Emails We Love: Eisenbrauns
Who says biblical scholars don’t have a sense of romance? Not the good folks at Eisenbrauns, a bookseller/publisher specializing in the ancient Near East and biblical studies. Having read my recent lament about the dull crop of Valentine’s Day marketing e-mails this year, James Spinti, the marketing director for Eisenbrauns’ book sales division, forwarded me the latest edition of the company’s e-newsletter, which included the results of its Valentine’s Day contest.
For the third year in a row, Eisenbrauns asked customers to submit original love poems, prose, songs, or other compositions written in any ancient Near Eastern language and accompanied by an English translation. (Being sporting sorts, the judges accepted entries in ancient Greek as well.) The winning entry was “An Old Babylonian Love Poem”; runners-up were written in Hebrew, Syriac, and Ugaratic. (Yes, I had to look them up too.)
And you don’t need to know your Aramaic from your Elamite to appreciate Eisenbrauns’ April Fool’s Day e-newsletters. Last year the lead story of the April 1 edition was “MLA Announces Severe Letter Shortage.” The publishing world was running out of Es and Ls, don’t you know, so institutions were resorting to replacing Es with As and Ls with Qs. Eisenbrauns even changed its logo for the day to “Aisanbrauns.” The same newsletter also promoted a sale on ancient Near Eastern romance novels: “The tablets are difficult to read and the language obscure, but we are happy to announce the immediate availability of the first two titles: The Amorous Akkadian and Ba’
al’s Beaus. Watch for forthcoming titles as they are translated including Canaanite Cuties and Divinities and Divas.”
Eisenbrauns gets “fantastic” response to its April Fool’s Day e-newsletters, Spinti says. “It blows the Google Analytics off the page. And the links on blogs and retweets on Twitter are always nice to see.” It’s also nice to see a specialty merchant getting creative in its efforts to engage with customers. What’s more, the contests and April Foolery prove that there’s no niche too esoteric for a bit of whimsy. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to get back to Canaanite Cuties—it’s a real tablet-turner, I tell you.
