Weekly Content Round-Up: 80 Percent of Americans Enjoy Purchase-Based Recommendations in Email and other stories

Welcome to my collection of articles on writing and the art of communication I read during the course of the week. This is apart from what I tweet @ottayan.


How to make every email heard loud and clear

A poorly written support email reads like a slapped together instruction manual. Unless you want customers floundering about like a fish out of water assembling an IKEA TV stand, it pays to get the “flow” right.

The Trouble with Harvard’s Email Culture

There are no official statistics that document how often the average Harvard student checks his or her inbox, but if three-quarters of U.S. employees surveyed by GFI Software reply within an hour of receiving an email, then the number on our campus is probably even higher. Even as I write this, despite the knowledge that my inbox has not been filled for weeks, I find my eyes drawn toward the tab that keeps it open. And it’s no secret that Harvard has an email-centric culture.

In many ways, it makes sense: It’s the fastest and easiest way to reach large groups of people, and it’s the go-to method for correspondence because it lets us avoid the intimacy of phone calls or face-to-face communication.

80 Percent of Americans Enjoy Purchase-Based Recommendations in Email

According to a recent study by digital marketing platform provider Listrak and market research company Harris Poll, 80% of Americans who read marketing emails find it helpful when retailers recommend products based on previous purchases. Likewise, 71% of promotional email readers value messages featuring items based on online browsing behaviors.

The study surveyed more than 2,000 U.S. adults but only focused on the 72% who read promotional emails. And it looks like these respondents enjoy experiencing personalization through other channels, as well. For instance, 69% of promotional email readers appreciate online retargeting ads that showcase products previously viewed on a brand's website. In addition, 67% of these respondents enjoy seeing product recommendations on a retailer's website while shopping.


Haruki Murakami gives readers further advice on writing, adultery and cats

Writing is like “chatting up a woman”, Japan’s superstar novelist Haruki Murakami has said: “You can get better with practice to a certain degree, but basically, you’re either born with it, or you’re not.”

C.R.E.A.M. – The One Thing That Would Have Saved My Client’s Website

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Business books describe this idea using the rather dry sounding “customer-centric philosophy,” but I find that undersells its importance. Instead, I borrowed a phrase from the Wu Tang Clan, C.R.E.A.M. – Customers Rule Everything Around Me.

Content Optimization with Web Analytics

For the majority of Fortune 1,000 websites, site content serves several goals in complex sales cycles. Often, content is meant to simultaneously acquire traffic, educate, persuade users about the superiority of an offering, and convert visitors to either e-commerce customers or qualified leads that are then nurtured by the content over several visits.

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We find that for complex sales cycles, the content needs to be graded on a wide variety of levels. We also find that most Web analytics platforms are not configured to have this level of content reporting out of the box. 

4 Ways to Boost Your Content Strategy

Is a content strategist agnostic towards art and story, or just more concerned about content logistics? And, at what point do you make sure what is being published is human-centered, strategically minded, useful?

A First-page Checklist

• It begins connecting the reader with the protagonist
• Something is happening. On a first page, this does NOT include a character musing about whatever.
• What happens is dramatized in an immediate scene with action and description plus, if it works, dialogue.
• What happens moves the story forward?
• What happens has consequences for the protagonist.
• The protagonist desires something.
• The protagonist does something.
• There’s enough of a setting to orient the reader as to where things are happening.
• It happens in the NOW of the story.
• Backstory? What backstory? We’re in the NOW of the story.
• Set-up? What set-up? We’re in the NOW of the story.
• What happens raises a story question—what happens next? or why did that happen?

Making Sense of Owned Media

So what are the elements of an owned media strategy? Think content, community, and context.

Story of the Shopping Cart and the Secret to Spreading Ideas

What does the story of a shopping cart have to do with spreading ideas? A lot.

5 Tips for Writing Interesting Case Studies

Everything about case studies has probably made you run far away. They are often dry, generic, or pretty much just a high school pep rally (minus the cool letterman jackets) cheering on a company, product, or solution. But they don't have to be.