Email newsletters are undercounted and underrated for marketing

The other day I was reading my weekly update email from The Portland Japanese Garden and I know I've mentioned them a few times here in the past couple years, but damn, I have to admit they really treat members well.

There's a monthly magazine and a weekly email newsletter which means they must have a whole content team working there, but what's great is every week I basically get a newspaper about every project and every upcoming improvement and every art installation and every new tour they're offering, and none of it feels like marketing.

The newsletter promotes the garden and makes me glad that I contribute annually there and it reads like a friend emailing you to excitedly share all the cool stuff they've been working on lately.

Data driven nonsense

So much of corporate marketing that I've been steeped in for the last ten years is about putting things out and measuring the response, then trying to optimize those numbers to creep up ever higher.

I don't think I've ever witnessed a big content push in any organization showing up quickly or significantly in their numbers. It's not easy to measure how happy I am each week to read about special visitor hours or early-bird tickets to a special event because I saw it in their email. Most often, the organizations I've worked with that have a large content team producing cool stuff mostly do it based on the pure vibes or the gut feelings of one of the higher ups.

Sometimes, you have a CEO with a English degree who takes communication seriously, because to this day I haven't seen the hard work of people writing engaging, interesting content for customers and members of an organization show up in graphs and dashboards because that kind of goodwill tends to grow over months and years. It's not something you'd see as a surge of +10% click-thru rates this week, and that's a bummer, and probably why so few organizations have big content teams elevating and supporting their work.

Seriously, personal one-to-one messaging is more powerful than we think

I love going to movies and I often think back to my two favorite theaters on earth and what they used to do. Basically, both movie houses were owned and operated by a film fan who would walk up to the screen before each showing, welcome the audience in a booming voice right in front of you than share some tidbit, fact, or reason why they like this particular movie/script/director that was about to start

I still fondly remember over 20 years ago when I'd go to a movie theater on the west side of San Francisco that likely paid its rent thanks to a large film fan club that was organized via their email newsletter sent directly from the theater owner.

They'd write a weekly email that told you what was playing and why, and what was coming soon. And I'd add the good ones to my calendar and show up almost every week to catch a screening. When you showed up, you got the old time-y personal greeting inside the theater from the owner along with the information about the movie or the people that worked on it, or other related movies worth checking out afterwards.

I give a lot of money annually to organizations that I like and enjoy, and maybe half of them send at least a few emails each year. But what I really enjoy are those rare places that keep in regular contact with interesting, engaging information that never feels like they're trying to sell me something or shill for donations.

It's not easy to do, which is why it's probably so rare to see out in the wild, but I really do enjoy it when I see it and wish it were more the norm.