Few days ago, Peanut and I traveled about 45 minutes west to her dad’s house, so we could be in the path of totality for the most recent eclipse.
It was badass.
A total surreal experience, especially during the four or so minutes we experienced a total eclipse.
But if you paid attention to media leading up to this event, then you probably heard that you shouldn’t look directly at the sun without eclipse glasses. This idea was littered throughout old school media and social media.
I didn’t fully understand this because I look at the full sun with barenaked eyes pretty often and haven’t gone blind, so why would I go blind from looking at a partial version of the sun I usually stare at?
Unless there’s some sort of time-delayed blindness, staring at the partially eclipsed sun did not make me go blind. I did tweak something in my back though, and I’m still waiting for any delayed onset super powers.
But this silly example brings up an important lesson:
Media members lie.
Social media influencers lie.
Freelancers trying to work for you lie.
The internet, as a whole, lies.
And yes, this includes other “media operations” that you wouldn’t normally think of.
Take any popular email software’s help docs for example. When you open these help articles, you expect to be told the truth to. But does that actually happen?
Well, of course, I’m not saying every help article is a brazen lie. There are some true help articles. But others are filled with brazen lies that will tell you…
Segmenting is the single best way to improve your email revenue (not really, it might help with some deliverability stuff, which an email software platform is always more worried about their deliverability than your profitability, they just don’t say that quiet part out loud)
Sending too many emails can tank your open, clicks, and deliverability rates (again, not really, but they’re saying this in an effort to protect their deliverability because they know most of their customers rely on their newly designed templates instead of learning how to be more persuasive and write more entertaining emails)
Kneeling at the altar of personalization (even though, nine times out of ten, personalization to an ESP means adding a first name tag)
Keeping your subject lines short and sweet (this isn’t always the best way to write subject lines)
And this list goes on.
The point I want you to remember is this:
When you’re reading any kind of help article or email marketing 101, there’s two distinct things you need to be aware of:
First, the ESP is doing everything to protect their own interests, not yours (even if you’re a paying customer). They value their deliverability more than how much money you make from email—and this shows throughout every piece of “advice” they spit out).
Second, most of these articles are regurgitated from other articles just like them, written by the interns of said companies (and in some cases, the coders, which is arguably worse than the interns).
Moral of the story?
Don’t believe everything you read on the internet.
If I didn’t go blind from looking at the eclipse, you’re fine to break some “email marketing 101 rules” in order to grow your company through email.
And if you need help maximizing the profits of your email strategy?
Hit reply, and let’s chat.
John