The Email And The Hook

Meredith's husband 0:24

So there's this new digital marketing book out. A book about digital marketing.

Meredith 0:28

Is it digital?

Meredith's husband 0:29

Oh, you could probably get it. I'm sure you could get a digital version, yes. I certainly hope so. It's written by a guy named Alex Schultz. I don't know, I've never heard of Alex Schultz before this this last week. Didn't know who this was. This book was introduced to me by you. You sent me an email, and your email, you forwarded me an email that you received, and your email says, quote, question mark, exclamation, question mark, exclamation, question mark, period.

Meredith 1:00

So clear. So clear.

Meredith's husband 1:03

And if you're wondering, yeah, that's a very typical message from Meredith. Now I took that, I didn't know what that meant exactly. I took it to mean, oh my gosh, look at this. This is this for real? This looks so great. That was the first thing that came to my mind. And so I scrolled down, and it is a it was this email about this book. And the headline of this email says, help yourself to expert marketing advice from Meta's CMO.

Meredith 1:31

Yeah.

Meredith's husband 1:31

Now that sounds actually intriguing. That's a pretty good headline. Well, it's a good as somebody who writes headlines, I think. Okay. It's a well-written headline.

Meredith 1:40

Trevor Burrus, Jr.: There.

Meredith's husband 1:41

As it should be.

Meredith 1:43

Yeah, I hope so.

Who Is Alex Schultz?

Meredith's husband 1:44

And then we're and then so scroll down. I have I don't have the images on, so there I can see there's a couple images that I'm not seeing. I don't know what's in those images. And then there is a well, right beneath that, there is a quote, and it says Alex is one of a small handful of people that I can say without his work, our community would not have connected to more than two billion people around the world. Mark Zuckerberg, CEO Meta. And then I'm like, well, that's pretty high praise. Oh, but this guy is Meta's CMO, was my next thought. Like, yeah, of course. Still, I mean, uh my my opinion just has dropped a notch because this seems to be a note from Mark Zuckerberg, not Alex Schultz. And they don't even mention his name. Like the person's name, I only found out his name later. So so far, as I'm going, imagine going through this email the first time. I know there's this book from this guy. He's met as CMO. There's a quote. Of course, Mark Zuckerberg's name is there. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

Meredith 2:38

I thought it was Mark Zuckerberg who wrote the book. Yeah. And that's why I was so confused.

Meredith's husband 2:42

Trevor Burrus, Jr.: Yeah, yeah. So uh so I continued the email, and it says, uh, starting out in marketing is overwhelming. Click here for the new book, blah, blah, blah. Oh no, no. The name of the book is click here.

Meredith 2:52

What?

Meredith's husband 2:53

The name of the book is click here.

Meredith 2:54

Oh boy.

Meredith's husband 2:55

The new book from Meta's chief marketing officer. Strategies, principles, confidence, straightforward. Be among the first to read this essential guide. Order, click here. And click here is not a button. It says that's the title of the book again.

Meredith 3:12

That's really clear. It is especially in a good idea. It's good for marketing.

Meredith's husband 3:16

It wasn't meant to be read aloud on a podcast, I guess.

Meredith 3:19

But you're reading it.

Meredith's husband 3:20

Trevor Burrus So order-click here, get your first access, blah, blah, blah. So I'm a little confused at this point.

Meredith 3:26

Yes.

Meredith's husband 3:32

So I scrolled up and I look, and it's from mail.instagram. It's from Meta.

Meredith 3:36

Yeah.

Meredith's husband 3:38

Trevor Burrus, Yeah. I'm curious. So I went ahead and I by the way, I have not read this book.

Meredith 3:47

Okay.

Meredith's husband 3:47

I'm not giving my professional or personal opinion of the of whatever is in the book. It might be great. I don't know.

Meredith 3:53

Aaron Ross Powell And just a side note, of course, why do you not have the images loading?

Meredith's husband 3:59

Because this message appears to be, and I'll get to this in a second, too. Okay. Marketing email.

Meredith 4:05

Yeah.

Meredith's husband 4:06

But anyway, I followed the link. It takes me to Amazon. This is where I learned the person's name. When I looked at it, it had I think it was 11 five-star reviews. I scrolled down, and those reviews certainly seemed to me to be this guy's best friends. Well, co-workers. Co-workers. People who work at Meta. Yeah. Right? It was all they started with, oh, I've been friends with Alex since his first days here at Meta, like at Facebook, et cetera. And then there was one review, which I thought was pretty good. It was like a five-star review. Oh my gosh, just got my copy in the mail. Can't wait to read it. I don't know if this person understands the concept of a review. Or maybe they think it's a huge success. If you order something from Amazon and it arrives, boom, that's a five-star review. Amazing. Absolutely unbelievable. Anyway, I digress. 11 five-star reviews at this time. I would be curious by the time it hits 20 or 30 or 100, how many are going to be five-star. Because as you have sort of indicated, back to this email.

Meredith 5:13

Yeah.

Meredith's husband 5:13

This email is it's not something you signed up for, is it? You didn't sign up to be so this email is by definition spam.

Meredith 5:21

Yes.

Meredith's husband 5:22

That is the definition of spam.

Meredith 5:23

Yeah.

Meredith's husband 5:24

Coming from a supposed marketing expert.

Meredith 5:28

Yeah.

Meredith's husband 5:28

Okay. Spam email, I will tell you, as a marketing professional, is a is about it's considered just about the lowest form of marketing that there is. There's there's a couple wrongs beneath that, but it's pretty I mean it's spam.

