Enough with the newsletters!

Dear Colleague,

Even though it’s been almost 20 years since we’ve worked together, I’m glad we keep in touch periodically. I do enjoy hearing what you’re doing.

We’ve helped each other over the years and I’m grateful for that.

I’m glad you’ve found a new career. I wish you much success.

I’m not glad that you decided to add me to your mailing list so now I’m getting weekly newsletters from you.

I hate to tell you this, but your newsletters are boring and are of no interest to me.

It’s so obvious that your newsletter is written by some nameless person at your corporate headquarters. People do business with people, not corporate headquarters.

Plus, the three paragraph disclaimer at the end isn’t going to win you any friends or business. You know the disclaimer I’m talking about, “this email is intended for the addressee only and if anyone else sees it, they must destroy the newsletter immediately or something really bad will happen.”

Please don’t take it personally, but I had to unsubscribe from your newsletter. I’m hoping that maybe you won’t notice that I did that, but if you’re like me, you’re constantly checking the newsletter statistics.

Sometimes the simplest approach works wonders. To really capture people’s attention, please ask people if they want to receive your newsletter. It’s called opt-in, or if you want to be really cool, call it inbound marketing. That way you’ll get people who are really interested in what you are selling.

Sincerely,

Your former colleague

Photo is courtesy of Sybren A. Stuvel’s Flickr Photostream, under Creative Commons Licensing.