Is there any computer user on the face of the planet whose brain isn’t screaming “SPAM!!” right now and mentally reaching for the Delete key?

And yet, author Lewis holds up this flatulent piece of dreck as an exemplary e-mail that “has good text, excellent rapport, and a strong one-to-one approach.” Umm…okayyyyy…and I’ll bet that same excellent rapport helps if you want to sell V 1 A G R A Cheap, No Prescription Needed!!!!!!

At first, I thought he was joking when he highlighted examples like this as the type of e-mail marketing messages we should be emulating. But he’s quite serious. Unfortunately, such lapses of discernment send his credibility plummeting and make it hard to separate his good advice from his bad.

He does have good advice to give, too, such as his admonition to carefully test different versions of an e-mail before blasting it out to a large list of recipients, and to measure the response and tweak the final production message accordingly.

Lewis cut his teeth on print-media direct mail marketing and a lot of the writing techniques and triggers that worked in print can be used effectively in e-mail. But today’s e-mail marketing messages need to be composed much more carefully to avoid being automatically filtered out as spam — by machine or human — and Lewis doesn’t convince me that he Gets It. His stuff doesn’t pass the smell test.
Rating: 3 / 5

So what’s different about the electronic approach, other than the method of distribution? Don’t you still need great copy and an effective target list of potential buyers?

There are a lot of similarities between electronic and postal direct mail, so you’ll read chapters on words and phrases that work and don’t work. You’ll still get the advice on how to construct your message to grab the attention of the recipient. This immediate attention issue is even more acute with e-mail: hitting the DELETE button is a lot quicker than handling a piece of mail, opening it or not, and tossing it in the trash.

Lewis has tailored this book nicely to this new medium, exploring how to adapt to this communications vehicle without getting burned. Chapters discuss opt-ins, avoiding the “spam” accusation, and how to use the e-mail subject line most effectively. He explores how to establish rapport through e-mail, using personalization and psychology to elicit the desired response. The chapter on rich media and viral mail is certainly something you won’t find in a typical marketing book.

This book is filled with medium-specific information, quelling my fear that this would be just another marketing book with “E-Mail” dropped in the front of the title. These pages are a treasure-trove of resources and tailored advice. The ten pages of tips at the end of the book supplement the tips that appear on the pages throughout the text. An abundance of examples illustrate the author’s points. Indexed.
Rating: 5 / 5