The camera follows him as the curtain is drawn — and a sea of chanting people filling the stadium to capacity roars on from the other side
I just watched Bohemian Rhapsody.
The film is a pretty straightforward retelling of the story of Queen, with of course, a focus on Freddie Mercury.
It traces the band from their time meeting behind a local concert hall and follows them for the next decade or so, all the way to the climactic concert at Wembley Stadium, where they performed to an ecstatic audience of close to 100,000.
In fact, that’s how the movie opens up.
While the rest of the script is chronologically linear, the opening is all about Freddie waking up, trimming his mustache, making his way through his mansion (populated by dozens of filthy cats), being driven in a Rolls-Royce to the stadium, and then warming up as he walks up to the stage.
The camera follows him as the curtain is drawn and a sea of chanting people filling the stadium to capacity roars on from the other side.
It’s a good way to start a movie.
And the same holds for starting emails.
You need to capture people’s attention straight away.
And even though you probably have a linear script in mind for what you’d like to say, that’s probably not the best way to present the information.
The good news is, it’s not hard to spruce up a regular ol’ email and make it into a sexy email.
Just go in once it’s written, find the highlight of the email, and splice it in up top.
You can keep the rest of the email as is.
This isn’t cheating in any way — you’re simply giving people a preview of the interesting things to come, and a reason to keep reading.
Once you have people’s attention, you can then take them to your important and serious message.
Such as for example, my upcoming book on email marketing for health products.
It’s not out yet.
But if you would like a free copy when it does come out, you can sign up here: