Pick a number, any number as long as it is not higher than 100. Now put this number in front of the search criteria, Reasons People Buy. This rather unsubtle suggestion is to show that there are any number of triggers for people to buy a product or service you are selling. But you knew this anyway.

In email marketing, we have to know which of our criteria apply to our particular product. On one of the search results (I only checked on a few) you will discover that one of the prime reasons people buy an item is for adventure, but if you are selling pens, adventure comes way, way down the list. A scuba diving holiday in the Sea of Cortez is another matter.

Should you feel tempted, 100 Reasons Why People Buy Stuff provides you with 101 subject headings that could, in the main, be defined as why people do anything. Some of them are reasons I get out of bed in the morning.

We thrive on data. It’s what gives email marketing its edge, but in a post-Covid world you might wonder if your information is as accurate as it used to be. After all, circumstances have changed fundamentally. What was important to our subscribers in 2019 has probably mutated into something seemingly quite different. 

This does not mean you should wipe the data from your systems. It is still valuable, probably as valuable as it has ever been, the only difference now is that you should view it somewhat differently. For instance, home coffee machines have assumed a greater significance in the life of many people. But how can we know which ones?

The fundamental change over the last year or so in the B2B world has been the proportion of people working from home. I now check inboxes irregularly.

We need to split our email marketing lists to see if the basics, those criteria that we had thought we’d nailed, have changed in the new reality of the post-Covid world. You need to discover if I’m the only person whose opening times have changed significantly.