Influence, Insight, And Income Via Writing
I’m putting together a book tentatively titled Profitable Health Emails.
It’s going to collect what I’ve learned so far about email marketing, and what I’ve used to help companies such as RealDose Nutrition, Australian Digestive Excellence, and Vitality Now make some money.
I’m expecting to finish the book by January 2019.
In case you’d like a free copy when it’s done, you can sign up for it here:
In 1975, the great copywriter Gary Bencivenga joined an upstart direct marketing agency.
They soon put out a gutsy ad in the Wall Street Journal to hunt for new clients. The headline ran:
“ANNOUNCING A DIRECT RESPONSE ADVERTISING AGENCY THAT WILL GUARANTEE TO OUTPULL YOUR BEST AD.”
There were only two catches:
1) You had to give Gary & co. creative freedom on the kind of ad to write — only legal and factual approval was asked for and allowed.
2) You actually needed better advertising. In Gary’s own words, “If we think your present advertising is excellent, we’ll tell you.”
I thought of this today because I’m looking over the wreckage of several email campaigns I wrote for a client over the past few months.
I put in serious work on these emails, and I thought I did a great job. When I handed them over to the client, he loved them. But apparently, they are underperforming what he was using earlier.
The thing is, I saw the earlier email sequences, and I was confident I could do better. They were dull and too heavy on the teaching, and I was going to make them intriguing and infotaining.
But that’s not enough.
What I should have asked for in addition to seeing the email copy is a breakdown of where the sales were coming from.
Were they all on day 0, and people weren’t even reading the emails?
Did sales trickle in as the relationship was established (which means that people actually liked reading the old emails)?
Was it all about the discounts (and was the copy largely irrelevant)?
Were the emails actually making any sales (the client hinted that they weren’t making any money through email marketing)?
Too late to ask now, because the client seems to have moved on to greener pastures.
However, going forward, I’ll insist on this sales info for two reasons:
1) It will help me decide whether I can in fact write emails that will do better. It’s not just about seeing the copy, but about finding out how that copy performs.
2) If I feel I can beat the emails, this info will give me useful clues about how to best do that.
Maybe obvious. But even old Gary above didn’t think to ask for the results in his gutsy ad — which makes me feel a bit better.
“Mrs. Briggs… I’ve known your husband for many years, and what’s good enough for him is good enough for me.”
I’ve recently written several autoresponder sequences that culminate with a discount for the product on sale. However, it’s no good to just announce this in the subject line by saying “15% off coupon inside”.
Why not?
Because it’s boring.
Because everybody does it that way.
Because it only focuses on the hyper-buyers, and drives away everyone else.
Because with a little bit of work, it’s possible to get the same message across, while creating curiosity, building a relationship, and thereby actually increasing response.
So how do you do it? Here are a few ideas:
#1 Tease. Announce that you’ve got an incredible offer in the subject line, without saying explicitly what it is. Then carry this on throughout the email as long as possible without pissing the reader off. Example: “A free fermenting offer you probably can’t refuse”.
#2 Testimonial connection. Include a testimonial in the body of the email and find an entertaining way to tie into this in the subject line. Example: “A discount that will disappear like a late-night snack”.
#3 Pop culture reference. Find a movie, TV show, celebrity, PS4 game, whatever — and in some way tie it in to the offer (or don’t tie it in — it’s more important that it’s entertaining than that it ties in perfectly). Preferably, choose a bit of pop culture that won’t seem dated six months from now. Example: “A discount that’s good enough for Groucho Marx”.
On May 28 of this year, many visitors to the Cedar Point amusement park, “The Rollercoaster Capital of the World,” got a special thrill.
They boarded the Millennium Force “giga coaster” — the biggest rollercoaster in the world at the time of its debut in 2000 — expecting a fast and gut-wrenching ride. Full of expectation, they started climbing the initial 300-foot ascent, and were preparing themselves to rush down the other side at 93 miles an hour.
Instead, what they got was a long wait. Halfway up the climb, the power went out. A car somewhere hit a utility pole, knocking out one third of the rides at Cedar Point. The folks on the Millennium Force sat up there in the air for two hours, cooking in the 90-degree heat.
Now a few days ago, I made a case against indoctrination emails, meaning emails that aim to build good will without trying to sell anything. My argument in that post was that people don’t read all your emails, so when they do actually read your emails, it makes financial sense to give them a chance to buy from you.
Today, I have a second argument against indoctrination emails (and other emails that don’t sell). This second argument has to do with the situation of being stuck on a rollercoaster, ready to scream and laugh — but not actually going anywhere.
