A/S/L? Lessons from my 90s AOL Email Days 📧

You might be a xennial if you know what “A/S/L?” means, looked forward to dELia*s catalog landing in your mailbox, remember MTV actually playing music videos, or heard your parents yell “get off the internet!” whenever they needed to use the land line. The early 90s internet was a wild time and place to be a nerdy and curious preteen, I tell you what…

As soon as I’d had my after-school snack, I would fire up the family computer in the den, endure that signature dial-up screech followed by “you’ve got mail” and bravely dive straight into the wild west of AOL chat rooms. There were no rules and way less ads back then. Inspired by another newsletter created by teen girls that read like a teeny bopper gossip column, I got a bit bored of chat rooms and decided to try writing my own email newsletter.

It was the 90s so naturally I got weird with the name—*gUrLiNk* and styled it with all kinds of keyboard symbols to add some texture since there were no images and barely any text styling back then. I have no idea how many subscribers I had, but they were primarily preteen girls like me, I think. Who even knows, it’s not like there were analytics, and everyone had weird emails / usernames. Mine was EZcheZpoof. 😂

Email has certainly come a long way since those days, and it’s crazy to think that it means I’ve been doing it for 30+ years now. My first job out of college, as a web designer at PETA in the mid 2000s, had me creating HTML emails with tables and very little CSS. I was pretty fluent in HTML those days since we used to have to code websites in it by hand, but coding for email was even more limited (and tedious).

Eventually I moved on to Mailchimp and “drag and drop” editors became the norm. I could finally let out a sigh of relief! No more broken table layouts from forgetting to close one of the rows or something. More recently, I have learned a lot about deliverability, the importance of segmented lists, and how to build automated email flows. I’ve also learned (sometimes the hard way) which platforms aren’t all that friendly to certain regulated industries. Mailchimp, you’re out, my new beau is Klaviyo.

Along the way I’ve heard cyclical rumors that “email is dead” that never prove true. Email is still the way the business world works, although Slack has definitely helped lessen the daily inbox load. (Thank goodness I am not in corporate, cuz I refuse to use Teams).

But in the era of rampant spam and scams, it seems that many have forgotten how to do email right. So I’m gonna share some lessons learned over three decades of creating and sending emails, and hopefully you’ll pick up a new trick or two! 📧

👍 Get Consent: like any relationship, sending someone email requires consent. If you’re a business sending emails, brush up on your local communications laws (like the CAN-SPAM Act in the US and Europe’s GDPR). It’s illegal to send someone an email who did not explicitly opt-in to receive it. And if you continually violate these rules, you’ll be marked as a spammer and have a hard time getting your emails to land in inboxes.

📧 Offer an Out: similarly, people should also be able to easily opt-out of your emails. Always include an Unsubscribe link (or two) in every email so that it’s easy for someone to hit that rather than marking your email as spam and hurting your deliverability. It’s also advised to include a physical business address in the footer of your emails, and use the same sending domain as your website address.

🛠️ Use the Right Tools: you should be fine with Outlook or Apple Mail for emails sent by an individual, but if you’re sending mass emails to subscribers or prospects or your emails are promotional, you’ll want to use an ESP (Email Service Provider). Many offer free tiers for small lists, and some offer robust CRM capabilities beyond email. My recommendations are Klaviyo, Hubspot, or for more of a publication like this one with built-in monetization features, beehiiv.

🤖 Automate, but Humanize: automated email flows are super useful for guiding the customer journey, especially for things like onboarding with a welcome series. I recommend setting up a few: abandoned cart notifications, sunset flows to clean up your list and remove inactive subscribers, and most importantly, a welcome flow that onboards your new subscriber and gets them up to speed with helpful links and tips. Be sure to test these thoroughly, personalize them and make sure they are carefully targeted, updated and spaced out so they don’t overlap and overwhelm.

📲 Segment Your Sends: don’t just email your entire list every time you send an email. ESPs are sophisticated, especially when connected to your website and other software. There is no need to spam everyone with everything when you can create segments based on customer behavior and target people with the right message at the right time. For better deliverability, open rates and conversions, only send frequently to your most engaged subscribers, and save blasts to the full list for very special occasions like annual sales or major announcements.

📊 Use Your Data: most ESPs offer robust analytics so you can see who received, opened, and clicked on your emails. When properly plugged into your business ecosystem, tracking this data can help you determine the best sending cadence, what segments to send to when, what automated flows you create, and what gets your audience to click and convert. Get to know your audience and their patterns, and learn your ESP’s reporting functions. Klaviyo has some excellent reporting and makes suggestions for improving your stats along the way.

👂 Know Your Audience: listening to your audience, asking questions and paying attention to their data can help you cater your messaging to each recipient, reward loyal customers and turn buyers into brand ambassadors. Email is a communication platform after all, so find ways to connect with your audience and listen to them. This can look like linking to a social media post where you encourage subscribers to chime in with comments, sending polls and surveys in your emails, and creating a rewards program.

🎨 Craft Emails with Strong Branding: start with a template that matches your brand’s style across other channels. Use the same colors, fonts, and design elements in your emails that you do your website, ads and print publications. And write in a style that fits your company’s personality as well. Doing some Brand Strategy led by a professional is a great way to lay a foundation and set the tone for your messaging across all your channels.

🔗 Connect Across Platforms: email is only one communications channel in your arsenal. It works best when coordinated with all your other marketing efforts. Your email subscribers will often differ from your social media followers, in person customers or people who browse your website or see your ads. Email supports your other marketing efforts and campaigns as a connective tissue. Push traffic to your website by featuring blog posts in emails, share social media comments and reviews and cross-pollinate your content. It’s also less less reinventing the wheel to repurpose themed content across your website, blog, emails and social media, using each platform to highlight a different angle of a topic or product offering.

I could keep going, but as usual, this email has gotten pretty long already! All these years of writing emails and I still struggle with the whole brevity thing. 🤷‍♀️ I hope you learned a few things, but if all of this sounds overwhelming, don’t worry. I would love to talk more about email marketing in a consulting call or just do the hard parts for you and help you choose an ESP and get set up. Reach out by replying or via my website!

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