Maybe it’s your mother or your neighbor. For me, it’s my uncle. Inappropriate jokes? He’s got ‘em. Political tee-hees? Those too. Miracle cures and crypto secrets? Oh yeah. It’s constant.

Last night during my latest inbox cleanse, it hit me. As crazy as it seems, my uncle’s email practices aren’t too different from many companies and organizations.

He sends way too much mail.
Everyone knows you should only send a maximum of 1.217323 emails per month. I’m joking. There’s no magic number for every email marketer. But every individual email marketer can get their magic number through testing. For some, it’s twice weekly. For others, twice monthly. Six times per hour like my uncle? Probably not. He needs a hobby. The bottom line is if you send too often, you’ll lose your audience. If you don’t send often enough — and we see a lot of organizations do this — you’re missing out.

There’s no hook.
Now I have no information on his open rate, but it can’t be good. I can see his messages coming from a mile away and delete them like no other. But honestly, by now, I think we’ve all gotten pretty good at deleting email messages without looking at them. As with actual email marketers, my uncle needs an effective subject line strategy that includes constant AB testing. With a few simple steps, he could improve his open rate dramatically.

Sends the same flawed message to everybody.
Let’s say you actually open one of his messages. They usually have a string of forwarded message threads followed by a joke that’s virtually hidden somewhere in the text. They’re very poorly designed. And unfortunately, they’re similar to many actual marketing emails we see. No flow. No brand differentiation. Muddled call to action. No personalization. A one-size-fits-all shot, lacking a hint of segmentation that could make it relevant to various audiences.

Any of this sound familiar?

If you’re concerned about being in the same boat as my uncle: Don’t worry. We have a whole team of people who can develop strategy, write and design beautiful and effective messages, target audiences, test everything, and improve your response. All you have to do is get in touch. Or better yet, send us an email.

We promise to open it.