• Marketing

Three simple ways to make bacn, not spam.

by Kara Gibson
January 17, 2017

Bacn vs Spam
At ntegrity, it’s my great pleasure to work with teams and groups making a delicious treat that many people love…bacn. I’m sure you have heard of spam – the email that pops into your inbox uninvited. However, you may not be so familiar with spam’s more handsome, desirable brother, bacn. It was a term coined at the PodCamp in Pittsburgh a few years back  to describe email that people opt in to receive from companies and organisations, which they may not read immediately, but save to read or reference at another point in time.

It is my job (and hope!) to help all marketers prepare bacn as best as possible. Here are some practices to help you cook up the best bacn for your subscribers:

  1. Create value. That sounds like a no-brainer, but how many times have you had a team member want to send out a last-minute email to get more sales/donations? When that scramble happens, how often do we ask what’s in it for our readers? Think about how your company can create content that your readers look forward to reading – not just emails that you think they should receive to achieve your internal objectives.

  2. Personalise. This goes beyond Dear <<name>>. Think of other ways to easily personalise emails to your users. Look at how your readers are segmented and use those differences to serve up unique content. It can be a different way of wording a video introduction or a follow-up on their past interactions with emails. Show your supporters you are listening by taking the time to provide relevant content.

  3. Subject lines. People decide to open an email based on the subject line. Now ask yourself: how long did you spend crafting the last subject line for an email campaign vs the time spent on the content? Take the time to write a specific, timely, interesting subject line. Without it, no one will see your great content within.

Start looking at the bacn in your inbox and consider why you look forward to reading it. Now recreate that for your reader because it always feels good to be bacn that people drool for.