Stuck inside of Mobile with the Email Blues Again

B2B marketers, why—when your email has a snowball's chance in hell of getting attention—do so many of you reduce the chance?

I see it every day: emails designed for desktop email clients, instead of mobile ones.

Seven in 10 prospects immediately delete mobile-unfriendly emails.

So stop sending them:

• Use a 300 pixel-wide template. Mobile screens are small and many smartphones don't automatically resize big emails.
  
  
• Use images sparingly. Mobile devices load slowly. The overall file size of your email should not exceed 70k.
  
  
• The top 250 pixels are prime real estate. Don't waste them on some gargantuan masthead. State your offer here in plain-text words.
  
  
• Use a clear call-to-action button near the top. Also include a text call-to-action linked to the same landing page (visible when images are disabled).
  
  
• Include a one-line pre-header to state your offer. Include as well the URL for the mobile-friendly version of your email you host on line.
  
  
• Avoid weird fonts, big fonts, reverse type, and red type. That stuff doesn't render and can trigger spam filters.
  
  
• Code short (basic HTML with tables).
  
  
• Write short (Anglo-Saxon words, and few of them).

Four in ten B2B marketers say designing mobile-friendly emails will automatically lift results.

So shake those email blues. Design for mobile.

10 Years a Blogger

Chris Brogan's advice—to make blogging the bedrock of your social media outreach—spurred me to start blogging 10 years ago.

In those years, I have learned to:

• Post early (8 am) and often (cadence counts).
  
  
• Niche.
  
  
• Write short. (If you value readers, don't smother them.)
  
  
• Be honest, and never surprised your most popular posts are the most heartfelt.
  
  
• Think "Progress, not perfection," but edit five times.
  
  
• Stay open for inspiration (and realize most sources are off line).
  
  
• Accept that you're not Mark Twain, Seth Godin, the Dalai Lama, or even Vito Corleone.
  
• Outpost.
  
  
• Remember Mama said there'll be days like this.
  
  
• Don't try to explain why you blog to your family.
  
  
• Get used to silence.

What's the Right Content Mix for B2B?

Apps. Blogs. Case studies. Digital tools. E-books. Events. Games. Graphs. Infographics. Newsletters. Photos. Podcasts. Presentations. Reports. Quizzes. Videos. Webinars. White papers.

What's the right content marketing mix?

Begin with the essentials:

Blogs. The Number 1 source of leads, says Search Engine Journal. Without a blog, your strategy's spineless.

Events and webinars. What's better than blogs? Three of four B2B marketers say events. Webinars are a close second. A single event can pack more punch than 100 blog posts.

Newsletters. Newsletters help you keep customers, and keep prospects interested. Weekly is the best frequency, if you can manage it.

Videos. Six in 10 decision-makers visit a brand’s website after watching a video, according to Inc. And four in 10 contact the company.

White papers. White papers trumpeter your authority, essential to persuading customers to buy from you. 

Case studies. Case studies provide social proof, equally essential to persuading customers.

E-books. E-books can gather repurposed blog posts. They offer an outlet for dazzling design work, inviting to readers turned off by other formats.

Other content. Apps, digital tools, games, graphs, infographics, photos, podcasts, presentations, reports and quizzes are all just icing on the cake.

Admit You're a Hack

In the modern world of business, it is useless to be a creative,
original thinker unless you can also sell what you create.

— David Ogilvy

Jay Baer, president of Convince & Convert, wants you to believe storytelling is hack work.

"I’m absolutely on board with storytelling as a content marketing device," he says. "But just because you understand story arcs and can riff on Joseph Campbell doesn’t mean you’re now Francis Ford Coppola or William Faulkner. Content marketing is a job, not an art form."

I suspect Baer doesn't know that Faulkner, with over a dozen dependents to support, wasn't above sports writing, travel writing, and movie scriptwriting (he's credited for, among other films, The Big Sleep).

But I get Baer's point: marketing's kind of storytelling ain't art-making; it's hack work.

"I see more and more content marketers straying from this perspective," Baer says, "thinking that they are newfangled hybrid players, straddling the line between fine art and commerce. They are not.

"The only job that content marketing has is to create behaviors among target audiences that benefit the business. Content must prod behavior, or it’s a useless exercise."

Or, as my agency's website says, "“It’s not creative unless it sells."

Is Succinct Extinct?

You can argue for long-form content 'til you're blue in the face.

You're still wrong.

In 1647, the Jesuit Baltazar Gracián explained why:

Don't be a bore.

The man of one business or of one topic is apt to be heavy. Brevity flatters and does better business; it gains by courtesy what it loses by curtness. Good things, when short, are twice as good. The quintessence of the matter is more effective than a whole farrago of details. It is a well-known truth that talkative folk rarely have much sense whether in dealing with the matter itself or its formal treatment. There are that serve more for stumbling-stones than centerpieces, useless lumber in everyone's way. The wise avoid being bores, especially to the great, who are fully occupied: it is worse to disturb one of them than all the rest. Well said is soon said.

Write for readers, not Google.