend that sends you an email each morning with all the tech and business news you need to know for the day.

I urge you to go through the entire sign-up process to see how these guys use personality to stand out and make love to you (don’t worry, it is easy.)

The full email.

 

 

email marketing

Want More Of Not Boring? AKA A Marketing Email Program With Personality…

The HUSTLE doesn’t stop at just sending you your daily email. They want you to refer friends.  Below, again, is what their website page looks like after you’ve subscribed. The copy is below the image.

A question, do you add a refer your friends’ message to your agency emails? You should. Note how the Hustle even promotes/incites/entices you to tell your friends… That’s what we call asking for referrals.

OK, before I leave you, my point is that even a simple email system can have personality.

Be not bland my friends. Be active. 

The above website referral page copy:

I used to read the news, but let’s be honest: that crap is dry and you only read it because you feel kinda like you should if you want to be a “good” adult. If you want a quick, blah-blah-blah sounding scoop on big world news today, your robot pal Alexa or the New York Times app can do that for you in a jiffy. But for a daily news email that’s funnier, punnier, less political, more relevant, and 200% guaranteed to make you sound more interesting at dinner parties and/or during Tinder dates, you HAVE to get on board with The Hustle. Like, now. Sign up today and tell me I’m right tomorrow.

Hey, want to hear more about advertising agency email marketing? From someone who started an email program in 1996 – yes, 1996. And, used it to get clients like Nike, Nabisco, and Radiohead.

Don’t be shy…

Crazy Data Or CRAZY Data

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I’d Say CRAZY Data

This is what is going on in crazy data-land every minute on the Internet (well, much of it. Domo left out PornHub.)

This has many implications. One is that the clients your agency is trying to attract via social media and content are, um, distracted.

16_domo_data-never-sleeps-4

San Miguel de Allende Favors Are Good

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Favors Are Good – Favores Están Bien

Screen Shot 2017-10-13 at 3.05.48 PMI live in San Miguel de Allende Mexico. It’s a very famous town these days thanks to articles like this #1 city in the world kinda crazy thing from Travel & Leisure.  I guess that this is a good thing, a favor to us, but hey, the Centro traffic can get a bit out of control on weekends.

OK, here is my favor request. Come on down and take a photography class from my friends at Seek Workshops. You’ll get two benefits – you will wind up taking better photographs and they’ll give you an insider’s look at San Miguel. From Seek:

Our one-week intensive photo workshops in beautiful San Miguel de Allende, Mexico will challenge you, inspire you, and lead you to new creative directions in your work. Explore our offerings for 2017-2018—ranging from Documentary and Street Photography to the Zen of Seeing— and prepare to evolve. In addition to our workshops listed here, we offer individual mentoring and one-on-one instruction.

As one of the primary benefits of being based here in San Miguel full-time, we can also create a wide range of customized workshop experiences to accommodate your group’s travel schedule.

Head over to Seek’s website and get one more bene… You’ll see a sweet video about Anado Mclaughlin and The Chapel of Jimmy Rae by the National Geo photographer & filmmaker Bob Krist. Yes, the chapel is otherworldly. But, that’s what living at 6,000 feet and drinking lots of mezcal will get you. If you do come down, I’ll do you a favor and I’ll show you a sweet mosaic that Anado did in my house’s courtyard. You also do yourself a favor by actually visiting the Chapel of Jimmy Rae… you will never forget this psychedelic art experience.

If for any reason the video is taken down, go here.

 

An “Advertising” Cure For CPG’s Ills

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An “Advertising” Cure For CPG’s Ills

images tideImagine creating a new marketing company that directly goes after a huge industry’s Pain Points. I mean, directly.

I just read, “2 Saatchi Alums Vow To ‘Clean Up’ CPG” in MediaPost. These ex-Saatchi guys vow to help clean up CPG’s big needs per the article …

“As the consumer packaged goods (CPG) industry continues to experience sharp declines in sales, two former Saatchi & Saatchi senior global executives, Vaughan Emsley and Cliff Francis, are launching Clean Up On Aisle 7, a new consulting firm to help CPG brands be more effective, responsive and agile in today’s changing landscape.”

Why Is The Idea Of This New “Consulting Agency” So Smart?

5 Big Reasons.

  1. CPG is in bad shape. Overall purchases of consumer-packaged goods in the U.S. declined 2.5% in unit terms in the first quarter, according to Nielsen.
  2. Volatility sucks. There are “probably more sources of volatility today than at any other time in history,” P&G Chief Financial Officer Jon Moeller said Wednesday in a call with reporters.
  3. CPG companies have been rather slow to adapt to the new world of digital marketing and consumer shifts. They need some speed.
  4. Clean Up On Aisle 7 (a cute name but a bit lengthy) aims to go directly at these major client pain points.
  5. Clean Up On Aisle 7’s management has the history and ecperience to deliver smart thinking. “Previously, Emsley served as the global client leader for all Publicis Groupe agencies working on P&G brands, while Francis worked as the former worldwide creative director for P&G brands at Saatchi & Saatchi.”

OK, One More Smart Point – For Your Agency.

Clean Up (a shorter version as I am sure they will be known) stands out from the huge pack of advertising agencies and consultants that do not have a well-defined positioning, a bold reason for being and a hard to ignore sales proposition.

A new company dedicated to curing the ills of CPG meets a clear need and… stands out.

They are unignorable.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Does Your Thought Leadership Kick Ass?

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To Be Unignorable, Kick Some Thought Leadership Ass

500AEC7B-7AB5-41BC-8AB0-FD500EDA9A54_0If you are one of my clients, you have heard me talk about how to be unignorable. That means, do not be ignorable. Which means, do not put forth me-to thought leadership content (copy, videos, podcasts, white papers, books and on and on) that can be easily dismissed by your target market.

How To Stand Out?

Want to get heard and talked about? Be bold. Tell it like it is. Say something that resonates. Have an opinion. Be bold and be quick. Act like Mario Andretti (you know who he is, right?) A quote:

If everything is under control, you are not going fast enough.

Well, L2’s Scott Galloway is not under control. He lets it hang out and… he is NOT ignorable. A sample… his opinion about Amazon, Apple (love this one!), Facebook and Google.