Meredith 5:42

Spam. Yeah. Junk is junk.

Meredith's husband 5:46

Yeah, junk is garbage and garbage.

Meredith 5:49

Spam.

Meredith's husband 5:50

So my opinion of this of this whole email now is like this is really very self-serving.

Meredith 5:55

Yes.

Meredith's husband 5:56

Because I very I again I have not read the book. I very much assume that in this book is something about how, you know, your strategy is going to involve, I don't know, advertising on Meta. Maybe, you think? Or at least.

Meredith 6:11

I don't know. Yes. It just seemed like insider trading.

Meredith's husband 6:15

Yeah, it seems like so so I would expect, like if you are a small business, we're going to do something like this, I would expect the book to be free.

Meredith 6:25

Yeah.

Amazon Reviews And Credibility

Meredith's husband 6:25

How much is the book? It's expensive. It's $32 for hardback. There's no paperback. You can get a Kindle version, which is probably half that. Wow. But yeah, it's not. So you're asking me this, which is why I have not read the book. One of the reasons. So my opinion is that this was a book written by Meta. Yeah. All the reviews from all the Meta uh chief officers are on Amazon. The first thing is from Mark Zuckerberg. It's written it's all C-level Meta people.

Meredith 6:55

Yeah.

Meredith's husband 6:55

So if you receive this email, and I did get this same email in another and something that in an account that I set up just for f Facebook and Instagram, I have a special email account. That email account also received this.

Meredith 7:08

I figure everyone who is a part of Meta receives this.

Meredith's husband 7:13

Well, everybody who Yeah, good point. Everybody certainly who has declared themselves a self-employed person or a business owner, or certainly if you are using the the business suite at Meta, yeah. I mean, think about it. Meta has, I don't know, how many billions of users do they have around the world? How many of those are uh own a small comp they they basically they have every single small company's email address. And at least in this country. They have them all, like a hundred percent of them.

Meredith 7:43

Yeah.

Meredith's husband 7:43

And like you said, it costs them nothing.

Meredith 7:45

Nothing.

Meredith's husband 7:46

So yeah. So not a dumb move, but I would say, as a professional marketer, very tasteless. Very tasteless.

Meredith 7:53

Self-service. Very self-serving.

Meredith's husband 7:57

I don't appreciate this.

Meredith 7:58

Yeah.

Meredith's husband 7:59

And this is one of another reason why I am not a fan of Meta.

Meredith 8:04

Yeah.

Meredith's husband 8:05

Facebook.

Meredith 8:05

Yeah.

Meredith's husband 8:06

Or even all of social media. I don't really like, but especially Meta, I just I really despise their business practices.

Meredith 8:13

Yes.

Meredith's husband 8:13

And this is just the latest example.

Meredith 8:15

Yes. Yeah.

Meredith's husband 8:16

Although, like I said, I'm not a big social media fan either. I'm not I don't use social media.

Meredith 8:22

Thank goodness. I'm sorry. I mean great.

Meredith's husband 8:25

I don't I think I'll I think a lot of the reason why a a lot of the world is in the state that it is right now is honestly because of social media. Not not to pin all the blame, but it has like fanned the flames like no tomorrow.

Meredith 8:38

Yeah. And you always feel bad after you get off it.

Meredith's husband 8:42

There's like this sense of just and there's a there's many reasons why that is.

Meredith 8:47

Yeah, intentional.

Meredith's husband 8:48

But yes. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. All the all the individual reasons are intentional for different reasons.

Meredith 8:54

But thank you, Mr. Schultz, probably.

Meredith's husband 8:57

Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. I'm like, oh, well, this guy was evidently around in the very early days of Facebook working with Mark. Like, oh, scumbag. Like, I hate this person.

Meredith 9:09

Yeah. This is how to just ring people dry.

Meredith's husband 9:12

Anyway, I was I was going to say, I'm not really on social. Like, I don't I don't use social media. I don't like social media. I don't want to contribute to social media, but I realize that's where everybody is.

Meredith 9:23

Yeah.

Meredith's husband 9:23

So I am going to start to be active on social media. I'm not going to like play the social media game. I'm not going to make duck lips and a peace sign over my cap of rapuccino.

Meredith 9:36

Oh gosh. What I would give for that though. Yes. Thank you.

Meredith's husband 9:39

Maybe I will do that. Actually, I probably guessed I will do that once.

Meredith 9:44

It's the next one.

Meredith's husband 9:45

I'm just going to put clips from my courses and my lessons online. And hopefully that's kind of like this podcast. I just I hope that it's helpful stuff because I know some of you are there.

Defining Spam From A Marketer’s View

Meredith 9:54

Yeah.

Meredith's husband 9:55

And hopefully it will help.

Meredith 9:57

Thank you.

Meredith's husband 9:57

If you want to contact me, I would say don't DM me on social media. I might not see that because I'm not, I'm not, I'm going to find some automated way of putting content out there. Doesn't mean I'm going to be using it. So if you want to DM me, I'll put a link below.

Meredith 10:11

Yeah.

Meredith's husband 10:11

And you can if you want me to review this book, if you want me to read this book, I'm not going to read the whole thing, but if you want me to somehow give a little a little deeper dive, because I realize this is this, I did not evaluate the content of the book at all. It's just where this book is coming from and how it came, how it got to us. I do not appreciate. Or if you want me to review something else, I will put a link below where you can hey say, hey, I got an email that says this. What does that mean?

Meredith 10:39

And if you want to see duck lips also.

Meredith's husband 10:42

Duck lips, yeah. I will do some duck lips if you want the duck lips.