Nurture—proper nurture—implies mothering. Clothing. Feeding, nourishing, and caring.
Devoted, selfless giving.
But look closely at the image below. Trickery is afoot.
That's email nurture. Care in disguise.
"Nurtures" the way marketers actually use them are thinly veiled surveillance. In the same inbox where recipients expect news of a well-deserved promotion and calendar invites to fun events comes a gloved fist. It's marketers. In suits. Masquerading as if they’ve got your interests in mind.
But they are sizing us up, asking, ‘Think this one’s ready?” Convert him.
As the marketer, you have to know that your subterfuge does not go unnoticed. Your audience longs to escape it.
AI has ushered in a golden age of spam. LLMs give grifters the tools to 100x their output. As a marketer, don't be lured by those tools. There's a rebellion forming against thoughtless outreach especially among your keenest buyers. They're using the term enshittification to describe not just the Dantean inferno of marketplaces like Amazon, but all outreach from companies.
They say, no more! They are jumping your shallow fences and retreating to the walled enclosures of Signal groups and paid, protected communiities.
They are escaping.
Out there, hidden from marketers' views, they are finding bucolic pastures where once again, it's just people talking to people.
If you want to be invited in, you'll need permission. You'll need to amend your blasted ways. You need to be nature in the inbox.
