WTF Am I Looking At? How Not to Send a Mail

On this note, I read the article and thought maybe I should feel like "WTF Am I Looking At? How Not to Write an Article".

The title of the paragraph that says "The Problem" says this:

> Do I need a new account? “Get a New Account” is the the only obvious button I’m prompted to click. Yet, when I click it nothing becomes any clearer.

That is not a clear enough problem statement for some random person on the Internet to understand what the author is even talking about at first read! Instead of a long winded article (which Medium as a platform seems to attract), where the problem is explained in terms of the solution, and which still didn't seem clear by the end, the problem could've been explained better initially.

Edit: The article about "Tappers and listeners" that was linked to was great!

Is it really that common to refer to email as mail? I had a different imagination when I clicked on the title...

How about just don't send spam?

If you really "get into their head" you'll find what they really want is no unsolicited email at all.

I work in higher education, which means there are a lot of {terrible} emails sent out daily. Recently I've started educating the senders on how to be more effective, as well as not just copy and paste event listings from our website to Mail Chimp.

It's a challenge teaching people how to be more effective in their emails communications.

"Get in their head"

Perfect advise. And if that's not possible: Ask someone in your target audience to give you feedback.

You don't need A/B tests, fancy markup or the newest marketing patterns if the gist of your message is misunderstood.

Ideally, the gist of the message should be in the subject line.