A couple months ago, I got the following unattractive proposition in my inbox (edited down for length):
I’m into email Copywriting(been studying it for a good year now) and would love to get my foot in the door as soon as possible.
I want to make you an offer that would
1. Benefit you(hopefully)
2. Benefit me(most definitely)
So here it is
Would you be open to me writting you a bunch of subject lines daily and also writing copy for you whenever you want?
This would make great practice for me and save you a lot of time coming up with subject lines
I should mention I studied the infotainment aspect of email Copywriting so my subject lines and copy are all entertaining and educational mixed in one awesome bundle
Would really love to hear your feedback on this
My feedback, the short version, was no.
My longer, more detailed feedback is no, repeated over and over, in many different languages, with many different supporting reasons.
In fact, for my own benefit, I sat down and wrote down 10 impregnable reasons why I would never accept this offer.
Some of the reasons you can probably guess:
Like the total impracticality of it. How would this guy possibly write my subject lines? It’s an integral part of the email copy. Would we get on a Zoom call each day where we would hash it out? Would we get on another Zoom call on the rare (but certainly possible) days when I found that all his subject lines were trash?
So that’s one easy reason. Another, more complex reason, is:
The fact that most of the value in an email is the personal voice. Even in newsletters like mine, where I make almost zero effort at having a unique voice, and where I instead work hard to dig up something new to say to you each day. Even so, the personal element is still the most important part. And like Dan Kennedy says, why would you outsource the most important part of your business?
So that’s reason two. But here’s a third and really most important reason:
There is value to me in writing these daily email besides just getting them out. I learn stuff. I become a more valuable marketer and copywriter. I get exposed to interesting new ideas and approaches and techniques, because I write about them for you. Writing these emails is an investment in the future.
Which is why I called my recent course the Most Valuable Email. What makes it so valuable is not the nice external things it brings. It’s not the list growth, the endorsements, the perceived authority, the free stuff, or the cool job offers I’ve gotten as a result of using the trick I describe inside this course.
Instead, it’s that that each time that I write any of my daily emails, and specifically, each time I use this MVE trick, it makes me more valuable.
So to any budding email copywriter out there, looking to practice or to get their foot in the door, my advice is:
Start your own email newsletter. Keep it up for a few months. And there you go. An opportunity to practice. And your foot will be jammed tightly in between the door and the wall.
And if by some strange magic you want to find out more about my Most Valuable Email trick, you can do that at the sales page below.
The sales page is still criminally short. And yet many people bought through it. That’s because I write my own daily emails, and people read those, and so they trust me.
If you want to do something similar: