Picture this: you’re a brand with a generous marketing budget, and yet somehow you still manage to face-plant spectacularly into midlife women’s inboxes. Before I dish the dirt on these digital disasters, and I’ve been on the receiving end of plenty of them, let’s talk about why this matters more than most businesses realise.
Plot Twist – midlife women are the ones with money and influence.
We’re the most under-served yet influential buyers in the market. Think about it – if your household includes a midlife woman, who’s the primary shopper? Who drives those high-ticket decisions, from holidays to furniture? Exactly.
Our purchasing influence ripples up and down generations too. One week I could be helping my almost-adult child choose a bank account, the next I’m advising my parents on which pricey trainers won’t make them look like they’re heading to a bowls tournament.
There’s that (sometimes unspoken) understanding that we’re also reconsidering lots of stuff. Milestone birthdays and life-changing moments tend to do that to you.
We’re pivoting careers. We’re open to new products, services or ways of being/doing. We might be looking for freedom, novelty, balance, or to build generational wealth for our families.
And let’s not forget this unsettling perspective – my mum was an intelligent, working adult at a time when women couldn’t open a UK bank account without permission from their father or husband. No, not in the Victorian era. This only changed in 1975.
That’s a whole lot of offence still hovering around in our collective emotional baggage. All reasons why I’m convinced (and I hope you are too) that having more money flowing through the hands of midlife women is a fine thing.
The great email marketing face-plant
Speaking of power moves, let me show you how not to use them in email marketing. I’ve got you front row seats to a couple of the most spectacular marketing face-plants happening right now in my inbox.
For background, I showed interest recently in two products aimed squarely at midlife women like me. No, not menopause-reversing tea. No one actually believes that works.
One was a skincare product. The other was a digital product, in the form of a wellbeing course.
Tales from my inbox: when email marketing just goes splat
Let me share the details of those two recent email encounters. They illustrate perfectly how brands are sticking the landing as gracefully as a penguin on roller skates. Unusually for me, both brands appeared on my radar from Instagram ads, proving that even a substantial ad budget can’t save you from tripping over your own digital shoelaces.
Both brands followed a similar tortuous journey from OK ads to terrible email marketing. No names mentioned. I’m feeling generous.
Exhibit A: The course creator’s chaos chronicles
This was a big course creator/personal brand who I was feeling pretty warm about. I was thinking about buying one of her courses, but the price point meant they were not quite an impulse buy. So I signed up for emails, just to keep the brand in mind and consider my choice some more.
Since signing up, I’ve received multiple messages selling me many different courses. I’ve had the whole repertoire in my inbox over the space of a few days.
And it’s not that I don’t want to buy one. I’m just not sure which one to choose first. These emails are not making my decision-making simple.
Choice overwhelm makes products and services difficult to compare. With a knowledge product like this, I need guidance about what course is right for me at this stage. Not five different messages giving me five different options. In fact, one useful email would do a better job than a scattered five.
Instead of all the choices…give one?
How about a simple message that points to a ‘start here’ course? Or a comparison of three courses max? But please not the “here’s everything I’ve got” blast attack.
Before emails: Enthusiastic, warm and interested
After emails: Confused and indecisive
The Meta ads created a warm lead. The emails cooled me off. I’m now wavering about which course to buy, and increasingly likely to pick none at all.
Right now I’m more worried about spending money on the wrong course. Their email marketing has actually put me further back on the buyer journey, rather than leading me forward. Well, this is awkward.
The emails reminded me of a buffet where someone keeps shoving different dishes in your face before you’ve even picked up your plate. Enthusiastic but aimless.
If that digital disaster wasn’t enough to make you wince in recognition, buckle up. Our next contestant in the ‘How to Lose a Customer in 10 Emails’ competition takes overwhelm to Olympic levels.
Exhibit B: The great skincare spam-pede
This brand appeared on my feed almost every time I opened Instagram for the last six months. Big tick for familiarity. I saw enough ads to infer some kind of social proof. They must be spending a clean fortune.
Anyway, this one time I clicked through, saw they had a tempting offer and fancied trying it. Order placed.
Post-order, I had a standard “thanks for your order” message and one saying “your order is on its way.” So far, so good. Both are appropriate. The emails that followed were at first perplexing, and then frankly annoying.
I’ve had emails fired off to me constantly. Three most days while I wait for my order, including –
- An invitation to buy the product I’d already ordered (huh?)
- Tips on how to use their products (great) which didn’t include the product I’d already bought (not so great)
- A discount code for my next order, which of course I won’t use because I haven’t even received my first order yet
- Another discount on everything on the entire website. Who orders more before the first parcel hits the doormat? Anyone?
- A ‘last call’ to use the discount (“but I’ve already ordered!” I silently screamed)
- Oh and a flash sale with further discounts on a range of different products
Naming no names, but this is a HUGE digital brand that’s actively targeting my demographic. Yet I feel like I’m being poked in the eye by a relentless toddler who’s trying to wake me up. They’re spending plenty on ads to generate sales. But their follow-up email game means they’re missing out. I’m convinced of it.
This midlife woman hit unsubscribe
Life’s overwhelming enough. As soon as I got my order, I hit unsubscribe. Not a moment too soon. Take your three daily emails and get out of my inbox. Close the door behind you.
Before emails: Excited to try
After emails: Irritated and overwhelmed
Before I ordered, this brand had been doing the digital equivalent of standing outside my window with a megaphone for six entire months. When I finally opened the window (aka clicked the ad), they responded by throwing their entire inventory list (and more) through it.
