click rates, and click-to-open rates.
In summary: Test short and sweet subject lines against super long subject
lines and see where you have the most success. But whatever you do, don’t
get caught up in between, in the death zone.
Assess the Terrain
Inboxes are busy and crowded places. Most of your audience is on multiple
lists. Your direct competitors. Non-direct competitors. The works.
In order to write emails that get opened, you should know how your emails
stack up and stand out against those you’re battling against for your reader’s
attention.
Sign up for every email and/or newsletter from people in your industry. See
what these people are sending out, how frequently they’re emailing, what
their subject lines are, what type of content and CTAs they’re using in their
emails.
That’s right: You need to see every email your competitors are sending.
Then start what’s called an ‘email swipe file’, which I recommend you divide
into folders in Gmail, Outlook, or whatever you use. This allows you to take
a panoramic view of the market and the landscape you’re fighting for
attention in.
Look, even though the subject line is one of the shortest elements of your
email, it’s the one part you should be willing to spend the most time on. It’s
the key to sucking people into your email. Get it wrong and almost
everything else doesn’t matter. Get it right and watch sales go through the
roof.
Preheader Text That Burns With Intrigue
The preheader is the short summary text that follows the subject line when an
email is viewed in the inbox. Many mobile, desktop, and web email clients
use preheader text to give the reader a preview of the email’s content before
they open it. Here’s an example in Gmail:
Preheader text is what I call the ‘sniff test’ used by subscribers as a pre-
screening tool along with the subject line, because it’s the second thing a
subscriber sees when they get your email.
It’s these two elements they use to decide whether or not this email belongs
to the ‘P’ group or the ‘C’ group, and whether or not they should open your
email.
As we’ve already covered, if your emails don’t get opened it’s impossible to
get people to click-through and take your desired conversion action, like
making a purchase or an enquiry.
People are time-poor and looking for any excuse to deem your email
irrelevant so they can delete it. Preheader text makes it easy for them to do
this without even clicking into the email.
This means the copy here must be on point. The key with preheader text is
not to tell the whole story and to have it burning with intrigue. Think of this
section as the headlines and blurbs you see on the cover of the trashy
magazines we’ve talked about – the ones that use intrigue to entice readers to
pick them up and find out more.
Be careful. If you tell the reader everything, it removes all the intrigue
enticing them to click open and find out more.
I’ve found it’s generally best to take some of your email body copy, ideally
mid-sentence, and modify it to make it work as the preheader text.
It’s also great to use a ‘cliff-hanger’ or the ‘open loop’ copywriting technique
where you leave the reader wanting more.
A cliff-hanger is a scene in a movie, book, newspaper story, or TV show that
holds something back from the reader or viewer.
The promise is that if you keep reading or watching, you’ll eventually be
rewarded with what you want to know.
Suspense and intrigue are the main ingredients of a good cliff-hanger.
Using curiosity as the hook in preheader text keeps things sort of vague, yet
gives the reader just enough to make them want to know more. Nothing is
more effective for raw clicking power.
Examples:
‘Man showers in lemon juice, you won’t believe what happens next.
Find out here >>’
‘Leading cardiologist says carbs are not the problem (this is)’
‘I walked into my manager’s office and said these 3 simple words…’
‘Cat comes face-to-face with a rhino and both creatures’ instincts just
take over’.
With that said, you don’t have to use pure suspense or intrigue to create a
Humour
Amazement
Doubt
Challenges
And while the most effective cliff-hangers are unique and personal to you
and your audience, you can also think of cliff-hangers as common phrases
like these:
For example
Let me explain
Here’s what I mean
Here’s why
Sound silly? It’s not
Case in point
This is how
If you can’t think of a unique and personal cliff-hanger, then go with one of
the above. Using preheader text in your emails will get you more opens, more
clicks, and more sales!
Email Timing: The Best Day to Send Email
According to research by CoSchedule, for maximum inbox deliverability and
open rates, you should prioritise your send days in this order:
Tuesday: This is hands down the #1 best day to send emails,
according to the majority of the data from these studies.
Thursday: If you send two emails a week, choose Thursday for your
second day.
Wednesday: While no single study showed that Wednesday was the
most popular, it came in second place several times.
