For a moment, just imagine that you received an email about this very article, and that the email read as follows:
To: WeAllMakeMusic_Reader
From:
Subject: New Article Just Published!
Hey %$firstname$%,
How are you? Week’s going great here, and hope yours is, too.
There’s a new article up on the site. Please consider reading it, and telling people about it. If you want to excerpt a paragraph, please use paragraph six — it’s cleared for your blog or magazine. And if you want to interview the author, excellent — let us know and we’ll set it up. The article just came out. It’s one of the best articles we have published. It builds on past articles and is written with the existing audience in mind, but it will also definitely appeal to a new audience, and that’s really exciting.
We’ve published a lot of articles, but this is one we’re really proud of.
Let us know what you think. Your feedback is always appreciated!
Yours,
The Editors
Seriously, after reading such an email — presuming you even did elect to read it — would you click through to the article?
Would you even make it past the database error that represented your name as a series of tech-gibberish? Or past the fake familiarity of the opening paragraph? Past the simple fact that there is, in fact, no information in the email explaining what the article is about?
Chances are you wouldn’t. Yet that is how a substantial portion of music PR emails read: blank templates filled with the barest amount of information. They may go a little further than this email and actually hit the who (band name), what (album name), where (iTunes, etc.), when (release date), and how (a wisp of anecdote intended to serve as the album’s “story”) of what they’re purportedly promoting, but in fact they express nothing of …Read the full story
Source:: We All Make Music