“WOOHOOO!!! A way to resolve emotional tension!!!”
The rollercoaster I’m talking about is an emotional rollercoaster. In my experience, the best emails stir emotion. This emotion can be curiosity, frustration, anger, disgust, fear, greed, outrage, inspired benevolence, whatever.
Why emotion in emails? If you want people to open your emails day after day and to read them, you have to give them an emotional jolt, and do so frequently. I don’t have a much better way of explaining it than saying it’s simply what people want. I guess emotion gives color to an otherwise drab day.
(Interesting and useful information is great once or twice. But without a little emotional color mixed in, useful information quickly becomes a burden rather than a gift.)
Of course, emotion also makes sense from a different perspective. That’s because when people get emotional about something, it’s much easier to get them to take action. Meaning it’s much easier to get them to buy.
And here’s the thing. Getting people to buy when they are emotional isn’t just good for you. It’s good for them. The act of buying resolves the tension that the emotion stirred up. And it replaces it with a sense of purpose, hope, and resolution.
If you don’t believe me, think about the feeling you yourself had the last time you made a sizeable purchase online. I know I’m usually relieved that the indecision of shopping has been resolved, and I’m optimistic about what my new purchase will alow me to do.
So emotion + selling = good. But emotion without selling is like being stuck high up on a rollercoaster, not moving and not being able to finish the ride. At first it might just be puzzling, after that it becomes annoying.
What’s the alternative? Well, one option is to send out bland and boring emails that don’t stir anybody up. A better option, in my opinion, is to get people a little emotional, and to then give them a chance to buy a product or service that allows them to complete their rollercoaster ride.
In 1935, Boeing demonstrated its new plane, nicknamed the Flying Fortress, to military observers.
The demonstration was a mere formality, because the plane, a four-engine behemoth, exceeded the army’s requirements in every way.
Except for one problem. During the demonstration, the plane took off, climbed steeply, stalled, and crashed, killing the two pilots inside.
An examination determined that nothing mechanical had gone wrong. The crash was due to pilot error. It seemed that the Flying Fortress was simply too much plane for one man to fly. Nonetheless, the air corps purchased a few Flying Fortresses and tried to figure out what to do.
Their solution was very low-tech. Instead of changing anything about the plane, or insisting on more training for the pilots, they simply came up with checklists to handle the complex procedures for each operation: takeoff, landing, cruising, bombing…
Thanks in part to these checklists, the Flying Fortress eventually wound up playing a key role in World War II, and became the third most produced bomber of all time.
I thought of this story today, because I came up with my first checklist for email copywriting.
Even though I’ve written hundreds of sales emails by now, I haven’t systematized the process, and sometimes, I find myself crashing and burning for no good reason. Today, I became aware of how the process goes when it goes well, and I want to write it down to make sure I don’t ever forget it ever again.
So here it is, along with an example (one of the emails I was working on today, for a home fermenting kit):
STEP 1. Get an idea for an angle or topic
I normally do a lot of research for the emails I write. This includes going through the sales letter, testimonials, transcripts I did with people from the company, examining the product itself, digging around on forums online, etc. As I do this, I write down possible topics and angles for emails.
For this particular project, I also went through a few hundred customer surveys. A lot of customers mentioned that they were interested in fermenting because they wanted to lose weight.
My first idea was simply to try to connect fermented foods to weight loss. While I had a good testimonial on this topic, the science seemed fairly vague and tenuous (more on this in step 2 below). However, a related and relevant topic — antibiotics and weight gain — seemed very solid, so I decided to go with that.
STEP 2. Search around for more details
If I know a lot about a topic, or I have a personal story I can share, I can skip this step.
However, I can’t simply riff about antibiotics and weight gain. It’s not a topic I know enough about, so I needed to do more research. In particular, I wanted to find some kind of supporting scientific study that actually made the connection. And ideally, I also wanted to find a story to kick off the entire email.
I have a few go-to places for both kinds of resource. For scientific research, ScienceDaily seems to have reliable summaries of recent research. For stories, articles that appear in The Atlantic and The New Yorker tend to be good sources. Beyond this, a bit of googling will usually solve all research problems.
For this particular email, I found a study from Johns Hopkins University that effectively said, “the more antibiotics, the more weight gain.” The story I found was about a woman who went to the doctor to get rid of her hormonal acne, but wound up with an extra 14 pounds, thanks to the antibiotics he prescribed her.
STEP 3. Write up different subject lines
Keeping In mind the topic I want to cover, and the details of the research I want to include, I start to write a bunch of different subject lines.
