This video was created by Joe Glover who is the founder of The Marketing Meetup.
The Marketing Meetup is a marketing community created by marketers, for marketers. It exists to help marketers learn and meet one another.
Hi, my name is Joe Glover, I’m the founder of The Marketing Meetup. In this video, we’re going to investigate a 26 word email and look at 11 opportunities within this plain text email, or mostly plain text email, for how you can make your email marketing just a little bit better:
So let’s take a quick look at the email. So the first opportunity I want to speak about is the subject line. So this is actually in my inbox, so someone’s actually replied to this saying ‘best email ever’, which is really kind. But what you can see here is there’s a very informal subject line. So for me, I’ve started off with a lowercase because I think it starts off much better in the inbox, it stands out, it’s a little bit more natural. And it’s also ridiculously long, again, this is something that sort of breaks people outside of their usual, ‘oh, this is going to be our usual promotions email’ from someone. That also builds on previous work. So in a previous email, I spent the time to say, writing the shortest email that I’ve ever tried to write, something along the words of that, by reinforcing that, in this particular email, what we see is people feel like they’re part of the club, they feel like they’re part of something that is not only existing in one moment but many. So they are welcomed as part of a specific club, which is a really nice way of doing things.
What most people would have seen in this email, and you can see it right here with my email address is that this particular promotional email came from my personal email address. So joeglover@marketingmeetup.com, what would have also appeared there is my profile picture. Now, both of these are opportunities two and three, these are opportunities to show that this is coming from a person, not a no-reply email address. If people want to get back in touch with your emails, then indeed they can. This is really important because email marketing is so often reduced to just a broadcast. In my opinion, one of the most effective channels and metrics that we can use when we’re speaking about email marketing is actually to look at the response rate, the conversations that have started as a result of your emails. If you start enough those conversations in a meaningful way, then one way to do that is to make sure that you’re sending your emails from a personal email address, or a version of a personal email address that certainly looks personal. So people are able to respond to it and know who they’re responding to.
Next, we can see here that there’s a fairly unique salutation. So granted, here, it’s just an emoji, but you can take it further. And indeed I do. In this case, it just says, ‘Hey, James’ and then there’s a heart emoji. Again, this just takes people out of a moment of ‘this is a standard email, this is something I receive 100 times a day’ and the emoji afterwards just reinforces this is a bit special.
The next opportunity I want to point out is in the copy. So this particular email is about a webinar. Now, what some people may do is they’ll have a single call to action as we can see with this pink button, but what you’re losing is an opportunity in your body text. So I always make sure that I link my webinars in the body text as soon as possible as well. You can do this with your call to action no matter what it is. And you can add in your call to action so people don’t actually need to scroll all the way to a button, or an image or whatever it may be is right there in the body text as they’re reading. If they want to get to the thing that you’re selling them quickly, then they can do. It’s easy, it’s clear and it’s concise. Next, you can see that the copy is very concise. So there are just a few words, but you get the information that you need. So the webinar is on Tuesdays at 3pm, it’s SEO opportunities from analytics and it’s gonna make your brain explode. It’s as simple as that. But it’s compelling enough that people are going to click in if they want to or if they’re not bothered about SEO, then they’ve made their decision nice and quick, it’s a respectful thing, they come out and say ‘No, you know what, that’s not for me’. That’s okay, absolutely fine. But at least you haven’t had to make them read 1000 lines of text to get to the point where their decision is made. The important thing here is that people actually have great awareness despite what people say, you know, people will consume Netflix content for 10 years. But what they have is a very, very short consideration cycle. This means to say that they will make a decision very quickly on whether they decide to continue consuming or not. Attention spans aren’t reducing, consideration spans are.
You can also see that this copy uses emoji quite a lot. So we’ve got one in the salutation, we’ve got one here, we’ve got two here, and then we’ve also got one on the button. Again, it’s just a way to add a bit of humour and a bit of lightheartedness. What I would say about this particular thing, however, is don’t, I’ve actually done it here and I wouldn’t do it again, is don’t necessarily rely on an emoji to convey the copy that you need to because some email providers aren’t going to show emojis in the same way as they appear in your own browser. So what you might actually do is use these emojis a little bit more sparingly than I did, but also use them to add humour and if you can, to reduce the copy. When we look at this button, you can see that again, the copy and the button is very informal. It’s very concise, but it’s also different. It’s not a sign up here button, it says see you there, thumbs up, again, that conveys something which is a little bit beyond just the normal email, it takes people out of the space of this is the same as everyone else. It’s a short way to sort of convey what you like to convey and do it with a bit of personality.
What I would suggest is that often your call to action should marry up to your subject line. So for example, this email isn’t a great example of that, but for example, it might be sign up for the world’s best webinar on SEO opportunities, or something to that effect, that marries up the subject line to the call to action, it makes the whole thing seem very coherent for the reader.
The next thing you’ll see is the word love. So most people will put something like kind regards or something like that which feels very, very cold, very, very corporate, and in 2021 is probably not the type of thing that people are going to be bothered about. So for me, I want to convey a sense of love. And I mean that sincerely for the marketing meetup I put a genuine sense of love into our community, and want to elevate everything we do to that level. So the best way and the most appropriate word for me to sign up is with love because that’s what I mean. I’ve also put from Joe, that’s my name, it’s not from the marketing meetup. Again, it’s all about being a person.
Here we can see another opportunity, which is your job title. So for me, I’ve put something which is a little bit unique: Irish Wolfhound. I changed that every time I did an email for that period of time, I’ve actually stopped doing that now. I think that there was probably a period of time where that was more appropriate and a little bit more unique. I think a few people picked up on it. And now it’s, you know, a little bit more commonplace and not necessarily something I’ll continue doing. But what we can see here is that there is another opportunity within the copy here to do something a little bit different.
So, over the course of these 26 words, I’ve just pointed out 11 opportunities for you to make your email copy and your email marketing a little bit more unique and a little bit more you. Hopefully, that’s useful. And a nice lifting off point for you to think about your own emails and the inspiration that may come off the back of it. Thank you for listening and take care.