The Best Time to Send Email
CoSchedule found that while many of the studies returned varying results,
here’s how you can prioritise your send times based on data:
10 am: While late-morning send times were the most popular in
general, several concluded the best time to send emails is at 10am
Another notable time is 11am.
8 pm-midnight: I bet you didn’t expect that one. It looks like emails
generally receive more opens and clicks later in the evening. This is
likely due to people checking their email before going to bed.
2 pm: It looks like you might be successful by sending your emails
later in the day as people are checking out of work mode or looking
for distractions.
6 am: This makes complete sense given that research from the Center
for Creative Leadership shows that 50% of you begin your day by
emailing in bed. Bingo! Before you even stand up, you’re opening
emails. Good morning!
The Winners Are…
This list combines the best days with the best time of day to send out emails,
in descending order:
Tuesday at 10 am
Thursday at 8 pm
Wednesday at 2 pm
Tuesday at 6 am
Thursday at 10 am
Wednesday at 8 pm
Tuesday at 2 pm
Thursday at 6 am
Wednesday at 10 am
Tuesday at 8 pm
Thursday at 2 pm
Wednesday 6 am
Test Everything!
Everyone is wrong until proven otherwise – that’s my motto. With this said,
you’ll need to test these days and times agai
nst your own list. Send out your
emails at the best days and times as suggested above. Then analyse the data
from your tests to see when you got not only the best open rates, but also the
most traffic and conversions.
Step 3: Getting It Clicked
Ok, now it’s time to whip your emails into shape. In this is section we’ll dive
into the anatomy of high converting emails. What works and what doesn’t.
Step-by-step, you’ll learn how write and design emails that actually make
you money.
First up, tone is everything. Unlike a classic novel, where you know what
tone to expect, writing for email is different. It’s much more personal and
conversational. People are really good at detecting if pieces of writing on the
Internet – be they emails, blog posts, Facebook updates or tweets, Google
ads, YouTube comment threads – are meant for them or not. And the key
signal is how you put the words together. The tone tells you a lot about
whether an email is worth your attention or not. And it’s your tone that will
help people answer their eternal question – ‘In an inbox of infinite options,
should I read this email?’
The number one thing that determines this is not your grammar. It’s not the
length of your email, or how beautifully styled it is (quite the contrary
actually) …You see, the number one thing that determines this is this:
Is it entertaining?
As I mentioned earlier, my number one fear when writing an email is that it
will be boring.
It doesn’t matter how valuable your content is. If your tone is dry and boring,
it’s an effort for your subscribers to read it, and they’re met with resistance at
every line. Let’s face it: If they’re reading your email, they’re on the Internet,
meaning they’re just two clicks away from super-models in bikinis on
Instagram, funny cat videos, or what their friends are up to on Facebook.
Therefore, your emails must entertain! Don’t write limp, boring, dull emails
that lull your readers into a coma.
Be that adventurous person in their life who brings them some spice,
entertainment, and excitement to their vanilla existence.
Be controversial, funny, and exciting. Hit them with that ‘happy shot’, make
them smile and want to read your emails.
I don’t care if your market consists of lawyers, financial planners,
neuroscientists, architects, or a member of the royal family... they will never
be ‘bored into buying’. They will only respond to passion and entertainment.
Passion, entertainment, and showmanship are the missing ingredients in copy
and advertising today.
In today’s digital age, everybody seems to be more concerned about
offending a few losers than they are about selling to a multitude of winners.
Whom will I offend? Who will unsubscribe from my list? Will I be stoned in
the streets? Who the hell cares about that small percentage of cowards who
have nothing but time on their hands, people who will hide behind their
keyboards and write scathing comments in response to almost every
solicitation they receive?
I know I certainly don’t. But I see countless companies give up millions of
dollars in sales every year just so they won’t offend a small percentage of
complainers who’ll never buy from them anyway.
Listen: When you write email copy, you should never lie, never cheat, never
use poor taste, never use trickery, never be crass, and never insult your
reader’s intelligence.
However, you absolutely must stop watering down your copy, playing it safe,
and making it lifeless, boring, and lacking in passion, all in the hopes of not
offending those who’ll never do business with you anyway.
Instead you must entertain, excite, and spark passion in your readers. Be
polarising. This will enable you to form a friend-like bond with your
audience by being ‘real’ and levelling with them and not trying to be some
uptight prude.
