What I’m sharing with you in this article is the biggest and most dangerous mistake brands make with their email marketing. While most of this article looks at alternative health and supplement brands, it’s a problem that goes far wider than that.
Almost all e-commerce brands make this mistake. Service-based businesses make this mistake. Even giant behemoth corporations make this mistake.
Before I reveal what this mistake is, let me paint a picture for you so you understand how lethal it is.
This is the reason why many companies think email marketing is dead. Let me be clear: folks have been saying email marketing is dead for well over a decade now.
And Email Marketing Is Still The Most Effective Marketing Strategy Known To Man
Let’s take a quick sidestep here and discuss why email marketing is still the most effective marketing strategy.
1. You don’t have to pay acquisition costs like you do with paid advertising
2. Social media can ban you from their platforms — even if an email provider banned you from their software, you can still download your lists and switch to another software.
3. Email marketing doesn’t need an entire team of people like sales teams have.
4. Almost everyone checks their email multiple times a day.
5. Email communication is 1-to-1 (when you do it right). That means, it’s the most personable form of marketing available today.
6. It doesn’t cost you anything to send out an email to your list — unlike direct mail where you’re charged for every letter or postcard you send.
7. Statistics say that email generates $38 for every $1 spent — giving it an astronomical ROI of about 3800%.
8. Email is the best way to gather feedback from your audience. If you know Jeff Walker and his “Product Launch Formula,” the whole gist of his business model is creating businesses based around what his audience wants. He learns this info from email.
9. When you email the right way, you build your authority, expertise, and authenticity more than any other marketing platform. This creates a rabidly engaged following who will buy almost anything you have for sale.
10. Your emails can be a product themselves by creating mini-courses that you deliver via email.
And there are a whole lot of other reasons.
Here’s the point I want you to take home:
Email Marketing Always Was, Still Is, And Will Continue To Be The Undisputed King Of Marketing
But… only when you send emails the right way — as I’ll explain in this article.
Let’s get back into the biggest and most lethal mistake brands make with their emails then, shall we?
You “nuke” all the benefits I mentioned above when you email the wrong way and commit this lethal mistake.
But here’s the problem:
Almost nobody knows about this brand-murdering mistake!
If you search for “how to do email marketing” or “best tips for email marketing” on Google, every result is from a big corporation type company who understands SEO. They know how to rank on Google. They don’t understand email marketing.
In other words, they stuff these articles with fluff, but there's no meat.
But it’s worse than that…
Not only are they fluff-filled articles, but they’re filled with the WRONG advice!
And it’s not just kinda wrong advice. It’s brand-killing, sales-sabotaging type advice.
Let me explain:
All these articles use examples of heavily-designed HTML emails whenever they’re talking about best practices. They say how you want to have pretty colored templates and use a contrasting color for your CTA button. They say you should personalize your subject lines with stupid emojis. They mention how your email should look snazzy — by inserting GIFs and only a couple lines of text.
And there’s a lot more business-bankrupting advice peppered all over these articles.
Here’s the thing:
While these heavily-designed and “pretty” HTML emails generate some quick sales…
...they do so at the expense of your business!
Over time, these types of emails bore your readers to death. (Remember: boredom is the death of any sale.)
These emails feel impersonal — even though any top ranking article about email marketing on Google tries to convince you that these emails are personal. When your emails feel impersonal, you behead the relationship you have with your list.
And since all the top ranking articles on Google give the same exact advice, everyone is using these heavily-designed HTML emails.
If you follow this advice, your emails will be no different from your competitors.
And most importantly…
Heavily-Designed HTML Emails Aren’t Persuasive
The whole point of sending emails is to make sales. You make sales by being persuasive. It’s damn near impossible to persuade someone when you only have two lines of text because you fill the rest of your emails with unpersuasive GIFs and pink backgrounds. That means, the only way you can make sales is by offering big, fat discounts. And if you’re already working with shoestring profit margins...
You’re Committing Business Suicide!
I can’t emphasize this enough.
If you follow this lame, played-out advice, you’re sending your business to purgatory at best and bankrupting it at worst. We dove into more detail about plain text vs HTML style emails in this article if you want to check it out.
Onward.
Let’s finally talk about this business-ravaging mistake.
If you’re smart, you might’ve already caught on to this mistake.
No, it’s not sending HTML emails (even though that’s a symptom).
No, it’s not offering discounts in every email either — though this is another symptom.
And no, it’s not that you’re following the advice of HubSpot and other top-ranking articles on Google when you search for “email marketing best practices.”
The real mistake?
Thinking Of Your Emails As Coming From A “Brand” Instead Of A “Person”
Here’s what I mean by that:
Brands aren’t personal.
Brands only care about money.
Brands don’t care about their customers.
Brands aren’t even real. They’re made up of people, but pretend they’re something greater than the humans who make them up.
On the other hand…
A person is personal by his very nature.
A person might care about money, but most good and honest people genuinely care about others.
A person cares about every single customer he’s ever had.
A person is real and authentic.
And the most important difference:
People Relate To Other People — They Don’t Relate To Brands
This is why email marketing is such an effective form of communication if you want to highlight your immense knowledge that can transform other people’s lives (and grow your wallet fatter).
People relate to you. Your struggles. Your story of how you became the expert you are today. And people relate to imperfections.
They don’t relate to brands — especially when every email from every brand looks identical (besides a different color CTA).
Brands try to be perfect. That’s why they meticulously craft their beautiful HTML designs. They want to show you that they’re perfect.
This rubs your customers the wrong way — usually on a subconscious level.
And the reverse is true:
Using ugly, plain-text emails filled with typos, slang, and your unique personality “infect” people on a subconscious level.
This is what I call “Pimping Your Personality.”
When you “pimp your personality,” you make your audience emotionally invested in you. They relate to you, your products, and your emails.
When you make typos, use slang, and don’t make beautiful HTML style emails, you’re using your own, unique personality. This not only helps you stand out from your competitors, but it makes your audience actually like you.
And here’s the thing about bizness:
People need to like YOU before they buy from you.
“Pimping Your Personality” makes people like you. Then they devour everything you have for sale.
While designing pretty HTML style emails that everyone else sends makes people indifferent to you. They won’t buy anything unless you offer them a big, fat discount.
Last point before we wrap up here:
When you send emails the wrong way, you need to have a constant influx of new leads. Because your list gets burnt out, bored, and stops opening your emails (even if you offer them a fat discount).
This means you have to spend even more money on paid advertising to constantly attract new leads into your world.
And this cost usually increases over time:
You have to spend more and more on ads and see less and less profit from email.
While people who send emails the right way usually have much smaller lists, but make way more from their emails.
Sumtin’ to think about.
Anyway, if you need help “Pimping Your Personality” and sending emails that make your audience like you, I offer consulting services and a done-for-you ghostwriting system I call Profit First Emails.
If’n you’re interested, you can set up a discovery call with me using the link below:
But my schedule doesn’t always have openings for new clients.
If the link above doesn’t work, I’m not accepting new clients. But you can join my waitlist using the link below and be the first to know when a new client spot opens up:
Join my waitlist here: https://www.johnbrandtcopy.com/waitlist
John Brandt