(or in other words… The 5 P’s for success.)
Confession:
I swiped the subject line from the GLC feature on Kendrick’s Poe Mans Dreams.
Here’s why:
My chick and I are heading on a 5-day camping trip. To prepare for said 5-day camping trip, we went camping last weekend. And boy, was it a good decision.
Now, we’ve been camping a few times this year.
We have a big queen-size air mattress, which is pretty comfy as far as air mattresses go.
Well, when we went camping this past weekend, we set up our tent, pumped our mattress full of high-quality A-I-R, and then I built us a fire.
We hung out around the fire, listened to music I downloaded from Spotify (we had zero service), and threw back a couple seltzers for a few hours before we sauntered back into our tent and tried to go to sleep.
Annnnnnd there was a massive problem happening inside our tent:
Someone (or something) went back to the 70s and replaced our air mattress with a waterbed!
Oooof.
It was half deflated when we went to lay down.
We both woke up at 3 am, almost hitting the ground because so much air deflated from our mattress. When we woke up around 7 am — we were both lying on the ground.
(Since we created our own makeshift campsite along the Allegheny River, we were laying on a garden variety of weeds, uneven land, and who knows what else when we awoke.)
And we didn’t bring sleeping bags because, well, there’s no point when you have an air mattress.
Best part?
If we didn’t go on this mini-camping trip, we woulda been luck-outta-shyt during our 5-day camping excursion.
Because, well, there’s no point in bringing sleeping bags when you have an air mattress. And we woulda brought our air mattress not realizing it was a sneaky waterbed from the 70s in disguise.
Told ya we out here rotating around the five P’s.
And, of course, my email-marketing-warped mind thought of an important email marketing lesson:
Proper prevention prevents poor performance.
When you’re writing emails (either for yourself or your clients), you have to double check everything’s working as intended.
So what do you check?
Here’s what I do:
1. Send a test email to myself and make sure every link works.
2. Read the copy out loud once (while running it through the Readable app), so I erase any obvious mistakes.
3. Check it's going to the intended lists and segments in the email marketing software.
4. Reread the subject line and make sure it’s the best one my noggin can cook up based on the content. (Tomorrow, I’ll reveal if you should write the subject line before the body copy or vice versa… caution: my answer may offend you.)
And that’s pretty much all I do, but with a humblebrag caveat:
I’m good at coming up with angles (case in point in this email). And I understand the emotional reasons someone purchases products from my clients.
If I was a “greener” copywriter and didn’t have as much experience, I’d add these “rules” to the checklist:
5. Focusing on benefits, not features.
In our air mattress example, the benefit is a comfy night of sleep anywhere in the world. The feature is that it's a 60″ x 80″ mattress.
6. Writing to only one person, with one big idea, one promise, and one CTA.
Or in other words, abiding by the “rule of one” lesson I shared with you a couple days back.
7. Having clear next steps on how to buy said product.
8. Writing emotional copy vs logical copy.
Continuing our example, writing, “drift into a restorative sleep which heals your body with the crickets chirping behind you. Then wake up to the beautiful songs of birds.” vs “because of our patented XYZ air, this mattress will stay inflated for the entire night.”
(You can use a mix of emotional and logical copy. Sometimes it makes sense. But remember: buying is an emotional decision, not a logical one.)
9. Injecting social proof where it seems fit.
And I can go on, but I won’t. It’s always better to try things yourself rather than getting spoon-fed them.
Anyway, I digress…
If you need help making bookoobucks with your emails, book a discovery call by clicking this link. If you have a proven list and an offer, we’ll hop on a quick call to make sure we’re a good fit.
Then we’s off’s to the races, rotating under the five P’s.
I’ll meet you back here tomorrow — and reveal if you should write the subject line or email first.
John