At this point, I have a fairly large stack of index cards with good headlines that I can use as templates or inspiration. These aren’t “classic” direct response headlines (eg. “They laughed when I sat down at the piano”).
Instead, they are the titles of articles I’ve found myself clicking on over the past sevreal years (eg. “De Beers admits defeat over man-made diamonds”). Most of these are general-interest articles that originally appeared on the front page of Hacker News, so they are vetted for being curiosity-inducing.
I force myself to write down 10-15 of these subject lines, even if I think they sound stupid. Then I just pick the one that I think sounds the best, ties into the content I want to share, and ideally, gives me a bit of edge I can use in the email (I can’t describe this any better right now).
For this particular email, the subject line I ended up with was “Antibiotics are shockingly good at causing weight gain”.
STEP 4. Write the body of the email
At this point, all that’s left to do is to tie the pieces together. That means starting off with the story, developing this a bit (in the example I’ve been using, that means talking about the supporting science study), and then tying this in with the product I’m promoting.
I won’t include the entire completed email here. But it looks something like this:
Smooth sailing thanks to a checklist
In the 2006 version of Casino Royale, there’s a classic James Bond pickup scene.
Bond is talking to the beautiful wife of one of the bad guys. After a bit of flirty banter, Bond looks her straight in the eye and says, “What about a drink at my place?”
He stares at her. She stares at him. The tension builds.
“Your place,” she says breathlessly, “is it close?”
“Very,” says Bond.
Now imagine if Bond couldn’t play so cool. Instead of throwing out that one proposal, imagine if he threw out three:
“What about a drink at my place? Or maybe some nachos? How about breakfast tomorrow in case you’re busy now?”
Even with his ice-cold stare, odds are he wouldn’t get the same response.
“Bond. James Bond. You can call me Jim. Or James. Whichever is easier.”
A while ago, I was reading “Made to Stick” by Chip and Dan Heath. This is the best book I’ve come across on how to present ideas clearly and in a way that people will remember. One of the things the Heaths say is, “Say one thing. If you say three things, you end up saying nothing at all.”
Michael Masterson and John Forde’s “Great Leads” emphasizes the same concept, which they call “The Rule of One – One Big Idea.”
In fact, the book opens up with the story of two speeches that were given by two Agora copywriters. One speech focused on one idea, the importance of clarity in writing. The other was something like “12 rules I follow when writing copy.”
The audience thought both speeches were terrific. But at the end of the night, people were only talking about the single idea in the first speech.
I’ve recently been working on some emails for a cool product. The product helps people make their own fermented food. And the emails I’m writing are specifically for people who’ve stated that they want to ferment for health reasons.
I’ve been going around in circles writing these emails. I need to get across a few ideas. One is that fermented foods are important for your health. The second is that fermenting can be a hassle. A third is that store-bought fermented foods aren’t a great choice compared to fermenting food yourself.
The problem is I’ve been trying to do this in the same email. This breaks the “Rule of One.” No wonder I’ve been re-reading the emails and thinking they are somehow weak and unconvincing.
The fix is simple. Pick one idea. Develop it in detail. Present it clearly. And then do the same for the other ideas, but in separate emails.
What’s the most important thing in email marketing? Ben Settle, in my opinion the top guy teaching this topic, has said that the number one thing he strives to do with email is to build a relationship.
It made sense to me when I first read it. But it seemed to click in my mind in a different way today, when I got an email from somebody in Ben’s sphere of influence.
The email had a Ben-style curiosity-drenched subject line. And yet, I purposefully chose not to open the email, because I know from previous experience that I don’t care too much for what that sender has to say.
That made me think a bit (specifically about the difference between levels 4 and 5 below). And the conclusion is the following hierarchy of email marketing.
The levels are ranked from least sophisticated to most sophisticated. For each level, I’m including a few examples of subject lines that represent that level, which I managed to dig up in my own inbox.
Level 1: Pointless
These tend to be emails from corporations and big organizations that have heard email marketing is important. However, since these organizations have no idea of what to put in their emails, they usually blast out pointless newsletters that are focused on random aspects of their own corporate existance (best case) or nothing at all (worst case). This is the lowest form of email marketing.
Example subject lines:
“New Bestcare website”
“#MakeBaobabFamous”
“What’s new in MailChimp?”
Level 2: Sale
The next level up is when the sender makes an offer. The offer can be a sale, a coupon, or a new product announcement. This works — if your readers are ready to buy and they just need to be nudged with the right kind of carrot. Unfortunately, many companies doing email marketing (especially in ecommerce) only ever send out these kinds of email.
