• by Cory Treffiletti , Featured Contributor, Yesterday

Would you be willing to read this column in exchange for a $100 Amazon gift card?  If you said yes, I should also ask whether you would even take my content seriously?  I get similar sentiments in my inbox every day.  Companies offer to pay me with gift cards to take meetings and vet their tools.  I see these emails and wonder, does this strategy really work?

Email is not the tool it used to be.  It used to be a core component of a digital marketing strategy, along with search and display.  These days, it still hangs on, but is used very differently.  I see email as a tool for building frequency rather than the tip of the spear for acquisition. 

I recently asked Claude from Anthropic about email strategies that get people to open and engage.  I still believe good copywriting, and showing you understand the challenges facing the reader, can solicit a response.  Claude didn’t fully agree.  He said there are tips and tricks I can use, and he suggested testing the pay-to-engage model that it seems so many other companies use. 

To me, incentivizing you to take my meeting feels, well, a little icky -- too much like bribery.  It feels like pay-to-play speaking opportunities at events, where the only way to get on stage is by paying a sponsorship fee rather than offering something of true industry value.  If I agree to your compensation and sit through the meeting with no true intention of paying for your product, is it even ethical of me to take the compensation?  In my eyes, that’s a hard “no.”

To be honest, I wish I weren’t viewing this through such an ethical point of view.  I could easily increase my income by about $500 a week just by doing what I already do: sitting in meetings and providing feedback.  I do this with salespeople from companies I know.  I do this in my own company.  I have always been willing to do so, when I have time and can allocate my attention fully.  If I can’t give you 100% of my attention, I don’t do it.  It feels worse to me to commit to a meeting knowing that I want my compensation.

Of course, I am in the minority here.   More and more companies are using this tactic, and I must assume it generates meetings, and a standard percentage of meetings convert to opportunities -- at least the same level of conversion from the non-comped meetings they get, or else they would ditch this strategy. 

This got me wondering if there are other email strategies that don’t work for me, but do work for others.  The one that comes to mind is that standard third email in the sequence which says something like, “If this doesn’t work for you, should I ping <insert name of your CEO> to see if this aligns more with their needs at this time?”  Does that create enough fear to get you to respond, or do you simply look poorly on the vendor for trying such an obvious threat?

Email has its place, but I don’t think these strategies will bring it back to the forefront.  If you are an executive marketer, please ask your team if they employ these strategies.  They may be damaging your brand in the long run, which will only make it harder for you to get our business.