And don’t just talk about business. Tell them about your personal life, what
you got up to on the weekend, what you do for fun, about your crazy ex-
mother-in-law who’s like a fire-breathing Godzilla. Let them see your
blemishes. Engage in casual banter like you do with friends. Tell them stories
and then, and only then, hit them with your valuable ideas, strategies, and
tactics on how to help them achieve their desired outcome.
As a result, like me, you’ll get countless emails just like the one below, in
this instance the subscriber had completely forgotten how he got on my list:
This email is just one example of many.
I’ve personally sold millions and millions of dollars’ worth of goods and
services through email. And it’s one of the most powerful, most highly
leveraged tool for business growth that exists.
Anatomy of a High-Converting Email
Every element of your email has one primary goal: to get the reader to take
the next step. Every line of copy should keep their eyes glued to their screen,
sliding down the slippery slope.
Your reader starts at the top of the slope, reading the subject line, and then
immediately slipping down to the preheader text, and then they open your
email and slide into the opening line of your copy and then immediately slip
down to the next line, slipping to the next line and so on and so forth.
In this sequence:
Subject line/Preheader: Grabs your reader by the throat and forces
them to keep reading. After reading your subject line, their brain
should be burning with intrigue to find out more.
Lead: Drag them into your copy by captivating them with an
interesting statement or ‘pattern interrupt’ that jolts them to attention.
Body: Fascinate them with a gripping or unusual story or example.
Call To Action: Get them to click, share, buy or do whatever the
primary call to action of your email is.
Once you’ve gotten your email opened, how do you get your readers to
actually click to go and see your offer or whatever it is you want them to do?
First up, if they’re ever going to click and do what you want them to do,
people must ‘consume’ and read your email. The very first element of this is
design.
1. Email design: how your email looks is as important as what it says!
While your email subject line is one of the primary ways to get email opened,
the design of your email is how you get it read.
As I mentioned previously, you might think that beautifully designed emails
with lots of images, animated-buttons and a HTML-enhanced responsive
theme would increase the amount of people that read your emails and then
click. But this couldn’t be further from the truth.
Don’t believe me? Let’s take a look. When you quickly scan this email,
what’s the first thing that comes to your mind?
Ok, stop. Let me guess. Immediately you knew it was from a business. You
knew it had commercial intent. Therefore immediately it goes into the ‘C’
group of emails. Consequently, you knew it wasn’t important or didn’t
require an action from you, and then you deleted it.
What’s the very first thing that tipped
you off? Let me guess – it was
probably the subject line with each and every word capitalised (when was the
last time a friend sent you an email with letter case in the subject line?) Then,
once we do open it, there’s a logo at the top in the header. Your friends
would never send you an email with the logo in the header, so don’t do it.
Instead, put your logo in the signature.
This is not just common sense. It’s backed up by research and data. Digital
marketing behemoth HubSpot researched the idea of HTML versus plain text
emails. To summarise their findings, they too found that HTML emails
actually decreased both their open and clickthrough rates.
Aside from proper list segmentation, nothing boosts opens and clicks as well
as an old school, plain-text email.
Why? It’s simple. Plain text emails look more authentic and less commercial
than HTML-enhanced emails. In addition, email filters are smart enough to
weed out over-enhanced emails from plain text emails – so it helps with your
deliverability too.
People see email as a one-to-one communication tool, and when was the last
time you got a beautifully designed HTML-enhanced email from a friend
about something important? Simple plain text emails seem to reflect the
personal nature of email, while HTML-enhanced emails scream ‘commercial
mass marketing’.
Check out this example from an email I received about business lending:
This is the perfect example of what not to do. It’s completely over designed,
there’s no copy, and the images are completely unrelated. I’m sure the creator
would be saying to their manager, ‘How great does this email look?’
Unfortunately for them, the design and polish of your emails doesn’t make
people trip over themselves to buy, in fact, it does quite the opposite.
No one wants to feel like you’re marketing to them. They’d rather feel like
they’ve opted in to receive information that will help them reach their desired
outcome. Email is a way to get your list to know, like, and trust you, which is
the number one way you convert subscribers into paying customers.
Takeaway: Send plain text emails rather than HTML-enhanced emails.
2. Talk to them like a friend
So, how do you cut through, get noticed, and eventually sell to your list? First
up, write conversationally and don’t try to sell them straight out of the gate.