Example subject lines:
“Your favorite mist, on us”
“Save 25% Now + Win a Trip to Maui”
“Get 33% OFF Absolutely EVERYTHING + FREE Shaker”
Level 3: Benefit
Now we’re getting into copywriting territory. “Sell the sizzle, not the steak!” This is where much of the Internet Marketing world lives. This category of emails is all about announcing (and frequently screaming) benefits — though I would also include transparent fear-mongering or urgency-based emails here.
Example subject lines:
“Higher T in 14 days”
“Boost your ranking with these SEO hacks”
“Closing: On-Demand Video Views = Sales”
Level 4: Curiosity
This is still a higher level of email copywriting, which is trying to persuade more skeptical, more sophisticated readers. At first blush, there can be overlap with emails in level 3, but these curiosity emails tend to be less direct and more broadly interesting than the benefit emails. Email courses (think Andre Chaperon) also go in this category.
Example subject lines:
“Do NOT do keto if…”
“The shocking truth about exercise”
“Why drug expiration dates don’t matter”
Level 5: Relationship
Finally, there is the highest level, relationship email marketing. That’s when readers open up your email and read it simply because they’ve grown to like and trust you over time.
This is the only kind of email marketing where you’re not living “email to email” — in other words, you can get away sending all sorts of random and personal stuff, even in the subject line, and people will still read on. In some way, this is coming full circle to the “Pointless” level — except that people actually want to hear what your opinions are and what’s new with you, because you’ve built that relationship.
Example subject lines:
“Bensplaining the importance of daily emails”
“BUSTED!”
“My new project”
“One weird trick for reaching the top of the ziggurat”
Now, there’s an important distinction between levels 1-4 and level 5.
Levels 1-4 are under your control. It’s simply a matter of what you put in the email.
However, you can’t force people to have a relationship with you. All you can really do is write good emails that will hopefully resonate with some of the people on your list.
Technical note: Being at the Relationship level doesn’t mean you only send out personal updates or rants. Quite the opposite. You can and should still frequently mix and match content from the different levels — even within one email. That’s how you get to — and stay at — the top.
In mathematics there is something called the “pigeonhole principle.”
At first, it sounds immensely stupid. Something like:
“If you have 20 pigeons but only 19 pigeonholes, and each pigeon has to go into a pigeonhole, then one pigeonhole will have more than one pigeon.”
No sh– Sherlock. But with a little creativity, mathematicians have found all sorts of complex and surprising applications of this simple principle. Still, they haven’t thought about marketing.
Three pigeons, just one pigeonhole. Something’s got to give.
I recently came across a successful business owner who wanted to send a sequence of “indoctrination” emails. Indoctrination emails are supposed to build a relationship without selling. I don’t think they are a good idea for multiple reason. Today let’s just talk about one that has to do with the pigeonhole principle.
When somebody subscribes to your email list, chances are very good they have subscribed to many other email lists. Perhaps they opted in on some web page for a free PDF. Perhaps they bought some supplement and put their email in when prompted. Perhaps they signed up to get notified of a webinar or of a sale.
What happens to all the emails all those businesses are sending and will be sending? Yep, they are arriving to the same inbox you are targeting. On the same day. And vying for the same attention and time of the person who’s supposed to read them. It’s the pigeonhole principle, applied to marketing.
Only, unlike in mathematics, this pigeonhole has limited space. You can’t fit infinitely many marketing emails into a real person’s day.
Which means:
Some emails will get skipped, ignored, and passed over…
Today
Tomorrow
And forever
And here’s how this applies to the indoctrination sequence: If you send out a “good-will” or “indoctrination” email (or two or seven), it might be the email that never gets read. That means that once you do send a “sales” email, your prospect won’t be as warmed up or indoctrinated as you might hope.
And yet, there’s a worse option still. And that’s when people read your indoctrination email, they like you, but they don’t know you have anything for sale (or they can’t get at your sales page easily)… And then, when your sales email arrives, it’s the one that gets ignored for good.
Now of course, this won’t happen all the time, and with every customer. And ultimatley, you still have their email address on your list, so you can follow up.
But why shoot yourself in the hoof before you’ve even started trotting?
There’s a simple solution to this problem. When you have somebody’s attention (when they’ve opened your email), build your relationship, build good-will, and offer your products for sale at the same time.
Speaking of which, if you do need somebody to write emails for your business in this vein, get in touch with me, because it’s a service I offer.