Email communication in times of crisis

Email communication
in times of crisis
Charlie Meyerson
linkedin.com/in/cmeyerson
facebook.com/meyerson
@Meyerson on Twitter
Charlie@MeyersonStrategy.com
ChicagoPublicSquare.com

Headlines are more than things in newspapers.

Headlines are how we decide what to watch on YouTube.

Headlines are how we connect in social media.
*
*No longer true.

And—especially in times of crisis—
headlines are how we decide what email to open.

But before we push ahead …
Skeptics will ask:
Does he know what
he’s talking about?

Yes, it works.
I learned what I know
by launching and running
the Chicago Tribune’s
email services for a decade.

... sent to tens of thousands of subscribers
on my watch, 2000-2009.
… often achieved Tribune Co. editorial newsletter-
leading 60 percent clickthrough rates
–60 clicks per 100 recipients.
Yes, it works.
[“Charlie is a pioneer in the e-newsletter headline business.”
—Rick Kaempfer, Illinois Entertainer, April 2017]

Yes, it works.
A major professional organization that followed the
advice you’re about to get (after I was embedded
with the team for four days)—a site that previously
hadn’t strung together two successive months of
record traffic—achieved record pageviews ...
• for the next 5 straight months.
• for 10 of the following 12 months.

... launched in
January
2017…
And more recently …

Main factor driving performance:
Stronger headlines
Primarily, in
email subject lines.

Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism:
The Resurgence and Importance of Email Newsletters
“Email newsletters, once thought of as low-tech
and unfashionable, are proving increasingly
valuable to publishers looking to build strong
direct relationships with audiences. Email can
help build habit and loyalty, which is particularly
important for new business models.”

Do you …
• Check Facebook, Twitter and email regularly?
• Check all three at least once a day?
• When you check them, scroll all the way back
to the last item you checked …
On email?
On Facebook?
On Twitter?

• Email summons at will your most devoted users.
• … who then share their interests (by clicking).
• It awaits their attention, unlike social-media rivers.
• It’s -independent!
• It’s fixed, unlike Web site front pages – and so, an
easier gauge of elements’ relative popularity,
especially with …
• Heat maps, or click maps, making patterns easy to spot.
The joy of email

But to get that intel from email …
You need people to
open it.

And the key to doing that?
Good, old-
fashioned writing.

Secrets for getting people to tune in:
Omit needless words.
—Will Strunk, The Elements of Style, 1918.
• Twitter.
• Texting.
• Tiny smartphone screens that truncate subject lines.
Need we say more?

• Make your most interesting word
or phrase the first element—the
first word of your headline or subject
line or post—and let your writing flow
from there.
meyersonstrategy.com/2007/04/good-radio-writing.html
Secrets for getting people to tune in:

But what are the most interesting words?
Develop a
sense of
the
wider
world’s
priorities
by
checking
sites like
Google
Trends:
google.co
m/trends
/

What are the most interesting words?
Develop a sense of your audience’s
priorities by monitoring clicks.

This is about
Good headlines
and
Bad headlines

Good headlines
Connect content
to the maximum number of people
to whom it’s
useful and relevant.
They begin with the most interesting words.
They’re brief; they omit needless words.
They create a curiosity gap.

Bad headlines
Fail to connect content
with people who’d find it
useful and relevant.
They’re long, boring and irrelevant.
They don’t spotlight interesting words.
They generate little curiosity.
Or
Connect content
with people to whom it’s
neither useful nor relevant
(turning them off to future communication).

Many companies do just that.
Graydon Carter, former editor of Vanity Fair—unable to part with vanity.

Other common mistakes
Echoing From field in Subject

Other common mistakes
Repeating
Subject from
day to day
(Ad Age email)

Compare those dispatches in the last few slides to these.
Would you click or delete?
Strunk and White: “Use definite,
specific, concrete language.”

Note
how
few
words
you
get.
If the future is mobile,
now more than ever,
every word–every
syllable–counts.
Strunk & White:
Omit needless
words.

Spreadsheets are (almost) useless

Better to watch your
clicks using …
Email Content
Analysis

Are you out of sync with your audience?
Little-clicked items among more-clicked items.
11%
2%
5%

Are
you
out of
sync?
More-
clicked
items
among
less-
clicked
items.
0%
1%
8%
16%3%

Headlines that work
Two purposes:
• Search-engine-optimized (SEO) headlines
(headlines for robots*).
Good for page-level placement.
• “Curiosity gap”-optimized headlines
(headlines for people*).
Good for front-page and email placement, for
print publications ... and for social media
(Twitter, Facebook).
*Andy Crestodina: orbitmedia.com/blog/write-for-robots-write-for-people/

Headlines for robots
These are the stupid-simple headlines that tell the story
plainly—that look like the answer to a Google query:
Portland police arrest 127 in protest
(Answers searches like “Portland protest”)

Headlines for humans
The difference between what you know
and what you want to know
The Onion … begins with dozens of headlines
and works on them until they create … “a
curiosity gap”—a need to know more that
prompts the impulse to click on something.
—the late David Carr, The New York Times

Assume most people (think they) aren’t
interested.
• Write headlines to engage them, and your core
audience will still be there for you.
• Play down location.
(Except locations well-known to your audience.)
• Play down names.
(Except names well-known to your audience.)
(Use generic nouns for unfamiliar names.)

• Questions:
COVID-careful … or OCD?
• Ellipses, teases:
Nation’s sickest city is …
• Pull-quotes:
‘Suck it up, wussies’

For all headlines
Place the story’s most
relevant or engaging
word or phrase as close
as possible to the start.

In all kinds of headlines, avoid …
ACRONYMS.
Image: business2community.com/marketing/42-b2b-marketing-acronyms-and-abbreviations-0192246
The addictive drugs of
headline writing.
Avoid them.
Unless your readers say
otherwise.
(And they probably
won’t.)

The power of YOU
The Onion:
Second-Person Narrative Enthralling You
CHICAGO—In a piece of writing that had you intrigued
from the very first clause, a second-person narrative you
are reading right at this very moment is absolutely
captivating you, sources reported. “Wow, I can’t believe
this is happening,” you are thinking as you move through
the narrative, which at first merely piqued your interest
but is now completely and utterly taking hold of you …

The case for sentence case
... vs. Title Case for headlines:
• Concrete nouns drive traffic.
• The most concrete concrete
nouns are Proper Nouns.
• So why not make Proper Nouns
easier to find?

Once you have a great subject line …
… make sure the inside of your
email is engaging and accessible.

Make sure your content is
engaging and accessible.
Stick to one column.
Smartphones render
multicolumn email illegible.

Make it
legible
on
small
screens.
Can’t read this? Neither
can a lot of readers.

Include many links every time.
Even—maybe especially—if you’re
sending readers to off-site content, the
relative popularity of those links gives
you valuable intel.

Don’t use images for images’ sake.
• If they’re not compelling at smartphone size, they
push down more engaging content.
• Lose that hulking masthead or logo at the top of
your email. (People don’t open email if they don’t
know who sent it, and your From field will have
made that clear.)

Anatomy of an email turd
Break down what we see, word for word ...

“Oh, that’s what a circular is ...”

Email communication in times of crisis

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