Thanks for Subscribing! A Genre Analysis of Email Marketing

Abstract

How do we know a marketing email when we see one? Is our decision based on what a marketing email looks like, or is it based on the linguistic features in the text? Marketing emails exist somewhere between the genres of email anmed direct marketing. They have features in common with both of these genres, but they also have their own distinct features. In this study, I analyze 793 emails from 17 companies. I develop and present a frame model for analyzing the layout of marketing emails. I then perform a rhetorical move analysis on each frame in the model, which points to the schemas in email marketing. The results show that email marketing does not use lexico-grammatical features that are common in other forms of email and computer-mediated communication. The results of the study also show that rhetorical moves are most common in the subject line and marketing frames, although email allows marketers to place rhetorical moves in other places as well.