I’ve no doubt their ads pay off, and convert into purchases. I’ve also no doubt that many customers get turned off by their email marketing and unsubscribe asap. So the brand has to keep spending on ads to replace the customers they’ve lost through email. Aha. That’s why they’re always appearing on my feed.
How to actually do email marketing to midlife women
Enough about how brands are tumbling aimlessly through emails. Let’s talk about how to actually stick the landing. It’s pretty simple advice.
Be useful, not relentless.
We’re busy people, us midlifers. We’ve got tattoos to choose, cold water to swim and podcasts to launch. Please don’t bombard us with poorly strategised marketing campaigns.
Want to know what midlife women actually want in their inbox? Here’s a wild concept: emails that don’t feel like being repeatedly slapped in the face with a wet newsletter. Instead of performing the digital equivalent of a panic-induced interpretive dance, brands could try these radical ideas.
For welcome sequences after sign-up –
- An actual welcome series that isn’t just a sales barrage (doesn’t mean no selling at all).
- Show us some social proof – testimonials and stories from real women.
- Make decision-making easier, not harder (looking at you, course creator) with a ‘start here’ offer, for example. Easy. Add to cart.
For post-purchase emails –
- Track those post-purchase opens and unsubscribes. If someone is warm enough to buy, but unsubscribes as soon as they get their parcel, that’s a clue that something may have gone wrong.
- Personalised follow-up emails based on what we actually bought (revolutionary, I know.)
- Carefully timed reorder prompts and discounts for when we’re actually running low, not before we’ve received our first order.
The awkward truth about marketing to midlife women
The examples above show what happens when brands don’t strategise their email content. But let’s rewind a step too, because getting the subject line right is the first opportunity to avoid a face-plant. So far we’ve looked at what makes us scramble for the unsubscribe button once we’ve opened the emails. But here’s another plot twist. Before you can annoy us with your content, you need us to open the email in the first place. And getting us to open those emails isn’t as difficult as brands make it look.
These are examples of subject lines from my own inbox that prompted me to open immediately. When I analysed what unites them, I found they were all loosely categorised into four different emotional triggers or needs – curiosity, ambition, necessity and validation. Four needs, four types of instant click.
So let me share some subject lines that actually worked on me (with links where relevant).
Curiosity: The “well, that’s intriguing” click
I am seriously overthinking this
Why dumb ideas capture smart and successful people
The internet is very concerned about my knees
Is your neck ageing faster than your face? (sorry, that’s mine!)
Eat the rich, steal their skin?
Ambition: The “level-up my life” click
A reader just pledged £6 to subscribe to Ink Tank: copywriting psychology
Get 8% on your savings
How Instagram creators are bringing their followers to Substack
Necessity: The “I just need to see this” click
Your Learner Driver insurance policy has expired
Your order is ready to collect
Your flight time has been changed
Validation: The “I knew it!” click
After Menopause, Killer Whale Moms Become Pod Leaders
The benefit of watching lectures at 2x speed
Subject lines and their emotional triggers work because they respect something fundamental about authentic messaging. Midlife women aren’t a marketing problem to solve – we’re an audience to connect with emotionally. Which brings me to my final plot twist.
Certain subject lines (and the email themselves) work because they treat midlife women as intelligent consumers, not problems to be fixed. Which makes it all the more baffling when brands try to sell us products that do exactly the opposite. Speaking of which.
Here’s where it gets interesting. You can nail your subject lines and your emails and still completely miss the mark with what you’re actually selling. Getting us to open an email is one thing. But if your product strategy is stuck in stereotype-land …
The brands that win our loyalty will be the ones that see us as complete humans with diverse interests and ambitions, not just a collection of midlife problems to solve.
The final plot twist: just don’t be That Brand
Now that we talk freely about midlife health, it feels like the vultures are circling at a cringeworthy goldrush. So please, for the love of our overflowing inboxes, don’t repackage last season’s moisturiser as meno-reverse serum and then try to flog it to us. Hold the women’s wellbeing room mist. And definitely don’t offer us a mellow cup of Cool Moments menopause infusion.
Here’s the real tea. We won’t feel soothed, I promise you that.
What we will do is vote with our wallets – and our unsubscribe buttons.
The brands that win our loyalty will be the ones that see us as complete humans with diverse interests and ambitions, not just a collection of midlife problems to solve. Get your email marketing right by all means – but first, get your thinking right about who we actually are.
I don’t want to talk AT midlife women, like some of the big brands. I’m one of you and always open to talking WITH you about this. I hope to see more women like us leading companies, receiving investment or building businesses that support our big dreams.
Do you believe in this too? Leave a comment with your thoughts.
I hope you enjoyed this guest post by Sue Moore. Read more about her below.
About Sue Moore: I help midlife women like me talk about their business and position their skills or products so that other people want to buy them. I do it with messaging strategy and copywriting – web copy, email marketing and the works. I work with midlife women because I’m convinced that if we took over the world, all would be well. Only half-joking.
Gen X women have major purchasing power and the world (and its boardroom) is finally catching on. How likely is it they’ll use this knowledge wisely?
2 Responses
I really enjoyed this blog post, thanks Willow & Sue! I felt especially grateful that ‘woman’ didn’t automatically mean ‘mother’ which is what a lot of stuff about midlife tends to focus on!
I’m really happy to hear that the post resonated with you, Lisa. I think broadening the conversation around midlife beyond the traditional focus on motherhood is necessary. I want to read more content about midlife women that acknowledges how multifaceted we are. Thanks for sharing your thoughts!