Today, we are proud to be sending our 200th newsletter, which will be reaching more than 140,000 subscribers worldwide. Like every respectable company, we now have a Marketing department and we consulted them on how we should celebrate this milestone properly. After all, we need someone to blame for the wrong decisions, right? And you know, we had been looking forward to a chance to use all the buzzwords shamelessly – it’s just marketing stuff!!! Here is what came up!

 

Vintage. We want to colonize Mars with style, so we’re bringing our vinyl player. Did any engineers check whether vinyl players will work in lower gravity? Who cares, it’s a great marketing plan! Let’s do vintage. So, how can we be vintage with our newsletter? We can use the graphical layout of our very first newsletter! No room for news, no videos, ugly graphics. But Marketing says vintage is cool; we shall ignore the boring details. Check!

 

Loyalty badges. We need more viral communication. How can we make our subscribers proud to be newsletter readers and spread the word? We need badges!
Let’s be honest. Are we too nerdy or not nerdy enough to need a marketing call on that? No idea, but the loyalty badges are here now: Newbie, Bronze, Silver, Gold, and Platinum.
It’s probably the easiest way to get a loyalty badge. Just register for the newsletter and read it. Or not. Actually, we don’t track whether you read it. If you spread the word, you will make Marketing happy. Check!

 

Crypto. Hey, everybody is talking about cryptocurrencies everywhere; what about us??? There are 100 million crypto holders out there. We have to do something! The FOMO was real. Marketing says we should announce proudly that we now accept payments in Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Dogecoin. Will the blockchain work on Mars? You know, the latency… Shut up, engineer! We are on planet Earth, crypto is cool, and it this is how we take people’s money who cannot use a credit card. Against all odds, Marketing may be right on that one. Check!

 

B2H. Nobody said a word. What is B2H? Business-to-human! No matter whether you have a B2B or a B2C model, you are interacting with people. Use a personal touch in your communication. Customize the message! At this point someone yelled, “Content is king!”, the customer service rep got offended out of nowhere, anyway we lost control of the meeting. Not impressed with Marketing. Moving on.

 

NFT. Marketing would have liked to play with NFT in this 200th newsletter. But then they changed their mind because they wouldn’t have enough time to implement an awesome cOmMuNiCaTiOn sTrAtEgY. Maybe next time. Anyway if you don’t know what NFT is, you definitely should look it up. Or you can ignore it and wait until you hear about NFT being discussed at a dinner party as casually as last night’s TV. At that point, you’ll experience that FOMO we talked about. In the meantime… Postponed!

 

Despite Marketing’s repeated attempts to destroy our credibility, we also tried to include helpful content in this newsletter. Don’t worry. We’ll be back to the regular format with the next issue. In the meantime, play Space Oddity on your vinyl player and be ready to continue the journey. With us, hopefully!

Oh, and here is where you register for the SQLBI newsletter BTW. So if your BFF sent you this for your enlightenment, here is your chance. It’s never too late.