I just received an email invitation to a webinar from a web conference software vendor. The email started like this:
Ken:
You're a product manager. But are you the janitor or the president of your product?
I stopped reading right about there. First line. I don't really care what they are promoting, since they started with an incorrect declamation about me and then followed it up with something that doesn't make sense.
I'm not a product manager. Haven't been for many years. Certainly not under the email address they used. So why would they send such a specific statement to a general audience? Yes, I get the fact that some percentage of their recipients will turn out to be product managers, but couldn't they pitch things so that the other people on the distribution list might keep reading anyway? And then that second sentence is simply mystifying. They just said that I'm a product manager. Now they are equating that to an either/or of janitor or president?
Cast your net wide, people. When you send that shotgun email blast, phrase it to speak to many recipients or get a proper list that limits recipients to the ones you want. Then get a benefit statement up front. You have a few seconds of reader attention at the most before s/he decides whether to hit the delete button and move to the next exhortation in the Inbox. Make it count.
