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August 30, 2007

The Killer Bs attack e-mail

One night when my son Sam was eight or nine, we were watching television when a 30-second commercial came on promoting an upcoming news special about killer bees.

“They’re heading this way!” proclaimed the announcer in an ominous voice. “Africanized honey bees have caused devastation throughout the South, and now they’re migrating northward. What horrible things will happen when the killer bees get here?”

Sam watched without comment, but after I put him to bed, he called me. He sounded so upset that I immediately went in to his room to see what was wrong.

“Mom, I can’t sleep,” he whispered. “I keep thinking about those killer bees. What horrible things will happen when they get here?”

Ever since then, killer bees make me remember Sam at this age (he’s now 20), which makes me smile. This is why I was amused when I saw yesterday’s newsletter. article, “Attack of the Killer Bs” (registration required, but it’s free).

“No, not those killer bees,” writes Loren McDonald. “These Killer Bs are a nasty swarm of words used by marketers haven’t caught on that marketing by email has evolved from its earliest days.”

Ms. McDonald refers to three Killer Bs: blast, broadcast and bulk. “They all speak to the age-old practice of marketing a uniform message to a mass audience. [People who use these words] don’t get that email marketing . . . is set apart from other channels because it comes as close to one-to-one-marketing as you can in a mass medium.”

For example, Ms. McDonald talks about the problem with “blast.” “I frequently hear otherwise intelligent marketers refer to ‘sending out an email blast,’ as if email marketing required no strategy or thinking . . . A blast has a lot of power behind it, and the messages goes far and wide, but the target is value and undefined.”

This made me think of the struggle that many of my clients are having with targeting their e-mail communication (and other forms as well). In marketing, the era of “send all” has long passed; smart marketers know that, in order to be compelling and relevant, e-mail needs to be targeted to meet customers’ specific needs.

But in internal communication, a “blast”—and its brethren, “broadcast” and “bulk”—are still standard operating procedure. Too many times, the strategy is to send nearly every message to every employee, without segmenting or targeting e-mails to meet employees’ needs.

Are the Killer Bs buzzing around in your organization? Be very afraid.

Posted by Alison Davis at August 30, 2007 02:37 PM