Do you start your emails with a question?
Do you try to identify with your reader, or get him to identify with you, by waffling on about his life, or worse, about the type of person you think he is?
Do you guess at your reader’s problems, but because you’re not really sure what those are, do you frame your guesses as questions to buy yourself some wiggle room?
If you’re anything like the several people I know who write vague and fluffy email copy that fails to draw readers in, it may be because you’re not saying anything hard and clear at the start of your email, and instead you engage in watery attempts at empathy.
Ok enough of that. Everything I’ve just done in the four sentences above — don’t do it. Especially at the start of your email.
Last night, I sat down and finally finished a batch of email copy critiques that had been lingering on my todo list.
There were lots of good ideas in each email.
But there was one recurring problem I saw. Maybe it was my fault, because I’ve been encouraging people to write about “symptoms” their audience is experiencing.
What I got instead was a cloud of throat clearing at the start, disguised as empathy copy.
The fact is, writing is not talking.
People will forgive a lot of when they look you in the face and hear your voice.
They will not forgive nearly as much when they are sitting alone on their couch with their phone in hand, with the TV on in front of them, with the next-door neighbor’s dog barking, with their own stomach growling. They won’t forgive:
– Abstraction that really doesn’t say much
– Aimless repetition
– A 2-3 min period to “warm up”
– Groping in the dark in the hope of finding something to say
– “Vibing”
Don’t do any of that. Especially at the start of your email.
Instead, say something hard and clear.
If you want examples of what hard and clear looks like, look inside my 10 Commandments book. Not among any of the actual A-list commandments. But in the way I start each chapter, which is really just an expanded email. As a reader named Tom wrote me:
I’ve been reading a lot of books around copywriting; but as a jumping off point, 10 Commandments was the best I’ve read so far.. So many good pointers on techniques to use and people to pay attention to.
But on a deeper level, your writing is exceptional. The first two books I started on were by Olgivy and Makepeace, but I was looking for something to bridge the gap in to the current era, as I couldn’t imagine myself ever actually engaging with their copy as a prospect.
I really appreciated how up-front, engaging, but still subtly very technical your style is. I’m planning to try to reverse engineer exactly what do, because I couldn’t put 10 Commandments down, and by the time your dropped the first CTA, there was no choice.
So…
Would you like to stop fluffing around? Are you sometimes stumped for a non-vague way to start your emails? Do you—
Ok, enough, once again.
For examples of hard and clear ways to start your message: